Life Changing Event.

Sir Winston Churchill.

Is there any one thing that has changed your life; if you think back and enjoy thinking back you may find it.

In script writing there is always a life changing event at the end of the first act and at the beginning of the second; without that life changing event the story would just drone on and on and in fact all stories are like that.

They have the set up, where everybody is introduced, the obstacle or the life changing event then the resolution. There are a lots of other things that happen in most screenplays like Rocky all at sea, with just a few minutes to go, then his trainer cuts his eyelids and he fights to a draw.

The screenplay is nothing new in fact that's the way stories are written since way before Shakespeare (look at Romeo and Juliet) right back to Sophocles.

In a movie it's usually on page 20 – about 20 minutes into the film.

There are things that change your life and sometimes those things that change an individual's life change history.

There was a man called Brendan Bracken; he was an Irishman who went to live in Australia, where his father was a builder, and he migrated to England to be Churchill's confidant during the inter-war wilderness years.

The greatest thing he did for Churchill was to make it possible for him to take over from Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister when all looked lost.

Nobody of any import wanted Churchill as Prime Minister; Chamberlain, The King, The House of Lords and The Labour Party wanted Lord Halifax.

When the time came for Chamberlain to step down he set up a meeting of the contenders in Downing Street to discuss the crisis. Lord Beaverbrook and Bracken found Churchill brooding alone in one of his clubs and warned him of the upcoming meeting.

Bracken, like Churchill, was an enemy of appeasement, and he deduced that the best thing Churchill could do in the meeting was to keep quiet.

I don't know whether Bracken was a poker player or not but his ploy worked. Chamberlain was trying to decide who was going to work with whom and probably wondered if Churchill would be able to work with Lord Halifax etc but Churchill just sat in silence.

After a long pause with Churchill keeping his silence Lord Halifax said that his position in The House of Lords would make it difficult for him to be Prime Minister. The next morning news came that Hitler had invaded Belgium and Holland and Churchill went to the palace to tell the king he was forming a government.

So not only was that a life changing event for Churchill, and Bracken, it was a history changing moment.

Now I can point to a few things in my life that changed things; this is apart from the personal things such as marriage and having children

I remember when I finished riding the motor bikes for the post office; I was nearly 19 and it was time. At 18 the usual thing was to be transferred to train to be a postman. It was something I really didn't want to be and when I was delivering mail one day, one of the companies I delivered to offered me a job.

It was a terrible job in a wallpaper and paint warehouse but it allowed me to be able to stay in bed till 7:30 and I didn't have to wear the heavy postman's uniform.

As soon as I started they sacked somebody else – someone who looked like me, as a matter of interest, and then after a month or so they asked me to leave. They didn't like my sense of humour: one of the supervisors said to me one day “Hurry up.” and I answered “Hurry up broke his neck.”

Only a joke but when I had the meeting when they told me I had to go it was brought up and I said it was only a joke - “well we don't like those kind of jokes!”

In those days you would just call the Personnel Department wherever you wanted to work and if they had any vacancies in their organisation they would invite you in – the forerunner of the HR department (Human Resources).

So I ended up working in the British Car Industry as a Material Controller; if they were manufacturing 400 Morris Minors that week, for example, I had to make sure that 2000 wheels, tyres, the nuts and bolts etc were there ready for the workers on the assembly line.

I was useless at the job and in the first week they had to send a whole assembly line of men home because I didn't order whatever requirements the vehicles needed. There were complaints from the cleaners too about my desk as it as always full of papers.

I met a young lad there who said he wanted to be an actor and my ears pricked up; he had all the answers and I was all ears and I made enquiries.

When the inevitable happened, and they called me in for a meeting to tell me I had to go, I told them I was going to The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and they said “...the Royal Acad . . . Royal Academy of What????”

Actually I went to Birmingham – London was a bit far for me in those days!!

I was always kind of show business inclined – I wanted to be a rock singer – but that was the event for me. I went ahead and I never gave up; the young lad with all the answers never did.

My parents always suspected I'd be an actor, my nick name was John Barrymore as a child, so I might have drifted into it in any case; who knows?

How I miss The Farmers' Market.

The Clock Tower at The Farmers' Market, Los Angeles.

I didn't think I would settle down over here so easily; I thought I would miss the good life of Los Angeles and the weather but since I've been back it has been quite an adventure. I have been bogged down with work and getting things organised, admittedly, but nonetheless I am satisfied here.

I have totally forgotten about Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton and all the other publicity seeking personalities of Los Angeles who seem to have some kind of importance over there.

I have had my moans about the coffee over here but apart from some friends, whom I try to keep in touch with as much as I can, the thing I miss about Los Angeles is The Farmer's Market.

I have dedicated posts in the past to The Farmer's Market as we went there nearly every day for the best coffee in the world from Bob's Doughnuts; I was always looked after at Bob's and the girls there would make sure my coffee was fresh – fresco, I used to say as they were all Latino, many of them from Guatemala, and others were Chicano – which means they were born in the USA from Latino parents.

I'm not sure if Chicano is specific to the Mexicans or to all Latinos.

There is a whole Chicano movement: Chicano Art, Chicano Cinema, Chicano Music and so on; a famous Chicano musician was Ritchie Valens.

The reason I asked for fresco was because the girls at Bob's would try to teach me Spanish and I picked up quite a bit of it through the experience over the years.

I always figured that because I drank decaffeinated coffee – descaffinado although I can't spell it – it would not be as popular as regular coffee so would not always be fresh so they would usually make sure it was for me.

I would chat to the girls whilst they did my coffee, find out about their studies and their babies and their lives and when I left them in June that information ceased; I saw a little glint of a tear in one of the girl's eyes when I said goodbye but I never mean goodbye. I have worked with hundreds of actors and when the job ends we say goodbye not knowing if we will ever meet again and lots of times we meet on another job soon after or even twenty years later. So goodbye has never seemed so drastic.

There were other people at the Farmer's Market; I would buy pizza from Patsy's Pizza a couple of times a week and one or two of the girls would sing 'Happy CHRIStmas' to me; putting a strong accent onto the Chris in the word so I miss those girls too; and sitting around other regular users of the market would recognise us – but never speak.

On Tuesday afternoons there would be a group of people who would come from the Bing Theatre at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) where they screen old movies on Tuesday afternoons; we would sit with them sometimes and chat and they would tell us which movies they had seen and I would say that I would go with them one of the weeks but I never did.

Patsy's Pizza was the last place James Dean ate before he set off in his Porsche on the journeythat killed him; it was about this time of the year maybe September 30^th and if you go to Patsy'stoday – Patsy D'Amore's Pizza to give it the full name – there is a picture of Patsy with Frank Sinatra,

The Frank Sinatra picture at Patsy's Pizza.

one with Bobby Darin, another with Jackie Gloeason but nothing about James Dean although it's about the only place in Hollywood where there is no picture of James Dean; his picture and image is everywhere.

And here he is:

James Dean In Giant.

We would go to the Farmer's Market in the weekdays at about 5:30 pm to wind down and over the weekend at about 2:00 pm. It was the ideal place to sit and chat at the end of the work day and various things happened at different times for instance in the weekdays people would come for breakfast in the morning.

A famous film director from the seventies would take coffee outside Bob's at around 8:30 and he would be surrounded by his assorted hangers on and acolytes; what they talked about is anybody's business but they were always there whenever I went at that time.

It was a place for actors; I saw Nicolas Cage having breakfast once with his Elvis trousers and white Elvis shoes. I had a cup of coffee for one of the guys from Entourage and plenty of others.

Walking around The Farmers' Market in the early evening you would pass hundreds of tables with people sitting there eating and you could feel the atmosphere as you passed. We were particularly fond of the Gumbo Pot where they served Louisiana food. It was a great place to eat and on Mardi Gras there would be a Gumbo type band.

One band we saw a few times was Cowboy Soul; they were a black band and played country rock music. They dressed in black with cowboy hats and their wives, children and girl friends would dance just in front of the stage to add to the entertainment.

Every now and then The Farmer's Market would hold a car show which had the classic American cars; Thunderbirds, Cadillacs, Mustangs – people crowded around one of the Mustangs at the last show I went to: it was the one used by Steve McQueen in Bullitt!!! They called it the Steve McQueen Mustang.

So I do miss The Farmers' Market in Los Angeles – there is nowhere like it here!!

People dining and chatting at the Farmers' Market.

Oye! Leave my Guinness alone!!

Guinness Poster 1973.

There I am up there many years ago on a Guinness poster; it's been up there before but as this post is primarily about the black stuff I thought it fitting to use it today; that poster was in all the cities and towns of Great Britain and stood about twenty feet high. No matter where I went I couldn't miss it but I was hardly recognised from it. I remember one day standing at a bus stop in front of the poster and nobody blinked a eye lid.

I would hazard a guess and say it was around 1973; I did a Guinness commercial in 1972 – in fact it's on YouTube if you want to search for it – which was set in an antique shop. The idea was that I went into an antique shop with my pal mistaking it for a pub. I suppose it was quite funny, really, and the director asked me if I had any funny business to do whilst leaving the antique shop on the way to the pub next door; I said, “I can bang my head on the bird cage, if you like” and he said “show me” so I did.

Little did I realise that they would be shooting it from all angles and doing multiple takes so I think I must have banged my head on that bird cage about fifty or sixty times. I kind of 'headed it' like heading a football meeting it on the bit where my forehead met my hair line; so it didn't really hurt that much and in any case it was soft metal!!****!!!!

Before I get to my point here is a little excerpt from my last novel:

Dubliners have travelled to other countries and seen how they treat Guinness and sometimes have drunk something else rather than see their beloved black stuff being treated like any other beer. An Irishman walked into a pub in Birmingham, England, and asked for a pint of Guinness, one day, only to see the excuse for a barman put a pint glass under the Guinness tap and press a button; this opened the pipe that dropped a pint of Guinness into a glass; dropped being the operative word as this had as much to do with pouring and caring for a pint of Guinness as throwing a pint of paint at a canvas and calling it art; people have called this art, of course, just as the people from Birmingham used to call that drink a pint of Guinness; they were both wrong.

And here is a lovely looking pint of Guinness:

Guinness: the perfect pint.

I was in Herefordshire over the weekend and when I went to the bar I was delighted to see that they had a Guinness pump so I asked for a pint of Guinness; the barmaid reached into the cupboard behind her and brought out a can of Guinness. It was a strange looking can and seemed to have a silver bottom unlike the regular Guinness can – the one with the widget – which is black at the bottom and signed Arthur Guinness.

She opened the can and started to pour the Guinness in to a pint glass and it looked flat and rather like black treacle. I was stumped for words as I watched this demonstration. I eventually said “What are you doing?”

The barmade just smiled and said “Now I have to put it on here” and she took that flat pint of Guinness and placed it on a small metal plate, under the Guinness tap, and pressed a button.

“This is the surge” she said.

Something was happening to the pint; it was being 'surged' from underneath, somehow, and gas was being put into it and eventually the head formed and a lot of the Guinness went over the side of the glass and all over the floor.

“This is the way we do the Guinness here” she said.

I eventually gave her £3 for the Guinness and took it to my seat; it looked like a Guinness, it felt like and Guinness and you know what? When I took a swig of it it nearly tasted like one – nearly!!

It was explained to me that they didn't sell much Guinness and I told them I wasn't surprised if it was only nearly a pint of Guinness.

I have to say one thing for Los Angeles, if it didn't have a Guinness tap to sell proper draught Guinness pubs and bars would sell the can with the widget. In case you don't know Guinness, in 1991, invented the widget and I believe they won the Queen's Award to Industry because of it. The 'widget' is actually a plastic moulded device that sits at the bottom of a can until it's opened and then releases a little beer and nitrogen, forcing a surge of bubbles that settle to form the tight white head - in short, the perfect pint at home. (source TheDrinkShop.com).

So I wondered why they just didn't have the draught Guinness at the pub and it was explained to me that unless they could sell a barrel of Guinness every 48 hours it wasn't feasible to sell it at all as it goes off.

But as to the surger here is what I found on the Internet:

Always complaining that your pint of the black stuff is never as good as that black nectar you supped in Ireland? Well, celebrate this St. Patrick's Day in true Irish tradition with the Guinness Surger Starterkit.
The Surger Kit is a revolutionary system that uses ultrasonic waves to stimulate the molecules in your pint of stout so your sad can of Guinness is transformed into a cream-brimmed glass of velvet. So, how does it work? Well, refrigerate a can of Guinness for at least three hours. Pour a little water onto the tray at the top of the Surger unit. Next, pour your can of Guinness into a glass at a 45 degree angle. Now, place you glass of freshly-poured Guinness onto the tray of water on the Surger unit. All that’s left is to hit the button on Surger unit. Sit back and witness the miracle of ultrasonic waves. In a matter of minutes, you can enjoy a Guinness just as good as the fresh draught served at The Storehouse in James's Gate.

First my coffee now my Guinness – this is going to get serious!!

Guinness - the pathetic surged pint.

Wake up and smell the coffee!

The dreadful M25.

It's an old expression wake up and smell the coffee but it's a truism; it means take notice of what is going on around you. I like to wake up and smell the coffee even though I usually drink Earl Grey tea, in the morning and don't touch coffee till the afternoon. Why the Italians are so proud of not drinking coffee after ten in the morning is beyond me so I can't see Starbucks doing any good business there.

However, I must say, I only drink decaffeinated (tea and coffee); I know people will think that's not the real stuff, that's not coffee you can't drink coffee unless it makes your heart beat fast.

Well there are other ways of making my heart beat fast!

My brother, replied to my post on Americano coffee saying 'going into Starbucks is like going into prison for sex; you know you're going to get some but you know it's going to be rough.'

But when I say wake up and smell the coffee I am talking about taking your time through life. I have done a lot of driving since being here and most of the time has been on motorways.

I started in Southampton, went up to London and I've been to Suffolk, Edinburgh, York, Birmingham and more than once to some of those places.

When I went to Edinburgh I could see the wonderful city almost immediately and when I went to York I saw it straight away.

In Birmingham last weekend I didn't see it at all; I got out of the car in Tamworth, which was about half an hour's drive from Birmingham, a few minutes from a motorway – a freeway in America – and in Birmingham the motorway seems to go right into the city centre. So when I got out of the car there it was as if I was in outer space and landing on a satellite.

At one time, when I worked for the post office on the motorbikes, I got to know all the routes for the whole south part of the city – that is stretching from the east side right over to the south west – postal districts 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 and a lot of the outer places and last weekend I didn't know any of it. I will presume that the suburbs are still the same but what saved me on Saturday was the old district numbers still on the street signs.

And what are the district numbers? They are what preceded the postal code (UK), zip code (USA) and the PIN code (India).

But you know – it got me to where I wanted to go faster than any other way and to get to the place in the centre of Birmingham from London I used the magical Spaghetti Junction.

Here is a map of it:

that is the original Spaghetti Junction.

Now it seems to me that we are using these motorways and missing where we are and what we can see, what we can hear and what we can smell. In other words we don't smell the flowers in those places we don't smell the coffee.

In Los Angeles I used to love to drive up Vine Street and come to Hollywood and Vine – even the name gives me a tingle; I would see a great building there called the Taft Building and I used to love to drive down Fairfax on my way to the farmer's market. I loved the architecture.

I mean look at The Capital Building – a stack of records piled on top of one another; the same architect designed the big restaurant at LAX airport; look at it:

The Capital Building, Hollywood; home of Capital Records.

There is an awful notorious motorway which circles London called the M25 – all motorways are prefixed with an M by the way - it is an awful motorway. It has a clockwise direction and an anti clockwise direction and in theory you can take any direction to reach your destination.

Now you will know what I think of the private motor car (whose days are numbered I have to say as it just can't go on) and motorways have been built to service the private motor car for the past 60 years in the UK.

Motorways are not meant to be pretty but on some of them you can see trees, some countryside and maybe some buildings - but not on the M25.

A few months after it was built they discovered it wasn't wide enough so they had to widen it in some places, then general maintenance meant more road works and repairs and it also attracted big trucks and when you use it you don't smell the coffee or see the trees you are up the arse of lorries and vans and you smell their exhaust fumes as you weave your way through the multitudinous traffic cones that spring up every ten miles or so.

If you look at the M25 at the top of the page you will see that there is another 'ring road' closer to London called the North Circular Road and South Circular Road and this does the same job but is not a motorway. That is a smaller circle to go around but people have actually been sent to the outer circle to go all the way around London to go the other way. For example the people in west London who want to travel east travel all the way out west to the M25 and then go all the way around to where they want to get off. Most of the time, even when they've travelled 100 miles they are still only 15 – 20 miles from the city.

Sometimes it is faster to go all the way round on the hellish motorway and you can save time but . ..

and this is the big question:

What is time?

Time is the one thing the lag is thinking about; the poor prisoner in his cell. Nothing is more important to him than time whereas to us the free people – free from that kind of prison perhaps – should never have to think of time and if we do? What are we but prisoners to the old enemy time.

So you save an hour by travelling around that monstrosity which will eventually spread exponentially as more cars are sold and more of us want to buy them and what do you do with that hour?

Nothing.

You may think you are doing something as you look at the garbage on TV, dangle little Johnny on your lap but why didn't you go the other way?

Last night instead of going around the M25 I travelled through London; I passed the British Library which half the people on the M25 probably don't even know exists; I passed Saint Pancras Railway Station which truly is one of the most wonderful buildings in London; I drove to the north of Bloomsbury where the likes of Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes and EM Forster were part of The Bloomsbury Set – oh how a little drive through London gives you food for thought.

Hope all is well on the M25!!

Americano - the scourge of coffee drinkers.

Robert Mitchum (top) and Robert Ryan.

There are lots of strange things about being back here; lots of things I am trying to get used to; just like when I first moved to Los Angeles.

For example when I moved there I couldn't find any Battenberg cakes; no cherry Bakewells; no Eccles cakes, fresh cream doughnuts – in fact no fresh cream at all. The fresh cream they give you is in an aerosol-can and you spray it; takes a lot of getting used to but you do.

If you buy fresh dairy cream in a carton there it seems to be made from homogenised milk – in fact you don't get fresh milk as you do in Britain and the cheese you will know about and that's a whole other story in itself; in fact one of the pleasures of being back here is the quality of the cheese.

One of the great things about living in Los Angeles was my favourite coffee hole The Farmers' Market (see previous posts) and the wonderful coffee they served and one of the worse things about being back here is the standard of the coffee; everywhere you go they serve the dreaded and tasteless Americano coffee.

Now who's idea was The Americano? It is tasteless mud! It is the equivalent of keeping a pot of tea simmering for hours and then when you want a cup put a spot of tea into the bottom of a cup then fill it up with boiling water.

When you make a pot of tea you put the tea leaves into the pot, then pour almost boiling water on top of them then leave the tea to brew or mash, for about 5 minutes.

Coffee is made the same way – you make it in a pot and it brews.

Americano is made by adding boiling water to espresso coffee – it's not brewed. And this is not an age thing; we have known espresso coffee all our lives. It was used in the coffee bars in the 50s and 60s in fact I remember the lyrics of the Lionel Bart song Fings Aint What They Used To Be:

'Once our beer was frothy but now it frothy coffee....

well fings aint what they used to be.'

I can just about stand coffee from a cafetiere – apart from all the mud at the bottom of the cup – but what happened to the good old cup of Joe? Coffee from a percolator, a coffee machine or just a plain old filter where you drip the coffee through to the cup.

There was a place I used to use here which gave you an individual filter and you waited whilst it dripped through before drinking it.

In a survey, a few years ago, it was found that coffee is carcinogenic; it went on to say that if it is filtered through paper it has the opposite affect.

Since I've been away all the horrible coffee shops have emerged in the UK; Cafe Nero, Costa, Starbucks and all the other equally guilty places.

There was a Campaign for Real Ale in the early 70s in Britain – remember the phrase Watneys' the Scourge of the Drinking Classes? Watneys introduced keg beer to Britain with Watneys Red Barrel, which was a keg bitter.

Keg bitter is pasteurised to stop fermentation and carbon dioxide is added for sparkle and keg beer didn't need the traditional long pump we see at the bar; but customers suspected that their beer was getting weaker and they were right – so CAMRA came along (The Campaign for Real Ale) and now you can get a decent pint in most places. In the 70s, sales of cask beers began to rise as there was a growing appreciation for the traditional methods of brewing. It is a testament to the success of CAMRA that the "classic" keg bitters of the sixties are now extinct. (source: http://retrowrow.co.uk).

But it's happening with the coffee in the shape of the Americano – be warned my friends. And it's happening with Earl Grey Tea; Twinings have changed their recipe – why????

The photos on here? These are great actors and all enjoyed their cup of Joe!

Lee Marvin: did a naughty thing with coffee.

West Ealing Railway Station - action!!!

Okay I've only been back here for 5 minutes and I'm complaining about this and that – never the weather – but I can't help seeing what I see.

You see that picture above? That was taken at West Ealing Railway Station and, as you can see, on platform 4 - in America that would be called track 4.

Many people – many, many people get on the train from that platform to go on the 15 – 20 minute journey to Paddington Station, in Central London, and a lot of them, as I have said before, have dumped their cars in the streets nearby to the chagrin of the local people and some of those people, as I said the other day, may be from Scotland or Cornwall.

The multitude that regularly pass it probably never look at that sign but tourists look at it and wonder where Action Main Line Station is. They probably think that is the place where there is action and get their maps and Satellite Navigation Devices out and look for – in vain I have to say– Action Main Line Station.

I can imagine the amount of calls to the railway stations asking about the place and the irate robots at the other end of the line saying 'I'm sorry I didn't understand you; please repeat your question' and the caller shouting 'AGENT! AGENT!! AGENT!!!'

Then when a real person answers the phone the caller is told that there is no such place as Action Main Line Station from platform 4 or anywhere else, and that the caller must mean Acton Main Line Station and then the caller saying 'No! It definitely says Action.'

But the poor caller would be put in his place because he only set eyes upon it and the agent, who is probably in the Falkland Islands, never has.

The Falkland Islands, did I say? That's a figment of my imagination – Britain has been sending them a million a day since The Falklands War so why would they work in a phone bank?

Action Main Line Station doesn't exist; it is a figment in the mind of some sign writer with a sense of humour or a figment of my imagination.

Next time you are at West Ealing Railway Station and on platform 4, have a look at the sign for yourself and you will see it is as above – unless they change it.

Is the private motor car the worst ever invention?

First of all, the title of this post was in answer to a question put to the eminent historian A J P Taylor when asked what was the worst invention of the 20^th Century – without hesitation he said 'The private motor car' and if you think about it he is probably right.

I think in a way we would all agree with that as long as we could keep our own car and get rid of everybody else's.

Without the private motor car there would be no need for freeways/motorways which destroy all in their way; there is no aesthetic qualities to a motorway; they are purely functional and their one use is to get you in your private motor car somewhere quicker than it would take you to walk – or take a bus.

Without the private motor car we would all have to take a bus – or a plane - or even the heights of luxury on trains or ships and if you have read my posts of late you will know that I have recently travelled 5,000 miles by train and ship.

Of course the Queen wouldn't take a bus; she would have to travel in a horse drawn carriage together with the President.

Just look at the pictures on this page; at the top you have a row of Edwardian houses which are typical of the houses in the London suburbs; I am currently staying in one and the photo at the top of the page was taken from the door step.

These houses are very large inside with high ceilings, big rooms and small back gardens; I don't know how many square feet there are in them; in fact the owners probably don't know; in America they would know to the inch.

These streets were built before the popularity of the private motor car so no allowance has been made for it.

Look at this photo:

First of all let me tell my American friends that you can park on either side of the street in Britain; in America you have to park on the side of the street you drive on.

The street in the photo is full of parked cars; the street itself is about 150 yards long – maybe a little shorter – and there is no room for two cars to pass each other; so if you are half way along the street and the person coming the other way is half way along too, one of you has to reverse for about 60 yards.

Not much fun!!

I know you can see a few parking gaps but the photo was taken yesterday - Saturday; in the week there is hardly a space.

All this because of the private motor car.

So what can be done about it? Very little.

There are about 10 million cars in Great Britain (which is the island) with a population of people running around 60 million; that means that there are 50 million potential customers here to buy private motor cars – some of those 60 million are children, of course, but there are probably 2 million kids reaching the age of driving, 17, every year.

So the car ownership can only get worse.

People park in these streets, by the way, and go to the railway station around the corner to go into central London; some go to Heathrow Airport as the station around the corner gets you there in 20 minutes or so; sometimes people leave their cars for a few weeks whilst they go away on their holidays.

This could never happen in America as the streets have to be cleared for a two hour period every week for road sweeping – not here but it's about time.

Another thing is in America you are not allowed to take your car permanently to another state without registering it there; I think it's okay for a couple of weeks but when you move you have to have a state drivers' licence and vehicle tags for the state you are in.

It can't happen here as there is only one state. So somebody from the north of Scotland is quite entitled to park their car outside somebody's front door in Cornwall; as long as there's legal parking.

What they plan to do in Ealing, which is where the photos were taken, is introduce a permits only status around these streets but I can only say 'be careful what you wish for.'

If these streets wanted to accommodate the private motor car properly they should do a couple of things; firstly make them one way streets; this would put a stop to the 60 yard reverse for a start. It might encourage the boy racers to put their foot down, which would be a drawback.

Secondly: get rid of the front gardens at the front of the houses. They're tiny in any case, as you can see in this photo, which would widen the roads.Of course the local council would have to compensate the house owners – and where would they get that money from? Why from the council tax paid by house owners of course!!

Just a thought!!