J has cut me up because I've only left myself an hour of Wednesday and I am missing the days of two blog postings a week and I haven't had time to acknowledge all of you fab people who have commented.
J is also tearing me up because I had a Howard Jones phase, but Tom Jones is a God, even if the idea of throwing under garments at someone icks me out. And Norah Jones sounded nice for a while back there.
And while I didn't like The Jam a lot at the time after Weller declared he would vote Conservative, it turns out the marketing people has told him to say that. In retrospect I love their angry but controlled sound.
Japan, in contrast seem to be pale faced pretty boys who were in on the early cusp of the New Romantic movement in the early 1980s, although they distanced themselves from it before fading away. They never made it big in America.
But even today their elegant sound stands the test of time. They are considered and clever and age like a fine wine or the painting of an impressionist with its subtle pastel undertones. For a while I had a double album of Exorcising Ghosts complete with pretty water colors on the sleeve. CDs killed vinyl but there's something aesthetically beautiful about the appearance of an album like that. There's something beautiful about Japan too.
Nobody died of a drug overdose but bassist Mick Karn died of cancer in 2011. And lead singer David Sylvian made a few pretty sounding albums about trees before fading into obscurity. Funny to think such beauty could come out of Catford.
Curious fact about Japan - the band was,in fact, big in Japan.
Let's face it possums, as Dame Edna might say, we all want to visit Australia. But has anything cool ever come out of the place?
Although cities like Sydney may be cosmopolitan, it seems to be an exception to the rule. The stereotypical view of Australia involves red earth, flies, spiders that attack you from the toilets in the outback and Crocodile Dundee types who don't take kindly to Sheilas in their bars.
INXS were clearly an exception to the rule, although they started off life with the less than cool name the Farriss Brothers.
A name change and the lead singer Michael Hutchence changed all of that. "Hutchence was the archetypal rock showman. He exuded an overtly sexual, macho cool with his flowing locks, and lithe and exuberant stage movements," commented rock music historian Ian McFarlane.
When he dated Kylie Minogue it was the nearest Australia had to a celeb couple. He also dated the model Helena Christensen.
Hits included Need You Tonight, Never Tear Us Apart, Disappear and Suicide Blonde.
The band, or at least the volatile Hutchence - was undone by a suicide blonde. Paula Yates, the infamous British TV presenter and rock chick first met him on her sofa on Channel 4's rock magazine program The Tube in 1985.
Being married to Bob Geldof didn't stop Paula stalking Hutchence with a vengeance for a decade until she finally got her man.
Geldof and Paula already had three kids - Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches Honeyblossom and Little Pixie. Paula and Hutchence felt they had to have their own daughter with a silly name and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence (known as 'Tiger') was born in July 1996.
There was no happy ending. Apparently, missing his child Hutchence committed suicide in 2007. Yates bitterly contested the verdict, arguing Hutchence was seeking sexual gratificaiton by hanging himself with a belt in his hotel room - perhaps the first time in history somebody has tried to argue auto erotic strangulation as a more preferable way to go.
It seems that rather a lot of the artists featured in this A-Z challenge have met premature ends. Inevitably Yates later died of a drug overdose.
Curious fact about INXS - The name INXS was inspired by the English band XTC and Australian jam makers IXL. Which is only slightly less glamorous than being named after a fish canning company. See A is for ABBA.
When Jimi Hendrix played a psychedelic version of The Star Spangled Banner at a muddy music festival called Woodstock in 1969 the moment became forever fixed in the imagery of the sixties along with B-52s raining bombs on the paddy fields.
The rendition was interpreted by some as an anti war statement but the guitar guru himself was more cryptic.
We're all Americans. . .it was like 'Go America!'. . .We play it the way the air is in America today. The air is slightly static, see," he said.
Although his fiinale is interpreted as the highlight of Woodstock, the video of the time makes it clear the crowd wasn't large. Hendrix didn't like performing in front of massive crowds and pushed back his performance to early in the morning on day four. Even the effects of LSD can only fortify festival goers from the effects of mud, little food and overflowing toilets for so long. The crowd had thinned from about 400,000 people to a tenth of that number by the time Hendrix took to the stage.
Those who saw him felt they were part of history but still the American bombs and burning napalm fell on an obscure corner of South East Asia. Hendrix himself would be dead in just over a year.
Like Elvis who he idolized for a while, Jimi Hendrix grew up in abject poverty. It's impossible to do justice to him in a short blog posting.
The man who would later be acclaimed as the world's greatest electric guitarist was born in Seattle of African American, European and Native American ancestry. His upbringing in cheap hotels, sprinkled with acts of random violence and abuse reads like a Tennessee Williams play.
Hendrix went on to forge a reputation a as great guitarist and the wild man of the sixties. Hendrix made his name in London where he hobnobbed with the Beatles and the Stones and formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Hendrix made a mark with his distinctive fashion sense and his party piece of smashing up his guitar and setting fire to it at the end of his performances.
Hendrix's death proved that sinister things happen in Notting Hill as well as fop haired idiots who run bookshops falling for humorless American actresses. Jimi Hendrix died in the Notting Hill flat of then girlfriend Monika Dannemann on September 18, 1970.
Although Hendrix was known to take psychedelic drugs it appears he had taken nine of his girlfriend's sleeping pills not realizing they were a very strong Belgian brand. It seems Belgium was to blame for the death of the world's greatest electric guitarist as well as the brutality of the Congo.
Numerous conspiracy theories fly about Hendrix's death. The doctor who attended him was later reprimanded for medical malpractice. He reported the presence of red wine that was inconsistent with the autopsy. Monika Dannemann was accused of failing to treat him and another book said a former manager plotted his death because Hendrix was about to pull out of a contract.
Dannemann committed suicide in the 1990s after she was found guilty of contempt of court for repeating a libel against Kathy Etchingham, who had been a girlfriend of Hendrix in the 1960s.
Sadly the Jimi Hendrix experience did not end up well for anybody, but at least his distinctive sound remains as a legacy to an era that seems so fast moving at times, it was very easy to fall out of it. Hendrix must be one of the few people to have a star on the Hollywood walk of fame and a blue plaque from English Heritage in London.
Curious fact about Jimi Hendrix - his father had six fingers on both hands.
For a band named after a stinking pile of compost Garbage seem to have done rather well for themselves. A bit grungy with a pop edge and a Scots-American composition, Garbage were one of the bands that gave the Nineties its distinctive sound.
They have had something of a revival in recent years and appear to be a hot-ish commodity again.
Garbage were formed in Madison, Wisconsin in 1994.American musicians Duke Erikson (bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion), Steve Marker (guitar, keyboards) and Butch Vig (drums, percussion) auditioned for a woman to front the band and settled on Shirley Manson, a fiery Scottish redhead who says fuck a lot.
I first heard Garbage through Stupid Girl, during the nineties but people were too fixated on Blur and Oasis back then to give Garbage much attention.
Looking back there were rather a lot of good tracks such as Milk, Special and You Look so Fine. You can still sometimes hear Garbage today in places like malls in America so they clearly have some staying power.
In a March 2012 interview with Vanity Fair Manson suggests bands and artists are so abysmally pants these days - my words not hers - because everyone is scared post 9/11. I don't know if this is the reason or if I'm just dismissive about new stuff because I'm old, but it sounds like an interesting theory.
"It’s a post-September 11 thing, where we have been living essentially in wartime. People are fearful and are unable to articulate their fear, so it’s buried under the carpet. I think that’s one of the reasons why we’ve had a proliferation of happy pop music, to buoy one’s spirits and make everyone feel safe," she said.
Or maybe it's because someone let Simon Cowell rule the world.
In another exert from the Vanity Fair interview Manson says: "Now everything has fallen back down a little, and it’s almost like the Mad Men era, where women are supposed to be perfect. They can do their job, but they have to have children and they have to be good moms and they have to look pretty at all times and they have to be always smiling and it must be fucking exhausting."
Manson, who has also been cast in some acting roles seems to have a rather pragmatic view of the world. Still you are unlikely to get carried away with yourself if you spend half of the time half freezing to death in Scotland and the other half of the time in chilly Madison, Wisconsin.
Curious fact about Garbage - Manson described her first session with the other band members as a "disaster" and said both herself and the other band members were "totally uncomfortable" with the situation.
(oh no - people in Australia have already written G)
Frankie Goes to Hollywood may not be the biggest band of all time. But they had one of the biggest and most controversial hits.
The Frankie saga is a cautionary tale about censorship not to mention sex and bondage.
The group's debut single Relax had crept up to Number 6 in the charts in 1984 when the BBC Radio 1 disc jockey Mike Read took a closer look at the front cover design on the record and got his knickers in a twist.
The DJ was appalled at the "overtly sexual" nature of the record sleeve and the printed lyrics, which prompted him to remove the disc from the turntable live on air, branding it "obscene."
For younger readers a turntable is... oh never mind.
Two days later, even though the record had been played for a couple of months, the BBC decided to ban it from all its radio stations and other outlets. Somebody had picked up on the fact Relax contained a reference to ejaculation.
The ban meant uninitiated folks like myself who had never heard of Relax suddenly knew all about it. Predictably the single shot to Number One in the charts and stayed there for five weeks becoming the biggest selling single of the year after Band Aid.
For week after week it seemed when the chart show got to the Number One slot the DJ would start clearing his throat a lot and sounding shifty before explaining he couldn't play the Number One hit because it was banned.
The video was banned by the BBC and MTV. Perhaps the case for banning the video was slightly stronger than the single.
The video is described thus by Wikipedia: "The original video ...depicted a gay S&M parlor where the bandmembers were admired by muscular leathermen, a bleached blonde drag queen and a large-bodied gentleman dressed as a Roman emperor. The video featured a scene where one of the bandmembers wrestled a live tiger, to the admiration of the clubgoers, and ended where the "emperor" was so excited he shimmied out of his toga."
There was a substitute version. I'm not even sure which one I'm posting here. The tame on I think. Relax became the seventh best selling single of all time. It was followed by two other Number Ones - Two Tribes and The Power of Love, before the outrageous boys from Liverpool faded out.
While Relax is a good dance track I'm not sure it deserved the mass sales it achieved. But it certainly left the folks at the Beeb looking straight laced and a bit like the authorities that banned Lady Chatterley's Lover back in the day.
Even American radio stations play Relax from time to time and I don't think they bleep out the offending word, although if the Beeb had such a problem with Relax I don't see why they couldn't have bleeped out one word like American stations do when Alanis Morissette sings: "Are you thinking of me when you bleep her?"
Curious fact Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Frankie's fourth single Welcome to the Pleasure Dome in March 1985, was promoted before its release as "their fourth number one." In the event Frankie fans didn't think it was worth shimmying out of their togas for and it only reached Number Two.
The couple of hours left of E is not enough time to do justice to Elvis, the King of Rock 'n' Roll who was more of a cultural icon than anybody before or since.
There's a Talking Heads lyric: "One day you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack." Elvis didn't have to wait. He was born into one in Tupelo, Mississippi.
There can be few less promising places to rise to stardom from. Elvis was said to be mediocre at music at school but he was inseparable from his guitar. When his family moved to Memphis, occupying rooms in boarding houses, the influence of the musical Mecca, rubbed off on Presley.
Elvis ushered in a new age of music and his matinee good looks and gyrating moves ensured he became the first global teen idol.
Britain is often hailed as the home of cool music but in the 1950s and early 1960s British youth looked wistfully west and had to make do with Cliff Richard closer to home, a singer who would years later have a Number One hit called Mistletoe and Wine. Enough said.
Elvis was also launched into movies with dizzying results. The audience response at Presley's live shows became increasingly frenzied. One commentator recalled, "He'd start out, 'You ain't nothin' but a Hound Dog,' and they'd just go to pieces."
If Elvis was the world's first superstar he also had a classic superstar downfall. Ruined by wealth and a failed marriage to Priscilla he became increasingly dependent on a cocktail of drugs. There are tales about Elvis ordering dozens of hamburgers a day and shooting TV sets to liven up his miserable existence.
By the early 1970s the idol had become a huge and grotesque mockery of himself. Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, "He was all gut. He was slurring."
There are now two personas of Elvis in the public imagination; the energetic young crooner and the big bejeweled Elvis with heavy dark glasses so beloved of Elvis impersonators. There didn't seem to be an in between Elvis.
Elvis died in 1977 and his home at Graceland instantly became a shrine. Later there was an unsuccessful attempt to steal his body.
Elvis' life and death should have been a clear lesson to all of those who came after him. But it's not one that the Amy Winehouses, Michael Jacksons and Whitney Houstons of later years, chose to heed.
Curious fact about Elvis: He had an identical twin brother who was stillborn at birth. It's curious to think what would have happened had he lived. Would he have made a living as an Elvis body double?
A-Z Challenge fatigue shouldn't be setting in by "D" but there you go. In last year's challenge I pointed out that there are a lot of doom laden words beginning with D - doom, for instance. Or disaster, dire and depression. So perhaps "D" is officially the hump letter of the A-Z challenge.
The best artist beginning with "D" must surely be Bob Dylan. But I don't have time to do him justice; the most intriguing band is surely the Doors. I have never heard anything from Dying Fetus and I really have no inclination to.
Duran Duran may not have the depth but they are hard to resist because they had the glitz. Perhaps it was the element of escapism that drew me to Duran in my teens. Cities were going up in smoke, acne was making inroads by the day and Duran were hanging out on yachts and making glamorous videos, while singing about girls called Rio.
The other curious thing about Duran is the fact they came from Birmingham, the city I was born in. This was remarkable because I don't believe anything glamorous has ever come out of Birmingham before or since, although it's home to a great chocolate factory. If you ever encounter anyone from Birmingham you have to remember to be patient. People from Birmingham have a genetic defect which means it takes longer for messages to travel from their brain to their mouth than other people. It doesn't mean they're not as bright.
Apparently the band would play at a venue called Barbarella's in Birmingham in the early days. They would later name the band after the villain from Barbarella, Roger Vadim's French science-fiction film. The villain, played by Milo O'Shea, is named "Dr. Durand Durand".
Duran at the height of their fame in the early 1980s comprised lead singer Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, Roger Taylor and Andy Taylor. None of the Taylors were related and half of the teenage boys in Britain wanted to be John Taylor.
Duran worked very carefully on their image with the likes of Vivian Westwood and Giorgio Armani. Their early video for Girls on Film was infamous for its topless mud wrestling women. It did the band no harm.
The band became so big they gained a "fab five" image that aped The Beatles. Princess Diana was a big fan. Later they came to regret the heartthrob image and spent a long time trying to distance themselves from it.
"We used to be a very chi-chi name to drop in '79, but then the Fab Five hype started and something went wrong. Something went really wrong. That wasn't what I wanted. [...] Not that I didn't like being screamed at. At one point I really did," commented John Taylor.
Duran were clearly not The Beatles but some of their stuff sounded pretty good and still does. I still hanker to visit the island where Save a Prayer was filmed.
And a View to a Kill is certainly one of the best Bond themes around.
Duran also had a surprising renaissance in the 1990s at a time when most of the frilly shirted New Romantic bands of the 1980s were as dead as Monty's parrot. Ordinary World and Come Undone remain two of their best songs. They even gained a presence in the United States.
Given the fact these guys had the world at their feet, it's amazing how much time they seem to have spent being disgruntled or squabbling with various Taylors in a perpetual state of departure.
Curious fact about Duran Duran: Simon Le Bon inadvertently hit a falsetto note singing A View to a Kill during Live Aid which he later described as the most humiliating moment of his career. It's uncertain how he continued to live from this moment on.
There's a lot of choice of artists beginning with "C" too with some obvious talents like Coldplay, Elvis Costello, the Cult and I was oh so tempted to go with the Cure, the soundtrack to the closest I got to teenage rebellion. I often wonder if Phil Collins realizes how much of his mediocre stuff is regurgitated on American radio stations.
I went with the Cranberries not because I was overwhelmed by them and purely because of Zombie. Linger and Dreams were catchy but not quite sublime. But Zombie was something else altogether.
Quite possibly you may have had to grow up in Britain to tap into the powerful mood of Zombie. For as long as I can remember the TV carried scenes of the funerals of soldiers and small boys with faces of 52-year-old men, the muddy puddles and the dilapidated back-to-back homes on the Falls Road, the threatening murals on bleak walls, the men with guns, the marches, the Maze, the hunger strikes and slowly but surely Ulster would eat into our souls.
It wasn't quite war but it certainly wasn't peace. And the Troubles were disconcerting because the road signs and the homes looked just like the ones on our street. Just the worse for wear.
When I first heard Zombie it blew me away because it captured the feel of Northern Ireland so well, down to the real footage of the British soldiers who didn't know they were being filmed, patrolling a conflict they didn't understand.
If there was no war there could be no winners. But with such hatred across the religious divide there could be no peace.
Mr T was a hapless history teacher. He sent us away to create a project on Northern Ireland. He didn't expect anyone to turn it in. He certainly didn't expect my graphic drawing of a victim being tarred and feathered. At least he wasn't being knee capped. That came later.
It wasn't very eloquent but it's hard to sum up the Troubles in Ireland without going back to King Henry VIII in the 16th century or the Easter Rising - "It's the same old theme since 1916."
By the time I first visited Northern Ireland in 1999 the Troubles were on the wane and it was hard to imagine sectarian violence on the wind swept cliffs of Antrim. But now and again you would drive through a staunchly Unionist village to see the curb stones painted red, white and blue and the red hand of Ulster raised aloft on signs as high as the wire around the police station.
Two years later airliners crashed into the Twin Towers and suddenly all the support from across the Atlantic for the "freedom fighters"of the IRA started to dry up as we saw terrorism for what it really was. Mud and blood, slogans of hate on walls, burnt out houses and hollow eyed people hardened to violence. Zombies to the last man and woman manning the barricades.
B is a difficult letter to find an artist for, not because of lack of choice but because there is too much.
The B-52s, Bananarama, Billy Bragg, the Beach Boys and Bjork all come to mind and then on a higher tier entirely there's Blondie, Blur and the Beatles - surely the most innovative and creative group in the history of forever.
But I chose Bowie because he's a bit out there and is surely the coolest singing artist alive. I didn't fully appreciate him growing up, although the eerie other world nature of Ashes to Ashes had a big impact on my early teens.
Through his outlandish costumes and numerous changes Bowie helped set the scene for punk and the New Romantic era and all of the movements that made it so exciting to grow up in the eighties.
While Bowie emphasizes British coolness he has a curious transatlantic quality. While Americans often see Brits as cooler and more innovative, it was the other way round growing up in Britain.
Bowie, formerly David Jones, whose voice was considered "adequate" in the school choir, famously heard "Tutti Frutti" by Little Richard and declared he had "heard God."
One interesting line stands out from his Wikipedia entry.
"When Bowie left the technical school the following year, he informed his parents of his intention to become a pop star. His mother promptly arranged his employment as an electrician's mate."
Fortunately Bowie sought electricity elsewhere and became Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke, generally forgetting who he really was, taking too many drugs and losing the plot while still producing amazing material. At his most androgynous best Bowie was compared to Lauren Bacall, although his Ziggy character reminded me more of my aunt Joan on acid; or at least how she would have looked on acid.
Then Bowie reinvented himself again in the eighties as a slick character with blond hair and a white suit.
Bowie faded out somewhat after that but when I saw him on stage in the 1990s I was amazed by his energy to think here was a guy who was born in the 1940s, throwing himself around the stage.
Bowie's biography suggests he was a pain in the backside, as well as a perfectionist, a sure sign of real genius.
Curious Fact about David Bowie - David Bowie appears to have different colored eyes. This is a result of serious damage to one eye sustained in a fight with his best friend George Underwood over a girl in 1962. They remained friends and Underwood was tasked to do the art on Bowie's early albums.
The theme of this year's A-Z challenge is bands and singers which is really great because when I'm too tired to post I can just shove a YouTube vid. on here and write a line about how Curiosity Killed the Cat was the best band in the history of the solar system. Ahem.
Anyway A is a no brainer. ABBA seem to have been hanging around in some shape or form for my whole life, although in more recent years more in the form of tribute bands and musicals. Still there are few bands that have come to be as synonymous with a nation as ABBA. Ask someone who the most famous band from Sweden is and it's a no-brainer. Then ask them for the second most famous band and time the silence.
To be fair the Cardigans were pretty cool for a while.
When I was a kid ABBA always seemed to be Number One in the charts. My father was rather pleased when be brought home a crackly old radio and cassette recorder. It was cutting edge technology. You could actually push a button and record ABBA songs on the radio, notwithstanding all the static and the voice of the DJ on Radio 1.
ABBA made it big after winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo,a song that revolves around the strange metaphor of a girl surrendering to romance in the same way as Napoleon was forced to surrender at Waterloo. Apparently in the Seventies it was cool to dress like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz.
ABBA were made up of Agnetha Åse Fältskog, Björn Kristian Ulvaeus, Göran Bror "Benny" Andersson and Anni-Frid Synni Lyngstad.
But, let's be honest, no self respecting Ford Cortina owning guy in bland 1970s Britain gave a rats about anybody other than Agnetha, who appeared to be the epitome of Swedish blonde perfection, and sparked a million crushes from guys in cheap flannel shirts with dubious side burns.
Rather unhealthily, as anybody who has been married to a co-worker will realize, ABBA were two couples - Benny and Anni were an item as were Agnetha and Bjorn. Both couples divorced. Neither Benny nor Bjorn proved to be anything like the character of one of ABBA's biggest hits Fernando.
And in one of those ironic quirks of fate the hairy guys ended up making all the money out of ABBA, Anni married an obscure prince and Agnetha, the real superstar at the time, went into a spiral of decline and became a recluse living on an island who even dated her stalker for a while. There's a strange irony here because Napoleon himself was exiled on the remote island of St. Helena after his Waterloo, although there's no evidence he dated any stalkers.
At least ABBA's catchy if inconsequential tunes live on. I can never paint a room these days without thinking of the line. "Don't go wasting your emulsion. Lay all your love on me."
CURIOUS FACT ABOUT ABBA - The band was named after a fish canning company. Sexy.
Dude. Why did I sign up for this? Am I out of my mind? This challenge of a blog a day for 26 days almost killed me last year so what possesed me to sign up for it again, particularly as I know I won't have as much time as last year and my blogs will be inferior?
And while I say now I don't care, at some point around "M" it will hit me that my writing is inferior to last year, I'll have a hissy meltown and wander around the back yard muttering about the direction or lack of it my life is taking. Because if there's one thing I hate it's regression. An Italian tank may have 9 reverse gears and one forward gear, but I'm the other way round.
Sadly this runs counter to the ageing proces that suggests at some point in our lives we'll all be sitting in the corner of some godforsaken old folks home, drooling on ourselves or muttering "winning" like Charlie Sheen, every time the nurse mashes up our food.
I had forgotten about the A-Z challenge until someone emailed me about it this week. They suggested I keep blog entries short which is rather good advice but not advice I always heed.
I decided to narrow it down to a more specific theme. The first thing that popped into my mind was parts of a toilet cistern. Don't ask me why? It's been that kind of week. My laptop that once seemed a ticket to freedom has become a sinister jailer. And an image of the guy who stole it recently occasionally pops up. He looks like such a friendly sort, sitting there on the sofa, idly caressing his colt 45 and running his hand lovingly through the matted her on the head of his pit bull. I digress.
I discounted the cistern idea due to the quite practical fact I can't name any parts of a cistern, apart from the ball cock, and I don't even know if that's it's proper name. You have to pity plumbers, though.
"Good morning Mrs. Jones. I am here to check out your defective ball cock."
The good news is I now have a theme for the A-Z challenge. And I do feel it will be easier than last year. And I do hope I will gain more followers even if they don't come back any time soon. Because life is a big numbers game. Only then are we winning, Charlie.
Enjoy the A-Z ride.
And here's an entry from last years. Just because.
B is for Busybodies
When Jackson attended a daycare closer to home I used to have time to drop into Starbucks. I didn't have much time but 30 minutes in the morning was a great interlude to chill with a book before work.
I like Starbucks, even though you can end up remortgaging your house to pay for a triple cherry, quadruple fluffed mattressochino if you are not careful.
I always order a small house coffee and make a beeline for the comfy chair. While Starbucks was seen as an extension of American cultural imperialism back in Britain because the company would take over all the nicest historic structures. over here it feels rather sophisticated and abstactly ethical for a chain.
However, Jackson's daycare was switched up a couple of months ago. I no longer pass Starbucks. The best I can hope for is a roadside 7-Eleven.
Now 7-Elven coffee is a strange concept. The first time I found one I was rather excited by the choices that include Colombian, Mountain Roast and a number of other exciting sounding brands.
It's only after trying them all that you come to the conclusion there's one basic flavor; and it's dessicated camel poo.
So now I am under no illusions. I am there for the caffeine fix; nothing more, nothing less.
Except the 7-Eleven I am frequenting in Suffolk has one other factor going against it, the resident busybody.
I'm moody enough knowing I'm going to work and am about to ingest camel poo. As if that weren't bad enough, this individual, a rangy middle aged employee with oversized hair, is always at the coffee counter with a rancid looking cloth in her hand, pretending to be doing something.
When I move to the left to grab a coffee pot she'll move to the left; when I move to the right, she'll move to the right. I daresay if I performed an amazing leap to the ceiling I'd find her blocking my way to the strip light.
"Oh, I'm not in your way am I?" she'll say as she again blocks my path to the stirring sticks and starts refilling them one by one with the speed of a tortiose coming out of hibernation.
"Not at all."
Of course I want to say: "Can't you sod off Doris and stack some mints somewhere else."
I don't actually know her name but if it's not Doris, it should be. That or Doreen, certainly not Paris.
Now my coffee coordination skills in the morning are not at their best as it is, mainly because I am caffeine deprived. I have to get out my notebook and draw a flow chart that links pouring to milk to lid etc. So imagine my consternation when the busybody is blocking Route One to the lids.
Yesterday she was grabbing the creamer container, mindlessly refilling it, even though it was almost full. A guy almost got into a circular kind of altercation with her as he pulled it one way and she pulled it back again.
I couldn't even dispose of my sugar wrapper down the chute without her throwing herself into my path with her manky old cloth, wiping the rim. Note to self: Resist the urge to scream out 'please stop cleaning my hole'
I'm not sure what's with the 7-Elven busybody but I'm starting to get a complex that she lies in wait in some busybody recess and ambles over to the coffee counter as soon as she sees me getting out of my car. This is probably exess paranoia on my part but busybodies can do this to you.
I'm not sure if my definition of busybodies is the same as that of the national debate which seems to equate the term with liberals who are taking away our rights.
U.S. Senator Rand Paul’s toilets don’t work. And, he says, it’s the government’s fault, reports Bloomberg.com, for example.
This seems to relate to low energy flushes and efficient lightbulbs.
But frankly I don't care too much about that. I'd just like this infernal woman to stop getting between me and the miserable jar of coffee that might keep me awake for a couple of hours longer.
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