Sunday morning in Manchester

There was nothing special about this morning. Just another shopping trip. When father says he’s going “into town” and would I like I lift I tend to jump at the chance. As mentioned in a previous missive, these days I tend to look around and think “I could write about that” and promptly forget about it or realise it wasn’t worth the tiny fragment of cyberspace needed to contain it. But on the way home I thought “What the heck?” It’s an opportunity for a bloggy column.

The first thing I remembered was how annoying it is that HMV have started labelling full price items with red, sale style stickers. Across a crowded shop floor you see the DVD you’ve had your eye on with a snazzy red sticker and think “hurrah!” to yourself. Only to find that it’s every bit as much as it used to be. Red was HMV’s sale sticker dammit. This cynical switch is typical of the current wave of market place abuse which is contributing to the decline of the high street every bit as much as online stores. Let’s take another example – the price of DVDs. When DVDs launched they were more expensive than VHS because they were a minority product. A small section of HMV was given over to these new fangled things which were only for the home cinema buff with his four hundred pound player. Now DVDs are in the majority and yet they are still more expensive. Despite the fact that they are cheaper to physically produce than VHS tapes and take up far less valuable shop space. An argument can be made that “special editions” have more money spent on them than their video counterparts and that is true but – to take a recent example – Peter Kay’s latest stand up show is exactly the same on DVD and VHS and yet the latter is a fiver cheaper. Explain that in a sentence which doesn’t include the words “rip” and “off”.

Then we came to the curious case of the changing comic books. Last week I was hunting round shops for Sandman volume 1 and it took several stores before I found one. Today I found very little BUT volume 1. No volume 3 which was what I wanted but plenty of volume 1. On the one hand I’m pleased that shops are buying new stock of the books because it means they should (touch Lynn Faulds-Wood) be easy to get as and when I progress in the series but on the other hand it pissed me off slightly.

As did seeing a small child – who could’ve been no more than 11 – persuading his mother to buying him an 18 certificate DVD and her needing no more convincing than “are you sure that’s what you want?” It seems that Sky Television are not the only people who ignore certification (Angel is 18 and Buffy is 15 but both are obviously children’s programmes which need extensive censorship rather than adult shows befitting an adult time slot and adult treatment). I don’t doubt that there are times when the BBFC go over the top. Most WWE pay per views get absurd certificates simply because there is a bit of blood in one or two of the matches. The idea that a little real blood is some how scarier than a lot of fake blood makes no sense but since when did censorship (sorry, classification) have to make sense? Nevertheless, parents should still take a bit of notice of them shouldn't they?

Then came two examples of anti-social behaviour that were outwardly ignored by everyone (including me as I’m a coward who can walk quite quickly). First was the drunk/stoned man with Booker T hair who wandered round with a guitar that he never played. He walked in a curious way which included a full 360 degree turn every eight paces and rarely including him noticing there were other people about. I later saw him outside Boots, now waving his guitar and shouting lyrics at passers by and expecting small change in return. Then there was the spitting boy. He too could only have been about eleven but bore a striking resemblance to convicted nutter Nathan Jones. He spat freely onto the ground. I hate people who spit. It is totally unnecessary – would you piss on the street if you were too lazy to go and find a toilet? Of course you wouldn’t. Well spitting is the same. We’re all basically the same species (some more evolved than others, naturally) so if I can avoid empting the sticky contents of my throat on a busy footpath then so can all.

So thus far we see that the only imagination in use on a Sunday morning comes in the unfortunate areas of misleading customers and shouting at strangers. The drab motif continued into Radio Five Live on the way home. Firstly they brought up the subject of whether men or women are better drivers. Oh for fucks sake. The men in the studio reacted half with mock-horror and half with grim reality to the question as they know as well as you or I that it is impossible for a man to say anything on this subject without cretinous wimmin complaining by phone, fax, email, text message and letter. It has become standard practice to assume that women have no objectivity and no sense of humour and it is a myth that women seem keen to perpetuate. Witness a joke on TV about women cooking or ironing and the boos which come from sections of the audience. No one on the Five Live panel had the balls to say the truth – that the question is beneath contempt because “Men” covers the 20 year old boy racer, the middle aged stress head, the elderly gent in his well polished Austin Allegro and several million who don’t fall into any of these crude stereotypes. Equally “Women” covers the timid newly qualified driver, the young mother with her focus on her screaming brats, the ditzy teenager more interested in texting Julie about David Beckham and the ladette who sincerely believes that she is proving something by trying to adopt as many regrettable male traits as possible. And the several million who don’t fall into any of these crude stereotypes. Some women are better than some men, some men are better than some women. Why do we still have to listen to endless crap about the “battle of the sexes”?

Then they moved on to that old chestnut – “did you know that it’s still legal to blah blah blah…” Ancient laws which have never been repealed could be an interesting subject except that it never is. The overly familiar story about it being legal to shoot Welsh people in Chester is always mentioned. Um, no it isn’t. Our legal system doesn’t actually work like that. A law doesn’t have to be repealed in order for it to cease to be law. A later law takes precedence over an earlier one. End of story. A subject like this should be (and no doubt has been) explored in a witty book with some depth rather than be tossed out for ten minutes with no intelligence just to perpetuate the urban myths which you can often hear bandied about the pub, office or substance abuse clinic.

I haven’t even mentioned yet the weird and slightly scary bloke in the café who insisted his cup of coffee be filled “right up to the brim” by a waitress a third of his size who was understandable nervous at the sight of him. Having spent the last 36 hours watching a lot of League of Gentlemen I couldn’t help think this man and his circular wife were on a day trip from Royston Vasey.

It’s good to vent anger like this. I used to keep a diary but that went by the by long ago. Now it’s your turn to suffer my petulant, disproportionate, factually iffy and frankly insulting off-pissedness. In the words of Tony Osoba, “You lucky, lucky people.”

18th January 2004