Halcyon Days on the Post Office Motor Bikes.

Here we have 5 of us - I am in the centre at the back.

Aged 18 the day before I was going on my SAS selection course I was forced into a bag and my hair parted down the middle - boys will be wags!!!

I was driving around here yesterday in the sunshine, with the sun roof open and really enjoying the bends in the road and listening to The Chieftains on the stereo, and my mind went back to the days I worked for the post office in Birmingham riding a motorbike.
I remembered doing the same thing then; the sun was beating down onto my crash helmet as opposed to my white hair but I got the same feeling of gratification which you get sometimes when you enjoy riding or driving.
Driving is possible to enjoy which is why I don't use freeways or motorways unless I have to; there have to be bends in the road and a certain amount of variety with regards to hills and valleys and because of this you concentrate on the enjoyment of actually driving.
I can't understand people who use cruise control and just sit there wishing the journey would be over – wishing their lives away.
Of course it's different if you're driving with children and their 'are we there yet' comments. I am all for putting DVD players in cars and SUVs (with head sets) for children to look at as more accidents are caused by parents looking at the children in the mirror, to make sure they're okay, than anything else.
There's a mini biography of me on the Internet Movie Data Base and it says that before I was an actor I (he) had the 'best job of his life delivering telegrams for the post office' – that is a true statement and I remember the time when I actually felt it and said to myself 'I will never have a better job than this ever' and I was right.
It was obviously on a summer's day and I had to go along a dual carriageway on Bristol Road South in a suburb south west of Birmingham; I turned left off the main drag onto a road, I have forgotten the name of, but it was full of bends, twists and turns and I was going down a slight hill; the bends were just right so I could fully open the throttle and swung left and right, banking over each time with the foot rests coming very close to the ground. What a job, I thought. I was my own boss – we all were when we were on the road – and I didn't have a care in the world.
Well I cared very much for a girl I used to meet in Rose's Cafe in Selly Oak; that cafe was on Bristol Road in the main high street of the Selly Oak suburb. It was a cafe with a great jukebox and I would drive everybody crazy by playing Love Letters by Kitty Lister on it – it just wasn't rock 'n' roll but listen to it today and see how great it sounds.
The office, we worked out of, was in Selly Oak and when we entered the yard at the back of the office we had to turn off the main street and if there were any girls looking some of us would let the foot rests scrape along the floor. The footrests were made of steel and the street made of concrete and what do you get when that happens? Sparks! That's right.
So the 16 and 17 year old girls would see us ride up and the sparks flying which looked very impressive to our youthful minds; especially in the dark.
I had another little trick I used to do: I would rest the motorbike on the concrete floor of the space where we garaged our bikes and open the throttle turning the handle bars slightly in. This would cause the bike to skid and spin around in a circle and as I would put the head lights on, it looked like the wall of death with those sparks flying, the engine revving and the supervisor yelling at me to stop.
When I stopped I took the crash helmet off and walked into the office feeling like John Wayne or James Dean; or what I thought was like them.
Of course I had filled the place with exhaust fumes but it didn't matter to me; I was young and I was going to live forever and in any case the exhaust fumes didn't bother me as I lit up a cigarette and moved to take my riding gear off in the locker room where we also drank tea and broke each other's balls.
We would drive the supervisors up the wall but what did they expect? We were mad headed 16 and 17 year olds with motor bikes on our minds half the time and sex the other half.
One of the supervisors was a very sexy girl from the north of Ireland who was in her late twenties and was the Brigitte Bardot of Belfast as far as I was concerned. She hardly looked at me but she would go weak at the knees if ever she heard the voice of Frank Sinatra. She dated one of the lads but he was a tall good looking fella who looked a bit like Elvis.
These supervisors were only in charge of us after six in the evenings when the proper supervisor would go home; they were actually telegraphists who received and sent telegrams by sticking the tape onto the telegram form (photo below), putting them into the telegram envelope and giving them to us to deliver; we got to know every street, alley, crescent and avenue in the Birmingham postal districts of 15, 16, 17, 29, 30, 31 and the suburbs of Rednal and Rubery.
There was a rock singer in the area called Jimmy Powell who suddenly shot to fame with a minor hit called Sugar Baby and another supervisor, called Tinkerbell Jackson, said that I could sing as good as Jimmy Powell as she'd heard me when I must have been singing to myself. 'You can sing better than he can – I've heard you do your Little Richard.'
Hummm, I thought, that's what she thinks of my Frank Sinatra, which I was trying to perfect for some reason!!!!
Most of the telegrams we delivered were to businesses and lots to weddings and birthdays but some were bad news; sometimes a supervisor or telegraphist would tell us it was bad news and to 'make sure the person is not by themselves.' Sometimes we would knock next door if we knew it was some old lady by herself to try to break the bad news gently. There were hardly any phones in those days – hardly any land lines don't mind mobile phones!! God however did we manage?
One or two people would scream when they saw us coming as they knew it was bad news; must have given some of us complexes.
The weather wasn't always so nice and sometimes we had 50 or 60 telegrams to deliver and maybe some express packets too which we kept in our paniers; it rained, the roads became slippy we would skid on a manhole cover and come off. We hit lorries, buses, cars and it is a wonder none of us were killed. We were taken to hospital, sometimes detained, sometimes in a coma or concussion but we all survived.
I was only taken to hospital once when a truck turned right in front of me without signalling as I was about to overtake him; as he hit me, one of the hooks that they use to tie rope to on the side snagged under my gauntlet and twisted my arm around. The driver didn't even know he'd hit me and was quite content to carry in driving which would have dragged me under the rear wheel but I shouted something very apt to stop him; the first thing that came into my head which was 'you stupid oaf!' Not a word I'd used before or since.
I tore the tendons in my arm and had a few days off work.
Accidents always seemed to happen in hazy lazy weather; we rode in the snow and ice and terrible rain conditions but it was the sunny days we should have been watching for.
There are no more telegrams now they have gone the way of the dodo and are replaced by every other means of communication. No more Rosie's Cafe in Selly Oak and no more hanging around in there playing on the one armed bandit and the jukebox.
The girl, I mentioned earlier, would come and sit with me every night and we would talk. Her friend would talk to the other telegram lads – they called us wags for some reason. I never asked her out on a proper date; I don't know why but I would get a kiss and a cuddle when I left her at the bus stop. That's what it was like in those days you just dropped them off at the bus stop.
A lot of my pals stayed on at the post office but it wasn't for me; I didn't like the job you had to do when they 'retired you' from the motorbikes at 18 – a postman.
I went to drama school to study speech, drama, dancing, singing and sword fighting and later on I went back to school to study sociology, English Literature and Film Studies and ended up writing this for you – hope you enjoyed it?

The Royal Family

Some members of the Royal Family - pretending to be normal.

This won't make any sense but there was such a big response to the last post about Prince William and his bride Kate and so I thought I would add a few random thoughts and see what happens; I see she is Catherine so is it Cate?
There are a few comments on the blog and I had quite a few e-mails; some against the royal family and some for – one quote described them as a bunch of inbred snoots descended from an oppressive lot of haughty prigs.
Well there is no arguing with where they descended from but I would guess that most of them would choose to be non-royal; can you imagine what it's like?
The thing is they are not snoots; by all accounts they are very nice – except Andrew. The younger one, Edward, defied his father and didn't go to Gordonstoun School like his brothers and he didn't join the military like them; I don't think he can fly Jet fighters or helicopters like his brothers and he married a commoner too and it seems his marriage has worked out; so far.
But by and large the people of Britain love them; mainly the working classes and the upper classes of course. I'm not sure about the middle class – the bourgeoisie – who try to ape the upper classes.
The upper classes have etiquette and good manners. The two things that I like. The middle classes are like Mrs Bucket, on TV, who call their living room their lounge, their lavatory the toilet and hold their knives, when they use a knife and fork, like a pencil.
They try to fit in with the upper classes and if ever they are invited to their homes they blow it by asking where the little boy's room is or folding their napkin or even putting the milk in their tea first; nobody in the world does this except for the British middles class.
If ever the middle class invite a rough member of the working class to their homes they run around after them putting doilies underneath their cups.
The upper classes of Britain have class; it's not acquired but taught. Prince Charles, and his mother, were trained for their role in life from a very early age which is why they can do the job when it falls into their laps.
Charles, and his aunt, Princess Margaret were very talented actors; very funny when in company and who knows what sort of a life they would have led if they hadn't been 'royal.'
In America the President has to achieve his greatness but in Britain the greatness of the royals comes with their birth and it is thrust upon them. As Shakespeare said: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.
The Prime Minister who is the head of the government – not the head of state – is usually dropped into the job before he or show knows anything about it; read Tony Blair's autobiography – he wasn't invited to the wedding, by the way, and neither was Gordon Brown. Thatcher was and so was John Major but Thatcher is too sick to attend.
Before the Queen's mother, Elizabeth, who was a commoner, even though she was posh and upper class, you have to go all the way back to Henry VIII for the last commoner who married a sovereign and, you know, that didn't work out.
Of the 4 Queen's children, 3 of them had broken marriages; if Charles had followed tradition and married a fellow royal, his marriage would still be going and maybe that would have been the case for the other 3; Princess Ann married Captain Mark Phillips – divorced; Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson – divorced and you will know about Charles.
The reason I am interested in the Royal Family is because I am interested in history; the royal family in Britain is the most documented family I know and I find them fascinating.
My interest in the Royal Wedding is very low but the reason I believe there should be a royal family in Britain – as I have said before – is that I would not like the alternative.
The Queen is the most loved person in Britain but when the most hated woman in Britain, Margaret Thatcher, became Prime Minister it was good to know that there was someone she had to answer to.
I think Thatcher hated having to go to the palace and get her papers signed each week and hated the idea; maybe she was a republican.
There are a lot of people – some of them in the government in Britain – who are against the royal family and are actively seeking the overthrow of the monarchy; this is quite legal unless they turn to violence. I don't think that could happen in America!
After the American revolution George Washington was offered the Kingship and turned it down but it wouldn't have worked would it – because he was a commoner and like in Britain or any other country a commoner will never be on the throne; they wouldn't know what to do with it.

Are William and Kate boring? Really?

I hear NBC have scaled back on their coverage of the Royal Wedding because they have found out that Prince William and his future bride, Kate, are boring. Someone on the radio said that William was like the boring friend at college – I have no idea as I know very little about either of them in fact I had to look up her name just now on the Internet.
When I got back from London a few people asked me if I heard much about the royal wedding when I was there – well the answer is no. I suppose there must be a lot of talk about it in the boonies and the burbs but I didn't hear any; in fact I hear more here in the USA on the radio and TV.
If it had been Prince Harry that might have been a different story; he's a more interesting character. He's a rugby playing blokey bloke and I don't care what anybody says - he looks like his father!!!!
Of course what I mean by that is that he looks like Charles. Look at the nose – it is certainly the royal hooter. If there was any doubt about his parenthood he would have been 'disappeared' at birth – haven't you read the history of the royal family and with the use of DNA these days I'm sure he's been verified.
But the big story there is that there is a national holiday next week for the royal wedding and that goes on top of the week off for Easter. So people are leaving Britain in droves this week for vacations, holidays, trips, cruises and the like and tourists are entering Britain in equally as many droves just for the wedding.
What they will see of the wedding beyond what's on TV will be very little.
But why are America – from what we see on TV – so fascinated with the royal family?
They have the wrong idea about them in any case! A lot of people I have spoken to think that Prince Charles is some kind of sissy. I won't go any further than that but he went to Gordonstoun School – I paraphrase from Wikipedea which describes it as a school based on the traditional private school ethos, modeled on Eton and Oxford, with a philosophy inspired by Plato’s The Republic and other aspects of ancient Greek history.
This is most notable in the title "Guardian", denoting the head boy and girl, the adoption of a Greek trireme (photo above) as the school's emblem, and a routine that could be described as Spartan. There is a high emphasis on militaristic discipline and physical education, particularly outdoor activities such as seamanship and mountaineering.
The school has had a reputation for harsh conditions, with cold showers and morning runs as a matter of routine, and physical punishments, known as "penalty drill" or PD, in the form of supervised runs around one's house (dormitory) or the south lawn of Gordonstoun House.
Charles called it Colditz in Kilts!!
So there we are – enjoy the royal wedding and here he is Carlos de Gales himself – the first Prince of Wales to actually speak Welsh; does he look like a sissy to you – don't answer that!!

playing with Arturo Valdez.

The journey back to Los Angeles was a bit of a pisser to say the least; it really is no pleasure to fly these days and having to change flights and travel into London didn't help.
We had a very pleasant drive from Great Finborough then the inevitable wait in the queues in the airport, the bother of the security check, the wait for the flight, the change of planes in Washington DC, the delay there and another long flight so – it was good to be back in Los Angeles.
The first thing I did the following day – we didn't get back till after midnight – was to go to El Compadre restaurant on Sunset Boulevard for some Mexican food. The waiters, as usual, were kidding me and asking if I would like some tequila but I am not an early in the day drinker any more; I used to have a lunch time drink sometimes when I lived in England but not here; I know what alcohol does to you in the sun.
After El Compadre I popped in next door to see Arturo Valdez the guitar maker also known around the world as the guitar repairman to the stars. He has worked on thousands of guitars owned by people such as John Lennon, Eric Clapton and John Denver. He also worked on one of mine.
A good friend of ours died last November and she left me her old guitar; I think the guitar, a Spanish one, is around 50 years old and the case has luggage labels from some very old airlines and ships on it.
When I tried to tune the guitar the keys crumbled in my fingers so Arturo put new keys onto it for me and changed the bridge. Now it sounds absolutely wonderful.
So I needed a new string for it and went into see him and he thanked me for a catalogue of the Eric Clapton Auction recently at Bonhams & Butterfields on Sunset I had given to him before we went away.
We got to talking and he showed me some guitars and I had a little play on a jazz guitar he had just made and then he asked me if I liked flamenco guitar playing and of course I said 'yes.'
He put the padlock on the shop door and we went into the back where he showed me a wonderful flamenco guitar which seemed to weigh less than a pound; he had made it from cedar wood.
“Sit down” he said and I sat in a chair close by his chair where he proceeded to play the guitar.
It was like sitting with Segovia; I sat there mesmerized by the dexterity of his fingering and the sound emanating from the instrument. As he played he also smacked his nails on to the body of the guitar which made it sound as if someone else was doing it; when he finished playing the first piece he handed the guitar to me!!!!
Now what was I going to do with it?
I played a few plinkety plonk chords – it was probably like Tiny Tim following Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall but I played. Not with the adeptness as he but I played for a little while.
After his next piece he handed it to me again and this time I played and sung I Will the Beatles song; it's a little high for me to sing quietly but I got away with it.
Each time he took the guitar back he played even better; one of the pieces was classical and when he handed it back to me again I played and sang Crossroads Blues; it's only 3 chords and I can sing it quite well.
He was impressed with my voice and mentioned it to me when I saw him again.
So it was good to be back in Los Angeles – as I walked away I wondered if I could ever grow my finger nails that long let alone even play half as good as he plays.
I couldn't get a picture of Arturo but he is on the internet at http://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/arturo-valdez being interviewed and he plays too!!

Cameron and Clegg - the 2 C words.

The 2 'C' words.

I'm at Heathrow Airport at the moment; my word processor, OpenOffice, has Heathrow down as a spelling mistake with a red line underneath it. OpenOffice is great apart from it's limited spell check and I much prefer it to Microsoft Word which costs money – OpenOffice is free and even though I have Microsoft Word now too I much prefer this.
There are lots of free hot spots here for wi-fi but when you log on you can't get any service and the ones that are there too cost something like £11 per month to get on.
One thing about £ signs and $ signs: there are dollar signs on all keyboards in the UK and no pound signs on the keyboards in the USA; why not?
So I am sitting in the middle of the waiting area surrounded by workers from Pret a Manger which is some kind sandwich retail chain of the UK.
One of the workers told one of his girl work mates “I got a BMW now.”
“Have you?” she says “bring me a photo tomorrow and you can take me out for a zoom!”
“Not working tomorrow” he says “It's my day off!”
“Well you had it then incha?” she replied.
Then he says “what's that white haired bloke doing there? Taking down everything we say?”
“Which white haired bloke? This one?” and she pointed at me.
“Yes” he says “what's he saying now?”
“What's he saying now.”
“What is it?”
“What?”
“What he's saying.”
“What's he saying?”
“What's he saying now.”
“That's what he's saying” she says.
“What?” he says.
“What's he saying now.”
I'd better get up and go type somewhere else.
I've got to know a few quirky characters here in the news – one of them being the deputy Prime Minister; a man called Clegg; he went to a very privileged school called Eton where the very rich people of the world send their kids – rich Americans, Africa leaders and the Neauvo Riche but not the sons of the royal family I hasten to add - until Diana came on board.
After he left Eton, Clegg's dad managed to pull a few strings and get him a job in a merchant bank – well an internship which to a millionaire's son is the same thing. The Prime Minister, Cameron, was also at Eton and he got his first job at Conservative Central Office.
The day before Cameron's interview somebody from Buckingham Palace called Conservative Central Office and told them that Davie (Boy) Cameron was a good egg and that they should give him the job.
The pair of them – the two C words (Clegg and Cameron) - have very annoying vowel sounds. They don't have an upper class accent like Prince Charles or RP (received English) like, shall we say Laurence Olivier or Alec Guinness or even Christopher Lee, they have terrible grating whiny and nasal kinds of voices like blunt pieces of chalk being scraped across blackboards and you have to throw cushions and pillows at the screen every time they come on television.
It has been a shot in the arm for the British economy with many television sets being smashed by people who didn't have something soft to throw at the screen when they came on, and smashed their sets by throwing furniture at them.
It seems Mister Clegg wants to pull the ladder up behind him – if you know what that expression means. He wants the old boy network to stop; he wants some kind of legislation or employment guidelines to stop the privileged few from getting a gee up from their influential mummys and daddys; or even their nepotistic Uncles.
He spent the day yesterday (Tuesday or even the day before yesterday as I notice it Thursday here) answering questions to the news media and talk shows and being pummelled by even the light weight pundits – of course his hoppo, Davie Boy, the other C word, is in Pakistan at the moment and will probably make as big an arsehole of himself as he did the last time he visited the sub-continent.
He was last seen in a punkawallah's hut looking for a dictionary so he could spell the word legacy for his memoirs.
I am now on the plane heading for Washington DC.
Maybe I'll write from there or just post this as it is -
In DC now – the same as any other airport on earth – or the planet, as people say these days which I hate – I hate some things, don't cha know!
The post of Deputy Prime Minister didn't really exist till Tony Blair gave the job to John Prescott to throw a gesture to the left. John Prescott came through the union ranks and was active in the Seaman's Union and was part of the old Labour Party; the party of Harold Wilson, Clement Atlee, Bevin, Bevan and Tony Benn!!!
That's one of the reasons Thatcher was voted in 3 times, even though more people voted against her than voted for her; as Kenny Everett used to say:

You will vote for her again
cos you won't vote for Tony Benn.
Another reason why she was voted in 3 times was because the 80s in the UK was a very greedy decade – Give me the money was a famous phrase from Harry Enfield.
But back to John Prescott; there used to be a famous fighter in the 60s or so in Britain called Johnny Prescott; no relation to the former Deputy Prime Minister, who kind of harked back to Johnny, the no relation pugilist, on one occasion; on the hustings, during one of the election campaigns, a member of the public threw an egg at Mister Prescott's face; Mister Prescott, with a right cross, chinned him and sent him sprawling into the crowd. It was headlined in all the newspapers, TV news and Tony Blair called him and asked him to apologise; he refused! He said he would sooner resign than apologise and Blair had to accept that – it is also thought that it won him a few votes.
What would it take for one of the C Words to throw a punch? Maybe they'd have you hauled away by one of their subalterns first!!