Amazon Versus Waterstone’s

Waterstone's book shop signWaterstone’s is the UK’s second biggest bricks and mortar bookseller (after the ubiquitous WH Smith’s) and its stores are great places to shelter from the rain and thumb through a title or two. I would hate to see them disappear from the high street just because of the relentless march of the on-line retailer. ‘If you can’t beat them, join them,’ may be a well-worn adage but it made perfect commercial sense for Waterstone’s to launch its own on-line offer a few years ago.

Much has been said about the phenomenal growth of Amazon and its sharp practices, not to mention its questionable (but quite legal) tax avoidance shenanigans. But you can’t fault their business acumen. If you view an out of stock item, you get this message:

Temporarily out of stock, order now and we’ll deliver when available

Contrast this with the message from Waterstone’s:

 Not in our warehouse. We can order it, but could take up to 3 weeks

It’s like they can’t be arsed. Hopeless really.

45 Years

45 Years

45 YearsLast year, while dining with an old friend at the Assembly House, Norwich’s delicious Georgian gem, we stumbled upon the making of ’45 Years’ starring Sixties starlets, Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtney. I caught the ravishing Ms Rampling rushing past in a dressing gown as I emerged from the little boy’s room. It was quite a shock, I can tell you. So when the film recently came to town, we went to see what we had inadvertently gatecrashed. I’m so glad we did. Filmed entirely in Norfolk and around Norwich,  45 Years tells the story of long-buried secrets disinterred with devastating consequences just days before a 45th wedding anniversary. Atmospheric and suffocating, comforting certainties are chipped away to reveal a marriage un-fulfilled. Norfolk’s low wintry skies, normally big and uplifting, only add to the bleak claustrophobia. Both Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtney are superb.

45 Years is a very British film. There are no Hollywood moments, no overwrought emotions, no final redemption, just the stoicism of a seemingly rock solid relationship in silent crisis. Classy and brilliant.

On the House

Haymarket 7Pret a Manger, a national chain of coffee houses, has one solitary outlet in Norwich. It’s distinguished by the fact that it is one of the few venues in the city with a place in the sun during the afternoons. Bright days are too few to waste so I take full advantage of their £1 filter coffee and sunny aspect whenever I’m able. Pret is also distinguished by the fact that they don’t have a formal loyalty scheme. You know the kind of thing – swipe this, stamp that, tells us  everything and we’ll give you a free crappafrappachino with every grand spent and we promise not to sell on your personal data to the Russians (yer, right). Instead, staff are encouraged to give away a free beverage to patrons whenever the mood takes them. It’s company policy. Back in the day, I was a regular beneficiary of a Pret freebie when I ordered my morning fix every weekday and 8:45. I like to think it’s because I looked quite the cock of the queue in my sharp business suit. Nowadays, my bargain bucket look goes unnoticed in Pret. At least that was I thinking last time I offered my pound coin to the nice young man with the hairy chest and pony tail. But then he said,

On the house.

Vicious!

Vicious!

Vicious

Norwich life is enriched by regular soirees of beer and banter with a well-preserved couple who have been together since God was a toddler. They will remain nameless to spare their blushes. We’re the same generation and witter on endlessly about the good-old, bad-old days, the state of the nation and who will change our nappies during the bewildered years. It’s a fun and fruity gig.

Last time we met, we all fell into conversation with the pot man collecting a forest of empty glasses from our table. It turned out he was a student at the University of East Anglia working his way through a PhD in Medieval History. He was also gay, clever and quick witted. The young buck took one look at the four old codgers and quipped,

God, it’s like staring at my future. An episode of Vicious.*

Well that put us in our place. You’ve got to love the young.

*Vicious is a recent high camp, hit-and-miss TV sitcom featuring a couple of elderly theatrical types starring a couple of old thespians, Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen.

Review of Turkey Street: Jack and Liam Move to Bodrum by Jack Scott

Once in a while, an extraordinary review comes along that makes it all worth the effort. This is such a time…

Man About the House

We’re always grateful when old friends spend their hard-earned cash on a pilgrimage to their country cousins, particularly as this invariably means the expense of a hotel stay. Cute as it is, the micro-loft is way too micro for topping and tailing, especially for those in their midriff years who prefer private douching facilities for those intimate moments. Just recently, we’ve had an embarrassment of callers. First on the Norwich trail were a couple of old drinking partners from the Smoke who last graced the city with their designer wear in April. As future exiles to Catalonia, we knew they were partial to a tapas or two, so when a new tapas restaurant called East Twenty Six opened to rave reviews we thought we’d give it spin. The setting was impressive but, sadly, the food was not. We drowned our sorrows in a nearby late night boozer, a place that was once Norwich’s only Irish-themed pub. Delaney’s has now been gutted and relaunched as St Andrew’s Brew House. Whereas Delaney’s oozed fake Oirish ambience with a landlady from Hell, the Brew House now boasts an über-trendy micro-brewery and has been branded to within an inch of its life. Very Shoreditch, apparently.

The next day, like ships that pass in the night, the old reprobates from London exchanged brief pleasantries with our next callers who had driven up from the coiffured hills of Sussex. Jacqueline and Angus have been friends of mine for donkey’s years and brought with them their coffee-coloured Labrador for a spot of dog-walking around the city. After an exhaustive saunter and with Ruby safely tucked up in the loft with an assortment of dog biscuits, dinner was courtesy of Jamie’s Italian. It was delicious. But really Jamie, that much for a bit of pasta?

Angus is a hands-on DIYer with an impressive collection of tools and when I mentioned we were having a bit of bother with a sticking flush, he was at it like a rat up a drain pipe.

A little WD40 will soon sort that out.

And it did. It was good to have a man about the house.

God Works in Mysterious Ways

AtheistsA short while ago I shared this image on Facebook. It was a whimsical tease about the sartorial obsession the religious establishment have with funny hats, as if a silly head covering confers gravitas and wisdom. The idea being that if atheists could come up a millinery gimmick to get them in the papers, they might get taken more seriously. It was a joke, obviously. Not so to someone. A couple of days later, the picture and associated comments disappeared quicker than a South American political activist. Where did it go? Why did it go? Who knows? But then, a few days on, the post miraculously re-appeared. I know it was probably some Faceache anorak in hipster whiskers and top knot but I like to think it was divine intervention.

Déjà Vu

Déjà Vu

I’m sure I’ve been here before.

So said my mother after she took a sip of her brandy and coke and looked around the large smoke-filled room. It was 1980 and I was stepping out with Bernie, a salesman from Somerset. We were treating my mother to a night of slap, sequins and perversion at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, South London’s premier drag pub. As it turned out, her feelings of déjà vu were spot on. In the Swinging Sixties, she and my soldier dad had slipped out from the barracks on the other side of the river to catch an act or two.

Bernie was a close friend of Pat, the jovial landlord. Against all the odds, bent-as-a-nine-bob-note Bernie and straight-as-a-die Pat had consummated their bromance at the horses, shelling out a king’s ransom at the Cheltenham Gold Cup every year.

RoyalVauxhallTavern

Pat was Irish. Digging roads or running pubs were the standard professions for the Irish back in the day. Just a few months before, Pat had been the manager of the Colherne, the grand old queen of gay bars in West London.  But Pat had ambitions to rise above the ranks and saved his pennies. When the tenancy of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern came up, he grabbed it with both hands, moved in his wife and kids and spent a small fortune reconfiguring the original three bars into one large single space. It was a masterstroke that saw the till ka-chinging for years.

Royal Vauxhall Tavern Charity Night

Charity night at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern with the late Diana Dors flanked by the Trollettes. That’s Pat the landlord (top row, third from the left. Next to him in the bow tie is someone everyone knew as Terry ‘Allcock’ – can’t think why we called him that.

Image courtesy of the RVT Community.

Time marched on, of course. Pat and his missus retired back to Ireland many moons ago and, sadly, I lost touch with Bernie in about 2006. The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, however, continued to thrive, standing firm against the constantly changing rainbow landscape as a venue for drag and alternative cabaret. Arguably, the venue’s most famous turn was Lily Savage, Paul O’Grady’s theatrical alter-ego before he hung up the blond wig and became every housewife’s favourite.

Image courtesy of Outmag
Image courtesy of QX Magazine

And then the iconic building was bought by an Austrian property development company. There’s a vast building boom going on in Vauxhall and Battersea these days, with a tube line extension, the redevelopment of Nine Elms, Battersea Power Station and a new state of the art American embassy. The future of the pub was looking bleak. That was until some punters swung into action and applied for listed building status. And guess what? They got it. Historic England (the organisation responsible for such things) decided…

…the building has historic and cultural significance as one of the best known and longstanding LGB&T venues…

It’s the first time any building has been listed on this basis. While the new status protects the building for posterity, it doesn’t mean that the venue will survive in its present form but it’s a start, a great start.

Land of the Blind

Land of the Blind

Land of the Blind 3dIf you’re looking for a masterclass in how to open a thriller, I suggest you read the first two pages of Barbara Nadel’s latest book, Land of the Blind. It’s the start of a rich and taut mystery, expertly crafted and atmospherically set in the extraordinary city of Istanbul. Following the discovery of a woman’s body in the hidden depths of the ancient Hippodrome, dog-eared, chain-smoking Inspector Çetin İkmen, leads the reader to the achingly satisfying reveal. İkmen is eminently likeable. He puffs and shuffles his way through the politically charged streets of the city like a Turkish Columbo. Nadel’s writing is fluid, crisp and crystal clear. As the clever plot weaves its way, she deftly lifts the veil on the contradictions of contemporary Turkey: the clash between secularism and Islamism, freedom and conformity. But this is no personal polemic against the direction of modern Turkey, more an astute observation seen through the eyes of the cleverly cast characters, from Inspector Süleyman and his controversial liaison with a feisty gypsy in the hills, to Ahmet Oden, a despised and despicable property mogul. Add into the mix the riots at Gezi Park and you end up with a compelling and electrifying read. In some ways, the city is as much a protagonist as the canny sleuth. A brilliant seventeenth book in the Çetin İkmen series.

Elvis Has Entered the Building

The Sir Garnet public house is a well-placed Norwich watering hole overlooking the multi-coloured market. Originally called the Baron of Beef, the pub was renamed in 1874 in honour of Sir Garnet Wolseley, one of those Victorian thugs who terrorised the natives in far flung lands for imperial glory, a trunk-load of military bling and a title from a grateful old Queen. These days, the trendy hostelry dishes up superior pub-grub sourced whenever possible from market traders. Particular favourites of ours are the chef’s plump sausage rolls. Moist and morish, they’re a tasty way to soak up the alcohol of a liquid lunch. You can feel your arteries harden with every bite. Our visits to the Sir Garnet are usually pleasantly uneventful. That was until we were entertained by a pantomime of supping Elvis impersonators in every shape, size, age and sex, all dressed as the King during his hamburger years. I’ve never understood the enduring appeal of Mr Presley or his trick hips but it made for an amusing afternoon. Now, what is the collective noun for group of Elvis lookalikes on a piss-up? A thrust? A bell bottom? A graceland maybe? Or my personal favourite, a pelvis of Elvis’?