Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
Mad for it? Not blooming likely. Not me.
I was musing about this Oasis revival tour. Well I wasn’t involved in the dash for tickets and I won’t be paying grossly inflated prices to see the return of the Gallagher brothers.
They had their day in the 1990s and will mean more to my 40-something kids, two of whom would be at school then.
I’m a self-confessed dinosaur. Britpop never did it for me. I just didn’t “get” Oasis. To me the day the music died was around 1970.
At first I was mystified by the rush for tickets, but then I thought about what life was like when Oasis and Blur were fighting for top spot. Things Can Only Get Better was the New Labour anthem and Tony Blair appeared to be the future.
They invited pop groups and sports teams as guests at No 10, we had Britpop and this country was leading the world in culture and sport. And Tony wished us to know that he was responsible.
I now know what it is. People were happy then. And they are not happy now. It’s a rotten old world. This country has just seen a summer of discontent, of marches, protests, riots and looting. Plus the world outside has never been so threatening and dangerous.
Okay so Tony was phoney. But I would rather have him than our funereal leader who tells us it can only get worse.
Since Labour got in at the election any lingering sense of optimism in the country has evaporated.
They lied through their teeth to get in. Was there any smoking ban mentioned in the manifesto, was there any suggestion of robbing pensioners of their winter fuel allowance, or paying train drivers £73,000 a year with no strings attached? At least the union leaders can now take more expensive holidays.
And I voted for them this time. Talk about buyer regret.
Smokers are pariahs
I used to know a few professional sportsmen who smoked. One of them was Carlisle’s goalkeeper Allan Ross who told me he could not play without a last cigarette prior to kick off and another at half time.
Smokers these days are pariahs. Condemned to tin shelters in alleyways outside pubs having a quick drag. When I started work nearly everyone smoked, certainly in the newspaper world. They got me started. I did not want to be the odd one out. Eventually I saw the light rather than the lighter and gave up. Over 55 years since my last drag.
This Labour nonsense about banning smoking outside is a distraction from more serious matters. The percentage of smokers in the population is very small anyway.
The tobacco industry must have been a big earner for governments at one time. There was even an advert on TV that said doctors recommended smoking.
Now thousands who used to smoke, and lots who weren’t smokers before, have taken to an even filthier habit, vaping.
The day will not be far off when the anti-smoking police can burst into our homes to collar some abject remnant from the days when millions lit up. Then it will be your pork pies, sweets and pop under threat along with any of life’s pleasures the health activists can think of.
Remembering the milkmen
Look, I may as well confess. I know all the words of Benny Hill’s classic song about Ernie the milkman. Well, we all have our little foibles.
The story that caught my eye this week was about the former milkman who has spent the last 40 years amassing a collection of over 20,000 glass milk bottles.
He reckons they form an important part of social history and in the days when milkmen went around delivering in the early morning crime was a lot less.
Ernie’s mates did a good job checking on old people and keeping an eye on their local communities and watching out for any suspicious characters.
The milkman on his float was a useful addition to neighbourhood policing. Sadly, like poor Ernie, they are no longer with us.
How did it get there?
Some strange thoughts come to me in the dark watches of the night — like how did they get that altar stone nearly 500 miles from Scotland to Stonehenge.
I have visions of them rolling it down Middlegate in Penrith before a mighty shove up and over Shap. Was a relay organised? How many hernias per mile were suffered?
The Greeks want their marbles back. How long before the Scots ask for their stone to be returned?
