THIS WEEK’S BRAIN TEASER
Shamima Begum is returning to Britain on a HM Government-leased Boeing 777 ‘Dreamliner’.
The plane flies at 679 miles per hour for 70 per cent of its journey from Beirut Airport to London Gatwick, and at 480 mph for the other 30 per cent. The total distance is 2820 miles. The meal is chicken curry. The most interesting film is Frozen II.
As she exits Passport Control, and heads towards baggage reclaim where a single Samsonite suitcase in blushing pink is waiting for her containing a Union Flag pillow (pictured), a kettle, and 500 individually-wrapped bags of Tetley’s, she is shot in the face by Sir Captain Colonel Tom Moore, with his trusty, rusty Browning 9mm service revolver**.
Q: Given this scenario, does the overall stock of “Britishness” in the world go up? Or does it in fact decline?
** with which he once took the lower jaw off of a Belgian Gestapo officer, in a lay bye, somewhere outside Brugge.
SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE GAY RAP
It was with sadness that I learned of the death of The Guardian Guide. Well, maybe sadness is over-egging it. These days, I could watch the last Black Rhino drink itself to death on an East Ham council estate and I’m not sure my tear ducts would spasm. Reality whooshes past at the speed of John Lewis redundancies. There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen, etc etc etc…
Still, as The Face was to the 90s, The Guide was the house journal of the British Noughties - it hit all of that most elegantly gate-kept decade’s sweet spots. In what The Guide became, we saw how children of Smash Hits had grown up to love Joanna Newsom and OutKast, how they were obsessed with positing new ‘trends’, and that they truly believed the DVD box set would set them free.
Quaint, to look at it now.
In the mid-00s, it seemed to me that if you could just make yourself a name at the Guide, you’d be a made man in the British media, Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. The idea stayed with me, basically until last week - a burn-after-reading life mission that I had shelved in my brains in 2006, then had forgotten to erase when times changed, culture changed, and the media dissolved.
Overall, I must say, it has been an honour and my privilege to be born at the fag end of print history; to have been a palliative care nurse to the likes of NME and The Guide, seeing them through their declining years, listening to all their stories about how things were better, once, then upping the morphine, massaging away the coughing fits, but catching a whiff, every once in a while, still pomaded with urine, of that sweet, sweet perfume called The Aesthetic Monoculture Of A Pre-Digital World.
So what happens when all your bright future dreams turn to sepia in yesterday’s scrapbook?
Well, perhaps, in Year Zero, we shall build a new Hacienda?
And maybe you’re reading it?
No Beatles/No Elvis/No Rolling Stones/In 1979.
- The JoeStrummers.
MY HAIRDRESSER ON CHILD ABDUCTIONS
My hairdresser is a very sweet Scots lady who is married to a rockabilly musician. She showed me her husband’s train set. He’d built a track through the garden for it on furlough. They’ve had a great lockdown, and they’re not afraid to admit it.
When it comes to child abductions, however, we must go our own separate ways.
In the chair, I made a brief point about Jonathan Haidt: how the coddling of American minds and creeping safetyism is behind the rise in anxiety disorders across the Western world. I think this boiled down to: “Kids need to be allowed to play unsupervised”.
Well, it appears Haidt and I are wrong. Apparently there are child abductions happening every week in England, serviced by secret gangs, in secret.
“You see, they take them from holiday parks. They use them. Then they’re murdered and never found.”
This was news to me. And it would be news to the news media, I pointed out.
“Ah, well you’ve not been talking to many social workers, have you?”
I had to admit that I’d not.
“They hush it up, you see. Bad publicity.”
I’m now very keen to meet anyone from the caravan park public relations industry who can confirm or deny this.
TV COME HOME?
TREVOR NELSON’S HANKY PANKY KLUX KLAN
[ITV3, 7:30PM, Wednesday] Trevor Nelson hosts this brand new reality show in which ordinary members of the public who have been convicted of white supremacy by a jury of their peers are sent on dates with each other, all of which end with them being strapped down to a mobile gurney and executed, using the lethal injection drug potassium chloride. This week: Luke Moores, 36, and Eileen Danby, 32, visit Chessington World Of Adventures.
LOOKING AT SHIT
[VICE/HBO] Heavily-tatted spunkcluster Mike Mould has a new series in which he looks at shit and says things like ‘Woah’, ‘Heavy’ and ‘So, like your whole family died? Harsh, bro.’ This week: Mike ‘looks’ at ISIS’s mass-rape of Yazidi women in Northern Iraq, and its ongoing impact on the splintered geopolitics of the region. Highlights include: ‘Woah’, ‘Heavy’ and ‘So your whole family died?’.
PODCASTS
THE SUPER STAN
Cressida Knight-Williams and bessie Iona Fellowes are just two dope podcast queens trying to make it in a crazy mixed-up Zennial world of lots and lots of podcasts with only two listeners.
This week: staycations. The dynamic duo discuss Sam Smith’s recent decision to take a holiday in East Lothian for over forty-five insight-free minutes without reaching any definite conclusions either way, except that Iona doesn’t much care for Wales, and Cressie would like to drive around America in a Winnebago one day. Finally, it’s time to welcome Crossfit Consultant and Toast Colourist, Tamsin Wakada, who is back with a new book: WHY I’M NO LONGER TALKING.
In the TV Nook, the trio discuss the latest episode of Looking At Shit, and BBC Sounds’ new podcast: The Eternal Karen. Episode Three: Protocols Of The Elders Of Karen.
**
WIN A GARROTTE!!
To celebrate the return of Spanish quarantine, we’ve got five of these beauties to give away: genuine Falange-era garrottes! Perfect for strangling. Great for slow beheading. Fantastic for strangling some more.
All you have to do is tell us:
to the nearest pound, how much weight would Boris Johnson lose if his head were entirely severed?
Oh - and if you’d like to
this post… well, I wouldn’t say no.