Category: humour

Having avoided being sent to elocution lessons when I was ten in 1967, my first taste of foreign languages, aside from my Nan speaking in rhyming Cockney slang to confuse her neighbours, was a year later at secondary school where they tried to teach us French.

Day trips to Dunkirk and Boulogne didn’t help; although did introduce us to cigarette lighters whose flames made oil rigs in the North Sea look tame – and flick knives.

But this was hardly immersion.  The only immersion likely was us trying to dump our Divinity teacher overboard just pulling out of Dunkirk harbour.

During our French lessons we were instructed solely to conjugate verbs. Because that happens in everyday foreign languages – Not!!  Whenever, trying to buy a fresh baguette on holiday in a gîte in a town which formerly housed U-Boats, you will not be saying to the Boulangerie, “I bake, you bake, he, she or it bakes, you bake (several of you baker types), we bake, they bake” you are English and, therefore, you speak slower and slightly louder, as if the baker is slightly mutton: “Have. You. Got. Any. Bread?”

Latin was just as bad. And useless, unless you wanted to study etymology or become a Personal Trainer.  Most Latin lessons involved us reading books about wars involving towns/cities/nations being taken by storm.  We learned the Latin verb expugnare – to take by storm.  I cannot remember, since my last Latin lesson in 1972, ever using the words “to take by storm” – although if I’d have supported Millwall that might have been different.

But, because English is the universal language, all we need to do is go to an evening class and learn how to say, in several languages: “Two beers, please”, “Where is the nearest chemist?” and “I think my clutch has gone!”

Auf wiedersehen, pet.

Have people stopped queuing for public transport? I’ve been promising myself, since 1974, the year I started commuting, to attend a “travelling in London” assertiveness course; it would seem this is becoming ever more urgent.

On the platform at Bank Station, connecting the Waterloo & City Line to Waterloo, there are markings behind which people would, with their rolled-up umbrellas, bowler hats and copies of the Times, wait patiently for the Drain as it is affectionately called, to arrive.

Not any more they don’t, plus the umbrellas have been replaced by invisible-to-the-wearer back-packs (probably containing a small person), whose sudden movement can remove an eye before you can say Captain Hook. Oblivious, they carry on listening through their headphones to something like “The Clash sing Edith Piaf”.

The markers on the platform are still very much there, but their existence is spurned.

I’ve noticed too that people no longer queue at bus stops.

Historically you’d form an orderly queue behind the bus stop. These days people congregate around the bus stop, mimicking vultures in the Nevada Desert, mentally preparing themselves to see the word “Due”.  This three-letter word pumps adrenalin through passengers’ veins as they lie in wait.

The bus is spotted and it is as if someone angelic host has said “On your marks…”, as there is an almost indiscernible shuffling towards where the bus door will open. The bus arrives and the ensuing pandemonium is on a par with a Boxing Day sale where tellies are suddenly available for under a shilling.

Planes are now boarded by the number on your ticket, this should be introduced for buses with priority given to people who never paid more than ten bob for a Red Rover.

I tried to get money out of an ATM the other day by mistakenly using my Kidney Donor Card; I had far too many loyalty cards in my wallet. I either needed to shed a few or buy a bigger wallet, a small travel bag or basket-on-wheels like my mum had.

There are very few shops these days where you’re not brandishing two cards – one to pay with and one to collect points. (Three, if you’re trying to break into the till).

Unlike in the 60s and 70s when you’d collect Green Shield Stamps or cigarette coupons, you knew exactly how much you had – eight and a half books or half a hundredweight of Embassy coupons. I wrote about this previously: https://mikerichards.blog/2017/01/03/gateway-to-the-south-revisited-2/

Because of this lack of knowledge of the worth on your loyalty card, I’m always hearing (predominantly in coffee shops): “Have I got enough points on this card?”, “No, you have 2p”. An ignominious silence descends.  In recovery mode, the question to the barista is: “Oh, where’s that flag from?” “Tuvalu.”  More silence.

But it is (no pun intended) rewarding redeeming points, even when you’ve paid over several hundred pounds to earn a couple of free Ginger Nuts in Costa.

Don’t get me wrong, these cards are useful; the alternative would be carrying around several bulging (freshly-licked) Green Shield Stamp books or several million Embassy coupons – you’d certainly need a bigger wallet – or a very strong elastic band.

I wonder, if I sold one of my kidneys, could I get the points put onto my Boot’s card?

When I was a teenager, growing up in the 70s, coffee was still regarded as relatively exotic; but it was just called “coffee”. In the Wimpy on Balham High Road one of the two hot beverages on offer was coffee; it cost 8p.  And tasted as such.

We rarely had it at home; we drank tea. I insisted on PG Tips being bought for the cards you got inside enabling me to learn about “British Butterflies”, “Adventures and Explorers” and “Notorious Nazis”.  I would force-drink my mother until I owned an entire set.

One day, my nan introduced me to coffee: frothy, hot, milky coffee. Although it smelled fantastic, it was far too hot to drink immediately – you’d needed it to cool down.  Because my nan had made the coffee by boiling milk in a saucepan (oddly enough she didn’t own a Gaggia machine) the moment it started to cool, a layer of skin would develop. This could be removed with a spoon although, hanging off the spoon, it looked like something out of the Quatermass Experiment!  It was enough to put you off coffee for life and why, I believe, lids are put on take-away coffee cups nowadays.

Today, courtesy of Messrs Costa, Starbuck and the Roman Emperor Nerro, there are copious amounts of choice of coffee, size of cup and type of milk. However, you’ll have needed to have attended several terms of conversational Italian evening classes to be able to pronounce cappuccino and latte correctly and a good grade at A-Level to order Caramel Macchiato. (It becomes easier – the more you have, the more your teeth have rotted away)

Still, in 1972, it was worth paying 8p for a cup of coffee, if only to dip your Wimpy Frankfurter into.

Arrivederci, Balham.

“Here he comes – Whistler’s mother” would be my nan’s retort as I’d skip through the dark corridors of Du Cane Court on Balham High Road where I lived until we emigrated to Carshalton in 1972.

I’d only whistle when happy and this would have coincided with me having talked to a girl – I would run down Balham High Road (I assumed no girls lived outside of SW17) whistling the main theme to Patton: Lust for glory.  I felt I was on top of the world, like the eponymous General George S Patton addressing the troops at the start of the 1970 film.

To demonstrate multi-tasking is not just a girl thing, I could bowl imaginary leg breaks whilst running and whistling!  Not unlike the kid in the 1982 Channel 4 film P’tang, yang, yipperbang – although he had John Arlott in his head, I had George C Scott chipping away in mine, like Jiminy Cricket (which is quite apposite).

If I’d have pursued this talent, rather than the more ostensibly glamorous route of being in advertising, I could have been the next Percy Edwards or Roger Whittaker. I could have released a re-worded version one of Whittaker’s famous ballads and written about leaving old Balham town.  Or copied Percy Edwards with some of his bird impressions.

My nan always said I was a bit of tit; I could have proven her right and sounded like one too!

To paraphrase Lady Bracknell: to have two chip shops nearby is handy, to have three is bad for your cholesterol.   

Growing up in Balham we had three very different chip shops (although I wonder why they were called chip shops as chips were such a small percentage of what they sold).  

One, in Tooting Bec Road, had built-in entertainment next door where, if you inserted an old penny into a slot, you’d see a model train going around in circles.  I hate to think how many minutes I’d spend chewing on a saveloy (a food product basically made up of all the rubbish they don’t put into sausages) watching this toy train go round and round. 

A chip shop on Balham High Road was the newest of three within walking distance of my flats, Du Cane Court, and you went there if you wanted to improve your conversational Greek.

But easily the most interesting (for me) was in Chestnut Grove where the wall was covered with West Ham memorabilia.

It was the place where I first learned about exotic football clubs like TSV 1860 München. The Hammers had played and beaten them in the 1964/65 European Cup Winners Cup final and photos of this victory were strewn across the shop; I was about thirteen when I learned that Martin Peters wasn’t actually a type of fish.  

I never read a paper as a kid, I never had to, I would always get my news from the back of a piece of rock salmon.  It was imprinted back to front and went through my teenage years thinking I’d mastered a foreign language. 

Or that Queen Victoria wasn’t dead after all.