THE BRITISH THREAD II

If it ain't Dylan, it's crap!

Ah, a rare Tico sighting. Did you ever get down the 'pool, bud, during your time in England NW?

My pal (from St Helens) hates all Scousers, by the way.

Of course, he's never met Smorgs.

No, but it was talked up by the denizen Mancunians I did meet in the pubs there (their colleagues in London talked up Brighton). I contemplated driving over on my way down from Glasgow, but didn't have enough time to make it happen.

Well it is. I Wanna Hold Your Hand eh. It's Just Another Brick in the Wall. **** the dark side of the moon. I'm Sliding down a Moonbeam on mi Arse an' de woiyld ain't comin' to no end. That's one I just wrote Tico. It scans neat if you do it right. Dylan gives lessons in that stuff. Especially live when he's a bit gone. I Did it My Way. Gawd I hate that. That's the worst song I've ever heard in my entire life. The number of useless baritones who think they are running their own lives belting that tripe out is astronomical. I've seen plenty. Lung emptying exercises. All as flat as flukes. Sid Vicous made a decent job of it. Oh Mrs Robinson. Oh Johnny Cash. And if you don't go and peel some onions shortsightedly before putting Leonard Cohen on you can't appreciate him properly.

Everytime a good song has appeared it's wiped them all out. My Dingaling. Tie Mi Kangaroo Down Sport. My Little Nicotine Girl. I'm Walking Backwards for Christmas. All Along the Watchtower. Shaduppaa yah face.

OK--a few have had a decent song now and then. Dylan has hundreds. Probably thousands.

Blimey! Tico has passed through my stamping ground on the M6. Come to think of it there was somebody a few years ago who was driving slowly in the fast lane. Oliver Cromwell was through here as well. They all go through here sooner or later. Melville. The Queen. Every Prime Minister and a good few times. My pub's about half a mile from the M6 and I often find myself watching vehicles going back and forth on a floodlit section over a bridge from the windows and wondering what it all means.

Hey Tico--rjb has sweet talked me into not retiring undefeated champion of the Pick-um series as I had intended to. Watching the games has had me awake at 4 am. I hope you are going to have a try at taking my crown off me.

Ever listened to "autobahn" by Kraftwerk?

Hold on ... Dylan cannot hold a candle to Pink Floyd, spendi. That's not just my opinion, it's a known fact!

Okay, is the fast lane on the left or the right?

I would have been the car constantly running on the shoulder over on the left.

I came down the M6 one time from Manchester to London in the middle of the night, and I was driving through the soupiest fog I've ever seen. Visibility was less than zero! I've no idea how I managed to make it home alive.

I fully intend to try, although I completely suck at that game.

Give over Tico. Dylan never has any momentary lapses of reason. Leastwise not in his oeuvre. That's the chrestomathy, the delectus, the works. He might well have had a few momentary lapses of reason when he wasn't working but we all have them. To have them in the works is right out of order. It's as if you are pandering to folks who empathise with momentary lapses of reason. Getting £12.99 off them like.

Gilmour never pulled a muscle in his vocal chords like Dylan did singing Every Grain of Sand in Verona.

Pull the other one. You could Ring Them Bells.

From the sound of it, Dylan strained his vocal chords before he ever started recording.

What's all this chit-chat? Get back to work!

Okay, I'm just practising...

I'm in charge today - extra lashings of mascara and some windowlene for the glass ceiling.

x

Don't clean it, smorgs. Break it!

And don't forget smorgsie to amplify the sound of the tinkling glass so that somebody in the next room can hear it. Marshall amps are pretty good on full bat.

In banks of ten.

...turned up to 11!

It'll never change in my lifetime - it's the Civil Service, women only go so far, and I'm no Stella Rimmington.

Besides, I wouldn't have time to do my nails!

Eunice says she is going to put in loads of grievances during my tenure, just to wind me up - she has the template saved to her favourites, then I pointed out that I'm hardly likely to help her complete the form, just so she can send it to me, as I have done all the others.

I asked her what the eff she could grieve against?

She replied 'not enough cakes'.

Had loads of annual leave requests - because I'm a soft touch.

x

You can't give a load of insubordination and snash up to your bosses and then complain about the glass ceiling, now can you?

Did you get your nails done today? I hate to see chipped nail varnish, especially on a woman.

I'm sure that they were shining ... in various colours, with diamonds on it ...

I just did. On U Tube. It's not what I hear from motorways. Some nights, when the wind is just right, I listen to the motorway as I drift off to sleep. It sings. Especially when it's raining. Like Sirens when Ulysses first heard them in the distance calling him to come ashore. When he ordered his crew to tie him to the mast and stop their own ears up with wax. A part of that something in "Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you". Some ghost of mechanisation tempting us ever onward. Kraftwerk look to me like the tempted. Not the Ghost. Art is about the Ghost. The Designer if you like that way of speaking. It's a humming sound with variations. One of my favourites is the intrepid motorcyclist who cuts through the hum seeing how fast his bike will go.

I liked the electronic sensors in the jacket lapels idea. Playing a tune on them in the pub. It would be good. But it would be no good if everybody was doing it. If everybody's doing it it's no good. Apart from those things we have to do. I reckon that if we could vary taking a dump in an infinite range of patterns and we could only eat one way dinner parties would have to be turned upside down.

I'm sure it's all very complicated and all and that being into it is proof of a high intelligence but it has no feeling. It may be good as a warning that this music is "modern" and made for modern people whose feeling is slipping away at a similar rate as talking about feeling is taking its place. Slipping in. A harbinger. Then it would be art. But I can't tell if it's just a bunch of guys whose daddies bought them gizmos for Christmas instead of a 1,000 cigarettes, two cases of John Smith's Extra Smooth and a five year subscription to Reader's Wives. And they've been practicing to astound us all and thus make waves. They had hairdoes.

Taking a cue from Elin one might imagine one of them splitting up after five years with a woman and her saying that she doesn't know how she sat through all those concerts and never wants to hear such a boring din again for the rest of her life. Elin doesn't watch the golf anymore.

But I'll allow I might be missing something. The Call of the Wild is my bag even if I do lounge on the couch watching cricket for days on end. Those Peruvian pipes echoing through the valleys of the Andes. Some big trucks make a sound a bit like that. You can tell when a class car goes through at high speed. You can only hear the tyres. Wonderful things are tyres.

Anyway-thanks for the tip.