Alan Coleman

It was after I read an article somewhere a few years ago that I began to think that things were going wrong for British Pubs. I can’t remember what it was in or when, but it was about John Illsley, former Bass player from Dire Straits taking over a pub in Hampshire, which turns out to be called the East End Arms. He made a comment about the kind of clientele he’d like to attract, something along the lines of replacing the lagers with real ales in an attempt discourage the “Lager crowd”.

The reason I’m talking about this now is on the back of some reading I did yesterday about the Government and Local Authorities trying to regulate how and where we use our local pubs. Typical New Labour stuff, no standing at the bar, no swearing, children welcome, you know. I put two and two together and came to the conclusion that New Labour and John Illsley are actually after the same things. Gentrification and profit.

When John Illsley spoke of the “Lager crowd” what he meant was people like you and me. People that use pubs in the way that they we’re always intended, rather than his idea of them as restaurants for his own kind of people.  No more faded pictures of the 1979 pub football team, no more fruit machines, no more carpet complete with engrained filth, no more coloured curved glass hiding drinkers from prying eyes, no more raucous laughter, no more waiting for years to finally be let in. That’s all been replaced by inclusive entertainment for all the family. A restaurant, and a profitable one too.

I guess that’s what happened. The locals at the East End Arms were made to feel unwelcome, the place was stripped of any individuality and transformed into a hearty gastropub full of occasional diners and ‘hand cooked’ crisps. You could argue that it’s been voted one of the top 50 pubs in Britain, but by whom? The Guardian? What would anyone that writes or has ever read The Guardian know about local pubs? Nothing apart from the fact that the Sunday Roast can be ‘very pleasant’ when mum comes to stay and that the double buggy can fit through the doors that where widened for disabled access.

So John Illsley finally got the kind of gentrified clientele he wanted after installing “The Guest Ales”, an ordered and pleasant slice of New Labour’s soulless and boring middle classes.

Imagine this scene. Myself and Mandy, enjoying a nice Sunday afternoon pint outside a pub before moving on to a friends house for a BBQ. The sun is shining and we’re passing the time by talking about how much money we wouldn’t give our families if we came in on the Premium Bonds.

That was yesterday, at least it was until the Smug London Parents arrived and along with the worlds cleverest child and promptly ruined a decent afternoon.

The child prodigy, just about walking age, proceeded to push a wooden chair backwards and forwards on the concrete producing a perfectly pitched grating sound. The Smug London Parents looked around proudly before returning to their conversation about All Tomorrows Parties, which incidentally they were conducting at the top of their voices to be heard about little darling’s racket.
So now no one else outside the pub can speak because of the child genius and his grating sound interspersed with his parents shrieking bouts of side splitting banter.

It’s like people will do anything to demonstrate how liberal and cool they are, even if it means being incredibly anti social.

So I get the hump and we leave. Leave them to their vanilla perfumed tobacco, middle class chit chat about cool bands and their wonderful fucking brat.

I was looking around online earlier and came across this great picture of Bernard Hinault and Greg Lemond settling their differences at the top of Alpe d’Huez during the 1986 Tour de France. It’s a defining moment in Tour history, a truly inspiring image and a tribute to the sportsmanship of both riders. The two of them are up there with the people that I admire most in life. Hinault, very much the master at this stage of the relationship, is a picture of joy as the emerging understudy Greg Lemond looks on with admiration and respect. The whole image, Peugeot, Credit Lyonnais, paint on the road and the smiles all combine to give a perfect window into that late 20th century European psyche.

This is often referred to as the Golden Era of cycling, before helmets removed all its personality and drug use became an acceptable fate. Certainly the riders have changed in as much as they all seemed to come in different shapes and sizes, ranging from tiny Columbian climbers like Luis Herrera to enormous Dutch sprinters who attacked the flatlands with relentless force. Maybe attitudes have changed too, sure it was competitive but it wasn’t so much about being the eventual winner as having a couple of glorious moments.

It’s like all these things though isn’t it? It’s the romance of it all, the memories, the sound of Phil Liggett’s exited voice and the feeling of pride as Robert Millar leaves Pedro Delgado behind in the Pyrenees. Cycling isn’t the most skilful sport in terms of individual competitors, but it’s probably the most romantic and certainly the most stylish.

Two Things. The first is the London Marathon. I’d only ever watched this on TV before and always considered it quite tedious, all those wacky costumes and over enthusiastic charity types seemed a little bit too much. We went to see some friends who live in Canary Wharf on Sunday so got caught up in the crowds on the way there, and bloody brilliant it was too. Despite my ill informed judgment (who would have thought it?) about the event it turned out to be not only really good fun, but also quite inspiring. Moreover, in the current climate of hysteria surrounding our identity here we have an event that shows that we can be a great nation without necessarily involving the tabloid press.

The costumes, the pain, the smiles and the decency all underpinned a general feeling of pride both in the spectators and the runners. As the Samba bands played in the sunshine, and pubs spilled out onto the cracked pavements on the Isle of Dogs, we suddenly had a glimpse of how life can be lived without politics, greed and Richard Littlejohn.

The second thing is a gig I went to at the Electric Ballroom last week. And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead has been one of my favourite bands (aren’t they all?) for years, and last Thursday didn’t disappoint. I won’t bother using F7 to come up with a load of adjectives other than to say that they’re the real deal, and as I’ve said time and again, all the best bands are American.

Things are looking up!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alcoleman/sets/72157617401351574/

http://www.trailofdead.com/

I try to cross the road in an attempt to buy some foreign food for lunch but can’t use the pelican crossing because it’s blocked, by a nausea inducing mini coach. The driver stares gormlessly ahead as I watch the little green man appear through his windows, completely unaware that hundreds of people now have to squeeze through a twelve inch gap in front of his stinking vehicle. I take my turn in squeezing past, like everybody else, and in doing so look up at his flabby face.

“Fucking twat”

As the silent words leave my mouth I get a closer inspection at his hunched gait. His ageing lips hang loosely above an obscene roll of fat that extends round the base of his head. He points at the road with a podgy finger and the loose lips bounce up and down. It’s at this point that I notice the flag of Saint George sitting on his dashboard, A4 in size and laminated so that he can take it from mini coach to mini coach at his pleasure.

So this is where it’s come to has it? The millennia of science, art, engineering, bravery and discovery. This is where everything that successive generations have strived for, through austerity, hardship and war, has finally ground to a halt. The sneering middle classes sat around waving plastic flags with bitterness in a desperate attempt to ignore the reality of a miserable life of condescension and sheer fucking boredom. Their working class counterparts, waddling around KFC in Chelsea shirts, staring at the grease with resentment and anger. All of them, crushed with the disappointment of identity and all of its unwanted side effects. What a waste, what a waste of everything we could have been.

The more we wave our plastic flags, given away free with every Happy Meal, the more we distance ourselves from Brunel, Kohima, football and everything we’ve ever achieved.

The expression ‘British jobs for British workers’ is quite simply laughable. The biggest hole in the current argument involving contractors at the Lindsey Oil Refinery in North Lincolnshire is that they are not British jobs at all, in fact they are French. French jobs that have been won, fair and square, by an Italian contractor who has every right to employ whoever it wants. Being British does not entitle anyone to work or special treatment within the EU. Again, they are not ‘British Jobs’ and the locality of an employer in relation to ones abode carries with it no obligation. Moreover, the benefits of EU membership has been carrying our economy for years, which is why the comforting and mythical idea of the British job and the British worker is as laughable is it is ludicrous.

When Clement Attlee created the National Coal Board after the war, he did so with no real intention of creating British jobs. It was just assumed that the coal would continue to be mined by the same communities as it always had. So when Margret Thatcher’s Conservative government closed the coal mines in the early 80s, preferring instead to rely on a cheaper imported product, the communities that had done the work previously had a fair claim to a British job. This is where the double standards start to emerge, and it doesn’t take the brains of an English craftsmen to know who is behind it either.

So what we’re really talking about is British jobs for British workers, just as long as it’s economically viable and certain other considerations are taken into account. Oh, and it helps if the media are on your side. Which is why striking miners spent two whole years fighting the media and the Government for real British jobs, and the argument for non British jobs was settled in a week. Shameful.

And since when has the tabloid press been a supporter of the striking worker? The swap from ‘The enemy within’ to ‘The honest working lads’ has been an overnight sensation, literally. The Daily Mail supporting Trade Unionism, who would have thought it? Strange times indeed, or an alternative agenda at play? Given the press and their historical attitude towards industrial action, it’s a little difficult to reconcile the cosy relationship that has developed without pointing to a common denominator. Foreigners.

Amazingly, they do have trades in other countries. Maybe they don’t aspire to the same level of craftsmanship that built our proud empire, but they probably get by with enough skills to build everything the British do, but somehow far better. Further still, we don’t have a problem with foreign children making our trainers in sweatshops for practically nothing do we? The reason being that it suits the economics of our vanity and is somehow justified by being a luxury item. This where the ‘British jobs for British workers’ argument finally crashes and burns.

And please don’t try and tell me that this isn’t a race issue when the idiocy that is the BNP are using it as their latest nationalist soundbite, and they’re not racist are they? Nick Griffin says so. ‘British jobs for British workers’ is a logical progression from ‘Jobs for whites’, only slightly more politically correct. It’s a shame that the working lads couldn’t have made their voice heard without appealing to the current zeitgeist of nationalism in the same manner as the pro Israel lobby.

It’s just all to easy. The flag, the aggressive rhetorical questioning and blatant ugliness of misguided British superiority. Things are changing, and sitting around watching Jeremy Clarkson tell you otherwise only reinforces the underpinning concept of this entire argument. We’re just not the country we used to be.

When I’m at work or in public and someone makes a particularly cutting or unnecessary comment, I never know what to say. More often than not I think of a hilarious reply whilst walking home later, but by then it’s too late. There’s a name for this scenario but I don’t know what it’s called, could be ‘Frenchmans Perogative’, or something like that.

Years ago I pulled into a petrol station in Colchester, it’s the one just down the hill from Hyderabad barracks on Mersea Road.  I needed some petrol and a slow puncture meant that I had to pump the front nearside tyre up every day or so.
As I approached the counter a thin tall man in his forties looked away in disgust, his general demeanour giving a distinct air of superiority.  During the transaction there was no dialog, I had to look at the till to know exactly how much I was paying for, which I thought was a little odd.

On remembering that I needed 20p for the tyre compressor I was forced into speech. “You haven’t got a 20p coin for the tyre machine have you?” I said, trying to sound as friendly as possible.

“Are you asking me, or telling me?” He still doesn’t look at me.

“What?” I replied.

“Are you asking me if I have 20p, or telling me that you need 20p?” Now he’s growing impatient.

“It doesn’t matter, you know what’s required either way you look at it.” I replied.

“That’s the trouble with your generation,  you don’t know how to speak properly.” He actually said this, the feeling of loathing on his part was overwhelming.

“Okay, and you do?”

“Yes, I think I do.” He replied, half smiling with a waggle of the head, still looking away.

“And this is where it’s got you, dishing up Richmonds, grotty mags and cheap pasties to pissed squaddies. Great, well done mate, your children must be soo proud. So the way that I speak may not be perfect, but whilst you’re stuck in this grubby shithole I’ll be out to dinner with my Girlfriend. There she is out there, checking her make up in my K reg Toyota that I pur-chased from new, from a dealership. ”

I didn’t get my 20p, but I drove away a proud man.

At least I would have been If that’s exactly what had happened. In reality I didn’t say any of the above apart from, “What?” Before walking out, shaking with embarrassment. To make matters worse as I was driving away he was smiling to himself, although still not looking at me.

Strange the things that stick in the mind.

I’m referring to the state of chaos and confusion that is the country of Greece this week, two before Christmas. It seems that the ignition for this spate of rioting was the shooting of a fifteen year old boy by Police, but I think that the real momentum is probably rooted in more wide ranging issues.  The Greeks have had enough, they’re fed up and pissed off and they’re releasing their anger by rioting in the streets and generally smashing things up. And good luck to them too.

I’ve always said that one of the defining moments for the British people, within my lifetime, was the manner in which we stood up to the Poll Tax (notice I use the word ‘we’ with a sense of pride). The widow learnt her lesson that day, humiliated by a mass disobedience that would end in tears of self pity. The politicians lined up with the usual rhetoric, but by then it’s too late because the damage had been done. Not by thugs or hooligans, but by people who were pushed too far. The reoccurring theme of a smaller group who consider the interests of an even smaller group to be of more importance.

We have to ask ourselves why and when civil disorder became uncivilised, frowned upon by middle aged men in suits and rebranded as thuggish, when the reality is that civil disorder results from people being badly treated.  Also, if it is our wish to smash the place up then why shouldn’t we? After all it does belong to us, we shouldn’t be made to feel as though our habitat has been provided for our use by graceful politicians, only to be handed a good helping of disappointment after we misbehave.

The right wing press poured scorn on protesters who gave a statue of Winston Churchill a green Mohican a few years ago. What happened to our sense of humour? That was a truly funny moment. Besides that, Churchill was a politician which means we have the right to lampoon him in life and death. Further still, it was he that played such a vital part in securing freedom during the Second World War, but he didn’t win the war on his own and even if he did, we still have the right to use that freedom how we choose.

Sometimes I think that peoples idea of democracy is just having things how they want it, or am I missing something?

Civil disorder keeps a country on its toes, it reminds the establishment that they can only have their way most of the time, and it reminds us that we still have some fighting spirit left.

The only problem the world has with civil disorder is there’s not enough of it.

I see him every morning in the park, watching intently as his pedigree Beagle shits in the flowerbed.

Dogs? Pet fucking dogs.

He stands upright and moans to other dog walkers about the state of the country, young people and insolence.

He wants to move on but the animal wants to stay and sniff, so they both block the path with their ridiculous retractable lead as he shouts the dogs name over and over and over again.

The voice of the old fashioned East End gent is inches from my hangover and fear. I tell him to get out of the way. He asks me who I’m talking to and I say you, and fucking that, jabbing my finger at the animal.

He spits with fury, the white hair and the brown winter coat. He’s foul mouthed, like me. The pet fucking dog has a go at me as the East End gent flicks the switch to let out yet more retractable lead.

So now I can’t walk through the park anymore through fear, it’s my own fault. I’m bored of it anyway, Lincoln’s inn fields. The ‘pleasant’ urban space for smug lawyers, personal trainers, tennis, tabloid newspapers, the middle classes and dog shit.

This is a fantastic picture, and one of my favourite images of the last few years. Even if you’ve been living in Mongolia since the turn of the century and don’t recognise them, they look like the sort of people you’d like know, right?

Look at Joe Calzaghe, with his humble stance and cool as thumbs up. When he answered his critics by teaching Jeff Lacy how to box in Mach 2006 I honestly thought that it was a defining point in my life. Still unbeaten after 45 fights, he is quite literally, a great bloke. Victoria Pendleton’s shy smile hides a personality that ignored her coach when he insisted that she was too small for track cycling. She went on to dominate her sport as the undisputed champion of the world with far too many titles and gold medals to list here. Lewis Hamilton’s friendly hands in pockets confidence is the epitome of cool. He ignored the racist slurs and backstabbing that accompany his chosen sport to rise as a true champion in unbelievable style.

I have no doubt whatever that any one of the above would stop and help you in the street if need be.

As a simple picture, it’s the embodiment of personal achievement, good nature and everything that is great about our country. Stuff The Daily Mail, the Royal family, the BNP and waving plastic flags at Last night of the proms. These people are what Great Britain is all about.