Angel Days

An Angel Day is a day when you are supposed to spend your time selling your labour power to profit someone else, but instead you spend your time creatively, thus profiting yourself. If you call in sick to work and spend the day watching telly - that's a sickie. If you call in sick to work and spend the day writing, painting or playing music - that's an Angel Day.

The phrase was coined by my old pal and former bandmate Giles back when he was working a soulless IT job. He left the job and the county of Dorset sometime just after the Millennium. Thanks to a reconnection via Facebook, I see he is now the vocalist for a psy-dub reggae band called dubblecross. Check them out!

At the end of the 1990s, Giles and I were in a band called Land. (We were originally called Bond, but then a string quartet stole our name and went on to sell 4 million albums - don't bother to check them out.) The other members of the band were Jonnyboy on drums, Chloe on vocals and Bob the Bassist. This line-up played precisely one gig of four songs at the Brewer's Arms in the Spring of 1999. It was the leaving party for the pub's landlord and landlady who were moving back to Ireland. I helped them move, but hadn't planned on how to get home so wound up working in a pottery factory in Ireland for six months.

Me in Ireland, summer of 1999 - I still have that Guinness T-shirt.
I have no idea what happened to the tweed jacket.

Upon my return, I discovered that Land had called in my mate Alex to play guitar in my place. In fairness, this was a good call. Alex can actually play the guitar properly. He knows scales and can figure out how to play a song by listening to it! I jammed with them a couple of times, but ultimately felt my place was better suited to propping up the bar at their gigs (or roadying as I liked to call it). And so my career as a rock and roll star came to an end. I don't play music as often as I used to, which is what makes Angel Days all the more important.

The Piccolo Problem

The piccolo problem is not, as you might expect, a problem for piccolo players. It is a problem for players of large instruments such as the cello, the double bass and the sousaphone. When they are lugging their instruments up stairs, say, or on and off public transport, complete strangers will stop them and say: "I bet you wish you played the piccolo." Douglas Adams was the first to point out that nobody works out that this is exactly what everybody else says. So the encumbered musician will hear this every working day for the rest of his or her life.

There is a related problem for recently married bartenders. Upon meeting me for the first time post-nuptials, every regular says the same thing: "So, how's married life treating you?" 

I know that it's a friendly way of asking how I am and showing that they have remembered a small fact about my personal life. Two essentials to British smalltalk covered in a single simple interrogative. Problem is that I serve hundreds of pints a week and once worked out that I know about two hundred regulars and what they usually drink. I can be answering this question a dozen times a day. If I don't answer it with sufficient enthusiasm, people look askance and think something terrible must have happened on the honeymoon.

Another problem is that half the people expect you to answer that married life is not very different from life prior to marriage and the other half expect to you to say that married life is totally different. I have to guess which group the person falls into so I can give them the answer that they are expecting. If I guess wrong I have to change my answer to the exact opposite to save their embarrassment. This whole process is so confusing, I have even considered just answering their question truthfully!

Just to clarify, married life is treating me very well as you can see from the amount of weight I have gained and productivity I have lost. The honeymoon was amazing (see selfie below) and married life is both very different and very similar to unmarried life - it depends who's asking. I play the mandolin (badly), so the piccolo problem has never really been a problem for me. I hope that covers everything.      

Practising selfies by the walls of the Old Town in Tallinn 

Last Chance to Save James Joyce

Regular drinkers in the Temple Bar will be so over-familiar with a mural on the interior of the Unthank Road wall that they will scarcely give it a second glance. New visitors to the pub often ask me "Why have you got a picture of Adolf Hitler on the wall?"

Give 'em no choice, Joyce

As should be obvious, this is clearly a painting of James Joyce - writer of such modernist classics as Ulysses and Finnegans Wake - (I suppose giving him a brown shirt doesn't really help.)

This portrait of the author as a middle-aged man has inspired people to ask the bartender a lot of questions. "Who is he?" must have even overtaken "But what will happen to all the ashtrays?" by now as the most asked question in the pub. A question that often leads to a conversation about the literary merits and inherent limitations of Twentieth Century modernism. (Unless there are chefs in - chefs hate talking about modernist literature and always try to steer the conversation round to quantum physics and black holes). 

But the boss has just ordered that the mural be painted over with blackboard paint so that upcoming sports events can be advertised. Now I'm not saying we should save the whole mural. The weird Thomas the tank-engine faced pint of Guinness can go, along with the bridge and the claddagh ring and the map of Dublin. Joyce needs to stay and it is your last chance to save him.

The Bigger Picture

In my first experiment in clicktivism, I have started a petition at change.org that I would like you all to sign if you would like to see the master of Twentieth Century modernism keep his place in the Temple Bar, Norwich.

More Alfred than Batman

Like Batman, I have two jobs. But unlike Batman, I am not a millionaire playboy by day and a masked vigilante by night. At night, I serve drinks (more like Alfred than Batman) and by day I write thoughtful articles (like Lois Lane?) for the websites of local tradespeople. Sometimes, I forget that I am not a crusader for justice (like Batman) and write what I think. Like when a local firm of plumbers asked me to write about 'Energy Saving Tips for Pensioners' in the wake of the Age UK/E.On energy firm scandal.

I sent them the following that they (rightly, I should concede) rejected, but did graciously say I could publish elsewhere provided I didn't link the views therein to their company in any way!

The Charity Trap: How Big Business Ruined Charity

Proverbially, charity begins at home. As far as big business was concerned, a system based on helping your neighbour was a system crying out for monetizing and they muscled in on the act. The deal struck was that a corporation would donate huge amounts of money to charities and this would improve the company’s image and the donations could be written off against paying tax. Plus, if charities were more like businesses, everyone reasoned, more money would be available to help the disadvantaged. Charity directors could pay themselves six-figure salaries like business CEOs and there would still be more money available for the disadvantaged than there was under the old system. Everyone’s a winner.

Case Study: Age UK

Take charity Age UK as a case in point. Eight of their executives pay themselves more than £100,000 a year. This is justified by the principle that because this is a huge charity with a commercial arm, it needs to be run by people with the relevant business skills and the only way to attract them is to pay them wages equivalent to what they would earn in the corporate sector. Age UK’s dealings with the corporate sector brought in double the money that donations did - over £100 million. So far so good.

A Scope for Corruption?

One of the dangers of the big-money private sector corporations being too closely intertwined with the charity sector is corruption. One company that donates to Age UK is energy giant E.ON. When Age UK wrote to elderly people with an “outstanding deal” on energy, it was a package offered by E.ON for £1049 that was being advertised. We hope that not too many hard-up pensioners took the charity’s word for it - E.ON’s cheapest tariff is £245 cheaper than that. Age UK have refused to apologise.

Charity volunteers (as distinct from the paid 'charity muggers') have always done great work, giving up their time for a good cause. It is the involvement of big business interests that threatens the good reputation of charities whose intentions historically have generally been good. At [local plumbing firm], we think that everybody deserves to stay warm at a reasonable cost. One way to ensure this is to have your heating system serviced. An efficient heating system will burn less gas, saving you money on your bills.

Were charities right to make a deal with big business? Let me know what you think.

  

Insert 'pun' that swaps 'you' for 'EU'

I've been following the build-up to the in/out referendum on the EU with some interest. I find it fascinating how the political spectrum does not divide along the usual lines. Sometimes if I'm feeling lazy and can't be bothered to think about where I stand on an issue, I can fairly reliably fall back on tribal loyalties. Not so on this one. I mean, whose camp do you want to be in? David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt want to remain. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove want to leave. 

The Case For Staying

There is a 'What have the EU ever done for us' meme floating around social media at the moment in which is listed the various EU legislation that can be pretty universally agreed to have been beneficial to everyone. 48hr working week, clean air acts, equal pay legislation and 60 years of relative peace are my particular favourites, you can pick your own out of the original letter to the Guardian from Simon Sweeney published in January 2013.

The Case for Leaving

There is a lot of talk and scaremongering from the right about immigration control and sovereignty that I find rather tedious and ignores the argument for leaving that I find most convincing. The European Union is an undemocratic (possibly antidemocratic if you look how it punished Greece for electing left-wing party Syriza to their government) institution that's primary purpose is to further the agendas of the big business and banking sectors. It is about to sign the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that is the latest threat to democratic structures from the corporate sector. Read about TTIP here. 

What the Papers Say

All the corporate proprietor-owned newspapers have lined up behind the leave campaign. This should be a red flag. What do they stand to gain from departure? Newspapers represent corporate interests particularly clearly. (If you don't believe me, compare the international and domestic politics pages to the financial pages: the former are full of comment and criticism, the latter are dry and uncritical - ask yourself, why?) They obviously think a UK independent of Europe would take a lurch to the right.

Selfish Reasons

There is a local language school just over the bridge from the pub. I know one of the teachers and one of the directors and I even worked on their social programme briefly and disastrously. The school, with its regular turnover of foreign students, adds colour and vibrancy to the neighbourhood. A large section of the school's intake comes from EU member states and I think some of the teachers and students who come to be trained in English have some of the fees paid for by the EU - I wouldn't want a change in the relation between the UK and Europe to adversely affect their business.

Conclusion

Sorry folks, I'm afraid I have yet to make up my mind. This is a really complex issue and I hope that you all are giving it plenty of thought as well. I would like to hear your views - especially any selfish reasons of your own that may sway you either way. The bigger ideas are being explored in the press and have yet to move me. Maybe you can persuade me.

Strange Encounters at the Temple Bar

My two week stint in loco proprietoris at the pub I work in has come to an end. Last year, I had a glass beer bottle thrown at me. This year, the best the psychos and maniacs of Norwich could manage was a Polish 'businessman' who emptied three bags of belongings over the smoking area and, despite several polite requests, refused to clear the mess up. Not really a matter for the police, I eventually went out there with a bin liner and said anything he didn't want was going in the bin. He objected to this and we had a short discussion on the nature of possession which might otherwise have been interesting but I had a pub full of people to deal with as well. 

I began to put some of his rubbish in the bin liner and encourage him to put the more valuable items in his own bags. He screamed at me a little bit at which point half of the pub's pool team, the Temple Bar Hashtags - usually to be found lurking in the bottom bar discussing principles of spin - came barrelling out of the pub en masse to make sure there wasn't any trouble. Just how groups of drunk men think that barrelling out of the pub en masse is going to decrease the amount of trouble remains a mystery. But as long as they're on my side, I'm not going to discourage it.

Nobody was hurt. The Polish businessman, his bags quickly refilled by the hands of some willing volunteers, repaired to the carpark where he stood reciting European laws to anyone who cared to listen. He claimed to be waiting for a taxi, but it was a girl on foot that eventually showed up. "Are you going to take him home?" I asked her. "Only if he pay me." She replied (her third person s-deletion revealing her local roots). Three of the Temple Bar Hashtags, nobler men than I, took it upon themselves to make sure the young-looking girl didn't go anywhere with the disturbed Polish businessman who didn't have any money with him anyway. 

I locked the doors on another Monday Night and went to bed. I'm not usually scared at night alone in an ancient pub that is known to be haunted by the ghost of the landlord who hanged himself there in the late Nineteenth Century. 

In fact, I love the feeling of locking the doors and knowing its ten hours or so before I have to speak to another member of the public.

The Economics of the 'Lock-in'

I'm in charge of the pub for a couple of weeks while my boss is in Cuba. I don't know why I get left in charge when clearly everybody else has a better idea of how to run the place than I do. Take 'lock-ins'. Everybody loves a lock-in. The Landlord locks the doors and carries on serving drinks well after closing time. 

If I ran a pub that was licensed until 12.30am, I would only advertise that we were open until midnight. That way every night people would get to feel like they were in a lock-in, but I wouldn't have to break the law.

Lock-ins make sense for landlords, because they get to keep all the money. If I stay open another hour, I get about six quid after tax and national insurance contributions and student loan repayments are deducted. Plus, in the the unlikely event of a bust, I would lose my licence to sell alcohol. Clearly not worth my while. I much prefer a calm hour reading or an hour's sleep to six pounds and the chance to watch drunk people play pool badly.  

I don't explain this to anyone obviously. I just ring the bell at closing time and watch their incredulity when I refuse to serve them ten minutes later. This is the point where they explain that my boss would always definitely give them a drink at that hour. I am working on a facial expression that contains all the information in the above paragraph but I'm worried it looks a bit like my "I couldn't give a..." facial expression.

None of this matters tonight of course, because tonight is what they call in the East: Old Year's Night. And therefore anything could happen... as long as you remember to buy the staff a drink!