Street Poetry

Edinburgh has gone arty for the Festival. Around the base of a soaring giraffe sculpture are words inscribed in circular iron lettering: ‘Giraffes! People who live between earth and skies. Each in his own religious steeple, keeping a lighthouse with his eyes.’

I read out the words with awe. Him Outdoors has seen different words advertising breakfast – unaware of the latent lyricism he says, ‘Coffee and tea – 49p. I’m not right into poetry, me.’

Hebden Sports Day

There were a couple of major festivals on Bank Holiday Weekend including the Leeds and Reading Music Festivals. I’ve been to them before and they were great. We decided not to go this year (I’ve seen New Order; The Pogues; Chumbawamba; Blur; New Model Army; Billy Bragg; The Men They Couldn’t Hang; James; Rage Against the Machine; The Prodigy; The Beastie Boys; Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine and Catatonia at these festivals before – somehow this year’s headliner of Guns n’ Roses wasn’t going to do it for me; I saw them 23 years ago when they were fresh).


Instead, we went to Hebden Sports Day and it was fantastic. Driving a diesel Ford Mondeo through the wall-lined single-track lanes of the Yorkshire Dales was a little hairy, but after I turned in through the narrow gate and parked in the field, things were great. I met the lads who have cycled over and are replenishing themselves with Victoria sponge cake and steak burgers from the entirely reasonably-priced food stalls.

The highlights and amusements are varied, and all cost the princely sum of 20p. I am entertained by ‘bat the rat’ in which a bloke drops a beanbag down a drainpipe and you have to pinion it with a baseball bat; all very educational I’m sure. Only slightly less politically incorrect is the ‘knock over a ginger’ stall where you can lob things at wooden panels painted as people and given red wigs to try and topple them.

Folk contested the skittles and grown men who really should know better tried to kick balls through cut-outs in a penalty shoot out game. Throwing things through different holes to reach the highest score was also on offer – at last look the prize of £2 was being shared among 20 people; so that’s the entry fee back, then!

The highlights of Hebden Sports Day were the fell-racing and the egg throwing. First, the kids raced around a tree in the field with push parents egging them on (pun entirely intended). Then the ‘seniors’ (which in this instance means people over 18 rather than 65) pelted through the tiny village and straight up the nearest steep incline.

We clambered our way up it (battling the voracious midgies) to a vantage point where we could watch them leaping over dry stone walls and hurling themselves down a rock-strewn hill. Him Outdoors perched reflectively on a rock, itching to participate (whereas I was just itching from the midgies) but knowing that it would be foolish to risk injury before his big event next week.

As we escaped the rigours of the outdoors (I’ll never make a rural girl) we walked past a more professional photographer with a big lens and a floppy hat. ‘That’s just what I wanted,’ he intoned, ‘You in my shot’. I believe this is what is known as Yorkshire wit – you’re not quite certain if the speaker is serious or not so are unsure whether to take offence, and they really don’t care if you do or you don’t. ‘I speak as I find’, they like to say, usually as a defence of their unspeakable rudeness.


When the mood takes them they can also have a generous spirit and a wonderfully warm sense of humour (and of course, these are sweeping generalisations). The egg throwing (and catching) is a fine example of their ‘playful’ attitude. Couples line up facing each other on either side of a rope and throw an egg between them. At each catch the lines get further apart until the field is littered with egg shell and albumen.

Children of all ages show off their cricketing techniques with the invariable ‘You could play for Yorkshire/ Lancashire/ England with a catch like that’. It’s a simple amusement and highly entertaining. Expect to see a version of it soon at a Blackhurst Party! Pictures below:

Films on a Plane 2

Date Night
dir. Shawn Levy

I hadn’t been interested in this film before but it begins with The Ramones singing Blitzkrieg Bop so I decide it can’t be all bad. Claire (Tina Fey) and Phil Foster (Steve Carell) have well-paying jobs they hate (he’s a tax lawyer; she’s a real estate agent) and kids they love, but they come home and they are so exhausted all they want to do is collapse in a mini-coma.

To try and keep the romance alive they have date night once a week but they go to the same steak house, eat the same food, talk about their children’s friends’ birthday parties, and make up stories about other couples at other tables whose lives are clearly more interesting than their own. They are afraid they are not a couple any more – just very good roommates who know each other too well and end up doing stuff in the marriage that they don’t really want to – Claire does all the housework and cooks all the meals; Phil reads the dreadful books (‘about a girl getting her period in the desert’) for his wife’s over-emotional book club.

In an attempt to spice things up they try to have dinner at an exclusive restaurant in Manhattan, but they can’t get a reservation and the staff and maitre‘d are exceptionally snotty. Tired of waiting at the bar, they steal the reservation of a couple who fail to show (an absolute crime in New York) – that and the fact that they toast with empty glasses (terrible bad luck) sets of a ridiculous train of events that becomes increasingly complicated. The couple they are pretending to be are involved with ransom notes, prostitution, blackmail, and hitmen with big guns, and the bumbling, terrified Fosters get mistaken for them and drawn into the intrigue.

It works because they are real people catapulted into an extraordinary situation. They play a variety of roles (which Tina Fey and Steve Carell do very well) and discover things about each other which emerge when put under pressure. Their clutzy, clumsy running into things shtick is light and entertaining, and there are also some original action sequences – a tug of war between two interlocked cars; domestic squabbles in the middle of a gunfight; and perhaps the funniest pole dancing you’ve ever seen.

Cold Souls

dir. Sophie Barthes

Billed as a ‘weird comedy’, this is really just weird. Paul Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti (although not quite himself) as he searches for his soul in his life and his self. Apparently you can store your soul (in New Jersey if you want to for tax evasion purposes – although no one does) because everything becomes much simpler when you separate the soul.

Paul Giamatti is rehearsing for Uncle Vanya and feels he is becoming the character with his mix of frustration and ennui. He goes to see the soul doctor (Doctor Flinstein played by an over-earnest David Strathairn imbued with pseudo-science and cracking walnuts in a pristine office) who separates his soul from his body and stores it in a grey steel locker like a morgue. Paul claims that he now feels hollow, light, empty and a little bit bored (didn’t he before?) and ponders, ‘How can such a tiny thing feel so heavy?’

Meanwhile, the soul storage company is importing souls from Russia. It’s not exactly a black market because the industry isn’t regulated yet, but the souls are collected by spurious means from people who might wish to do such a thing – failed Russian ballet dancers; the military; bored office and factory workers; people in hospital beds – and smuggled into America by a mule such as Nina (Dina Korzun) who works for Dimitri at the collection company.

Paul transplants his soul with that of a Russian poet, but when things don’t improve he requests it back, only to find that it has been appropriated by Dimitri’s beautiful but vacuous girlfriend who ‘stars’ in a soap opera and wants to be a proper actress; she wanted the soul of Johnny Depp or Robert de Niro, but Paul Giamatti was the only actor listed. He tracks her down in St Petersburg and attempts to take it back (worried that she may have somehow sullied it) in a scene that is empty, bleak and soulless.

There are issues of philosophy – Paul Giamatti asks his wife (Emily Watson), ‘If I were a different me in the same body, would you still love me?’ to which she understandably responds, ‘What are you talking about?’ The navel-gazing, self-obsessed, neurotic, whiny, cynical, fed-up, depressed and depressing New York element is funny in a Woody Allen sort of way, if you like that sort of thing.

Artistically it is clinical and intense – the difference in cleanliness and modernity of the Russian and American surgeries is frequently highlighted – and the minor details are lovingly filmed; drying a Russian hat beneath a hand-dryer; a pack of dogs racing down the street in height order.

How much of your personality is comprised of the soul? From where do our memories come? Why would you even want the soul of another person? The actors discuss pronunciation of English and Russian words; they say the same lines in different ways; perhaps we are all just playing along and Dr Flinstein and his glamorous assistant (Lauren Ambrose) are merely the catalysts in the business of wish fulfilment.

Wild Target
dir. Jonathan Lynn

The stellar cast prevents this predictable rom com/ art heist thriller from becoming stale and turgid, but it is still full of obvious gags and unlikely coincidences.

Victor Maynard (Bill Nighy) is 54 and works as an assassin. He is scrupulously fastidious, ironing his socks and trimming his bonsai trees. He executes his targets with ruthless efficiency (his mother, Eileen Atkins, is proud of his work and collects clippings in an album for him) with his sole regret being his lack of heir or apprentice.

Rose (Emily Watson) rides in on a bicycle in a red coat to a gallery where she blithely steals a Rembrandt against a Regina Spektor backtrack. She is slovenly, wild, unpredictable, aggressive, annoying and a kleptomaniac. No prizes for guessing what comes next.

When duped into buying a fake painting (a copy of the Rembrandt Rose has arranged) a wealthy art dealer (Rupert Everett) takes out a hit on her and hires the best – Victor Maynard. Victor declares she is ‘completely out of control’ but he admires her duplicity and despite his reputation being at stake, decides to protect her instead. (He has a soft side after all and, although he declares, ‘My dear, I’m not a gangster, but I was in real estate for 20 years. I stop at nothing,’ he is affectionate towards the cat.)

Everett hires the second best assassin (Martin Freeman) to finish the job, and the couple go on the run with the unlikely accompaniment of Tony (Rupert Grinch) who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but may just show enough promise to be Victor’s successor.

If that sounds like a rather slim plot, it’s because it is. The constant bitching and bickering between the leads assures us they will end up together – for that is comedy convention – even if the lack of chemistry and extreme age difference make this less than convincing. A mini chase around the streets of London and a set-piece hide out in a rural idyll (where Tony sees a cow for the first time) break the action into a modulated film with peaks and troughs, but it’s really nothing to write home about. Has a romantic comedy ever made a great film, or should we expect nothing more from them but light entertainment?

Scontro di Civilita per un Ascensore a Piazza Vittorio (Clash of Civilization Over a Lift)
dir. Isotta Toso

Any film that has ‘lift’ in the title has got to be good, right? Well, probably not necessarily, but this one is.

We are introduced to the occupants of an apartment building – Marco Manfredini (Daniele Liotti) a ‘two-bit lawyer’; his girlfriend Guilia (Kasia Smutniak) who is a photographer compiling a portfolio of pictures for an exhibition entitled Clash of the Civilizations; Marco’s little brother Lorenzo (Marco Rossetti) aka the Gladiator who quotes Jim Morrison, fights dogs and runs an illegal boarding house for immigrants; Mrs Fabiani (Milena Vukotic) who is mean-spirited and caustic to everyone except her precious little dog Valentino until he disappears; Maria Cristina (Kesia Elwin), an illegal immigrant from Ecuador who works as a live-in cleaner to support herself and her daughter, Penelope, in preference to being out on the streets; her so-called boyfriend, Dandini (Francesco Pannofino) who works on a garlic stall and promises her a family but prevaricates over marrying her; Leo (Massimo De Santis), the owner of a station café who cares only about Roma football team; Iqbal Allah Amir (Lamine Labidi) who is pressured by the authorities with a permit to arrest an Allah Iqbal and who buys the apartment in which Lorenzo was hiding his illegal immigrants; Nurit (Serra Yilmaz) who has a permit to stay but wants refugee status from Persia – she is loud, obnoxious and frequently drunk; Professor Marini (Roberto Citran) who cares for Maria Cristina and Penelope but is gay so Dandini has no reason for his jealousy; Amedeo (Ahmed Hafiene) who seems to be the group’s spokesperson and appears calm and collected but may harbour a secret identity; and Benedetta (Isa Danieli) the caretaker constantly grumbling about immigrants and lack of respect.

All of these people are connected (quite literally) by the elevator in the heart of the building which is ‘the barrier between barbarity and civilisation.’ ‘To disrespect the elevator is an offence to Enlightenment.’ Grand words indeed, but there are rules for its use (no smoking or spitting, although Bendetta loathes Lorenzo for peeing in the elevator and littering the floor with cigarette butts) which are meant to harmonise this disparate society.

There is even conflict over who is allowed to use the lift. When outsiders come to steal Giuilia’s camera which contains all her work and some incriminating evidence, there is a fabulous chase sequence filmed from above as they descend the stairs before racing through the streets of Rome – the sanctity of the elevator denied them. Lorenzo shouts ‘Italy to the Italians’ and thinks non-nationals should be forbidden it, thrown onto the street and forced into prostitution which he demonstrates by attempting to rape Maria Cristina when she rejects his advances.

Here is one of the themes of the film – to be Italian is to have privileges denied to others. We make assumptions about people (usually imagining we are superior) based on their ethnicity and outsider or ‘other’ status. Nurit argues that ‘when you have no voice, you have no identity.’ She should know; she is found with her mouth sewn shut.

When Lorenzo Manfredini goes up in flames in the lift, Comissario Bettarini (Paolo Calabresi) is called in to investigate. He soon finds things aren’t’ straightforward and no rapid conclusions can be drawn. Marco (the only one to walk behind the coffin) also attempts to find out who murdered his brother and why. Giuilia feels that Marco has ruined his life to look after Lorenzo and there is a Cain and Abel influence to the story. ‘Who is right? We have little time, there is no room for neutrality. Cut out your tongue and run.’

Like an Italian Agatha Christie drama it seems everyone had a motive for murder (ranging from hating someone’s dog or being a Lazio fan to always causing a disturbance or deep-seated political differences) which they intone in voice-overs throughout the film. In a clever twist to the sophisticated drama Marco proves himself none too shabby as a lawyer and concludes a thought-provoking and memorable parable about integration and unity.

Films on a Plane

Long haul flights are horrible. There's no other way to put it - it's a long time to be cramped up next to someone with a hideous cold (13 hours to worry about catching something nasty). I can't afford business class, let alone first class, and it takes me all year to pay off the credit card for cattle class, but I live on the other side of the world from half of my family, so needs must...

One thing that makes the trip bearable is watching the films on offer - so this is what I watched on this trip:

Cemetery Junction
dir. Ricky Gervais/ Stephen Merchant

Summer in Reading 1973 (filmed by the looks of things in Bourne End and Maidenhead) is quite pretty, but pretty quiet. It is a world of casual racism, sexism and homophobia. Freddie (Christian Cooke), Bruce (Tom Hughes) and Snork (Jack Doolan) go out at nights boozing, shagging (or trying to) and fighting. The options are to continue with this life; to work (in a factory or selling life insurance) until you retire and die with a wife, family and mortgage en route; or to get out.

The music, politics (starving children in Africa – ‘the government can’t keep the lights on; they can’t keep the streets clean’), and fashion put it in its place – actually, those black polo-necks, high-waisted jeans with buckled belts, leather bomber jackets, wide-lapelled shirts and polished brogues look very classy.

When you have such a privileged background, there is nothing much to rebel against except boredom. Julie (Felicity Jones), the love interest, wants to be a photographer for National Geographic but ‘people from round here don’t do stuff life like that.’ What they do is smoke and sulk because their parents get divorced (which still seems to be a Big Deal) – too scared to break out no matter how much they talk about it. ‘As long as you stay here you’re a big fish in a small pond and you can blame everyone else for holding you back. But you’re no different from everyone else – you’re nothing special.’

There’s some good writing and some great dialogue, and, while he plays Freddie’s dad very well, it’s interesting to see others delivering the lines written by Ricky Gervais (and Stephen Merchant). Ralph Fiennes does straight comedy very well as Julie’s dad, and her mum, Emily Watson, is the new Imelda Staunton with a great line in desperate angst.

Some of the ‘comedy quips’ are similar to those of Ben Elton and Richard Curtis – this is mainly a predictable coming of age tale about leaving the home town, breaking away from the old generation and forging a new and individual lifestyle. The acting and the script elevate it above the run of the mill, but it’s essentially and old story well-told.

Iron Man 2
dir. Jon Favreau

Over-the-top fight scenes and action sequences featuring guns, cars, machines, weaponry and lots of explosions are ten-a-penny, but as we’re talking Robert Downey Jnr. there is still a smattering of humour (one-liners that would take pages to explain and sound lame in the translation) and flawed genius.

Iron-Man’s ego is out of control (‘The suit and I are one’; ‘I am Iron Man’; ‘I have successfully privatised World Peace’) and so is his health – that which is keeping him alive is also killing him and he needs to discover a new element to survive. He also encounters a Russian nemesis, Ivan Vanko (played by Mickey Rourke), with a similar suit but enhanced by electro-whips.

There are spies, baddies, double-crossing, a love interest (Gwyneth Paltrow is ill-served by the part; her character, Pepper Potts, was more entertaining in the first instalment) and textbook narcissism which leads to (or is the result of?) a strained father/son relationship. But really, it’s all about the toys – including a race car, car race at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Das Weisse Band – Eine Deutsche Kindergeschinchte (The White Ribbon)
dir. Michael Haneke

I’m not sure what possessed me to watch a black and white German film with subtitles on the plane, but I’m glad it did. This is gripping stuff – not exactly action-packed though – a drama of psychological suspense and supposedly innocent children. A small village has all the usual characters – the priest, baron, schoolteacher, doctor, farmers, midwife and respective partners and children.

The villagers’ lives revolve uneventfully around the seasons – planting; harvest; winter – feasting and dancing, and could be a farmyard idyll with rustic scenes of pitchforks and scythes, haymaking and the village pump. There are no tricky camera angles – everything is straightforward – and no music; just the sound of the birds in the trees and the chickens in the yard; there are long silences and pauses with the sound of heavy footfalls and rustling skirts. It’s like a painting (in one funeral scene no one moves or speaks for about a minute and the focus doesn’t change) – but one where the perspective is skewed.

When there are mysterious deaths, accidents, tortures and disappearances, someone in the village has to be responsible. It soon becomes apparent that the village is intensely claustrophobic harbouring secrets, affairs, abuse and violence. Farmers mistrust each other, there are mutual suspicions and denunciation, dislike, jealousy, and revenge for perceived wrongdoings and injustices. The stilted family relations have no warmth in their interactions and the surroundings are ‘dominated by malice, envy, apathy and brutality.’ When a farmer hangs himself no one says a word.

The environment and the group of impressionable and malicious children (‘He’s at a difficult age’; ‘They’re always at a difficult age’) are reminiscent of The Crucible. The black and white filming works excellently as it should be clear-cut but there are shades of grey, and the story (narrated in a voice-over flashback from the teacher, Christian Friedel) is oblique and uncertain and curiously, interestingly, unfinished.

This is the last year of peace and, after the Archduke of Sarajevo is assassinated, the teacher is drafted and never returns to the village. Although he has his suspicions about the perpetrators of the pernicious crimes, they are never definitely proven. Whereas the village gossips discuss local rumours and small-town politics, the war makes the details irrelevant.

The children have been punished for the sins of the parents down to the third and fourth generations – the length of time since the First World War. Is the director (Michael Haneke) suggesting that global politics mean we should all move on and stop trying to apportion blame for past wrongs? It’s deep and it’s fascinating – the powerful mix of religious piety and terrifying evil may not be thrilling but it’s certainly chilling.

Shrek Forever After
dir. Mike Mitchell

Bored with monotonous domesticity, Shrek just wants to be an ogre again. He makes a deal with the malicious and maniacal Rumplestiltskin (voiced by Walt Dohrn) to have a day as a scary character of old rather than the ‘jolly green joke’ he has become. He claims he just wants things back the way they were, when he could do whatever he wanted, although as Princess Fiona admonishes, ‘You have three beautiful children and a wife who loves you. You have everything; how come the only person who can’t see that is you?’

The snag is that he trades a day of his life for the privilege of ogreness and Rumplestiltskin takes the day he was born, so he never existed and finds himself in an alternative reality where Princess Fiona rescued herself, Shrek has never met Donkey (although Donkey is shocked that Shrek knows his name), and Puss in Boots is now a Fat Cat.

Of course, it all works out as you would expect, with a fine blend of myth, nursery rhyme, fairytale and popular film culture played out against an eclectic soundtrack. The moral of the story appears to be that true love lasts beyond the initial flush of romance, but we are warned, ‘It’s all just a big fairytale.’

My Newest Favourite Thing: Pub Quizzes

For the last six weeks we have been going to the pub religiously (a curious adverb, but I'll leave that for another time) every Tuesday eveneing. There is nothing unusual in that of course - I enjoy a good pint of bitter or glass of chardonnay as much as the next lush - but we have been doing more than just imbibing; we have been pub-quizzing.

The dynamic of a pub quiz is fascinating; all the personalities come out to play. We run the gamut of stereotypes: competitive; timid; bullying; loud; hesitant; passive aggressive; anal (I confess that last one is me but then you knew that, didn't you?). And there is always the person who, when the answers are read out, says, "I was going to say that", to which I always think, "So, why didn't you?"

I like the quizzes that have rounds in different categories as everyone has a chance to shine in their specialist subject. We have an eclectic group who cover history, sport, science, literature, art, music, geaography and gardening. We struggle a little with 'popular ' culture if it's based on reality TV as all of us are over 35 and no longer in the demographic that enjoys watching anorexic teenagers be mean to each other while wrestling with the profundities of life such as how to boil an egg or share the hairdryer.

There's a certain amount of snobbery involved in these quizzes. The team that routinely wins is terrible at sport and proud of it, boasting of how little they know about it. This seems incredible to me. My father used to get incensed by people who jokingly dismissed their mathematical ignorance as though the arts were somehow more important (he probably still does, but I haven't lived with him for over 20 years, so don't hear about it as often). You know the type: "Oh, I was woeful at maths at school. It's so boring; I leave it to my accountant. Haw, haw!"

Sport-phobes are as bad. I enjoy watching football (as I may have mentioned), cricket, tennis, athletics, rowing, cycling, triathlon, skiing, and most sports that England play, among other activities. I don't particularly enjoy motor-racing, show-jumping or snooker, but I know a bit about them just from listening to the news and not being blinkered. A complete lack of interst in all sport is surely wilfull ignorance, just as it would be for someone to claim they hate all books or all films.

Besides, how do you know you don't like it unless you've tried it? If I've forced myself to read a Stieg Larsson novel, you can watch a football match - the latter takes a fraction of the time and is infinitely more exciting and less predictable. As Sir Thomas Beecham said, "Try everything once except folk dancing and incest." I think he was a little harsh on the folk dancing but otherwise his sentiments are admirable.

Anyway, these quizzes are usually for a good cause, whether it be the volunteer fire brigade, the local primary school or research into childhood leukemia. There are often raffles at which you can buy tickets for things you don't want, or auctions at which you can bid for things you don't need (Him Outdoors bid for a poker set and we've got a gas fire) just because it's for charity.

And, of course, you learn stuff. True, it may be largely irrelevant, but I am now cognisant of many facts:

• Pibroch is a type of music usually performed on the bagpipes
• Kinkalow and Lambkin Dwarves are cats
• Thanatology is the study of death
• Waitangi is the principal settlement on the Chatham Islands
• Members of the Queen's Council 'take silk'
• Richard Nixon made the first phone call to the moon
• The collective name for finches is a charm

Who knows when or if I will need this information again, but if I am ever called upon to climb the Auckland Sky Tower, I will know that there are 51 flights of steps to negotiate.

Let them eat cake!

The latest ridiculousness to be filed in the customer-is-always-righteous file is the recent issue of 'cakeage'. Thankfully, it is not quite a scandal or we would be hearing predictable stories of cake-gate.
 
Apparently a group of folk went to a restaurant in Richmond to celebrate a 70th birthday and were charged $12 to eat a cake they had baked themselves and brought along. They were 'disgusted' (I can but imagine their spurius indignation) and contacted their local paper to complain; note, incidentally, that they didn't discuss this with the restaurnt owner at the time. He later expressed himself to be 'shocked' by the response - you can't beat a dash of hyperbole in the kitchen.
 
I wonder what makes people think they can take their own food into a restaurant. Would these people go to a pub and crack out their own home-brew? Are these the people who go to the theatre to watch a performance and conduct their own conversation? Probably.
 
It is not the same as the service charge applied on public holidays, which is simply ludicrous. Some 'hospitality' outlets insist it costs more to open on these days; to pay staff an extra percentage on their meagre wages to compensate for them missing out on time with their loved ones or leisure activities; a cost which, apparently, is not recovered by the increased custom. In that case, this cost should be factored into the prices for the rest of the year. It's not as though Christmas is a surprise to anyone; even Easter may be a moveable feast, but you know it happens every year. That way the cost is spread through to everyone and is negligible.

But why should others shoulder the financial burden because you want to have your cake and eat it (in public) too? Why don't you just have it at home? This is similar to parents who bring their own food to cafés to feed their chidren. Their argument is that the café is making money from the mothers who buy a coffee. I've seen these meetings. Children throw food, drink and various bodily excretions around the place. They run, wriggle, fidget and scream.

All normal people are driven away or take one look at the bedlam and decide to eat elsewhere. After the mothers' mayhem has gone, the café is left to clean up and replace the tables and chairs to their original position, plus dispose of semi-masticated food that they haven't even provided. Some cafés are happy to provide this service, and fair play to them. I avoid such places.

I prefer to go to a café where I can enjoy my coffee and conversation in peace. Coffee houses were originally established as places to discuss the events of the day and share ideas. One of the first, Café Procope (est. 1686), was a major meeting venue for the proponents of the French Enlightenment, such as Voltaire, Rosseau, Diderot et al. It is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopedie - the first modern encylopaedia; try writing that while being deafened by a toddler's tantrum! Lloyds of London began life as a coffee house where politics and business were the topics on the menu (sport was reserved for the pub).

There used to be a wonderful place like this in Queenstown where folk met to pontificiate and enjoy their caffeinated pleasures. The place ground the beans on location and you could purchase them whole - they were in big sacks at the side of the shop. It was a tiny venue and not conducive to small children clogging up the place with cumbersome pushchairs, falling off the stools or plunging their grubby mitts into sackfuls of coffee. The owner banned children from the premises. One crusading mother took him to the Commission of Human Rights and her complaint was upheld. He has since moved on and there is now no refuge from screaming miniature hooligans in town.

Restaurants and cafés should have the right to charge what they choose to serve whom they want. They should print their charges and intentions clearly so there can be no confusion. And then everyone can make an educated decision about where they spend their time and money. If you don't like disruptive infants, child-free zones, or paying for 'cakeage', go somewhere else. There are plenty of choices, and so there should be. Vive la difference! (as they would have said at Le Café Procope).

Red card? My Arse!

We was robbed, and you know we were...

Still a strong performance and encouraging for our first game of the season. Even down to ten men, the Arse couldn't score against us and we had to do it for them.

Who needs to gamble when you can experience blind optimism and crushing disappointment just by supporting Liverpool?