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Smokin’ and Chokin’: Eighteen Days in Europe
Smokin’
London pubs
Chokin’
London pubs
Smokin’
The Arctic Monkeys album
Chokin’
The Arctic Monkeys album cover
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Record buyers who put teenage working class poetry back on top of the charts
Chokin’
Cynics who can’t believe you can be 19, working class, and a poet
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Talking of teenage working class poetry, All Mod Cons gets the special reissue treatment
Chokin’
Snap gets the cash-in treatment
Smokin’
A memoir by David Lines called My Life With Paul Weller
Chokin’
A biography on The Jam by Dennis Munday
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So many books on The Jam
Chokin’
I haven’t written mine. Yet.
Smokin’
The cover story on All Mod Cons in the new Uncut reminds me of my introduction to the music business
Chokin’
Did Paul really once look that young?
Smokin’
Sitting in the directors box at Crystal Palace
Chokin’
The lack of atmosphere compared to the Holmsdale
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The free half-time buffet in the Director’s Lounge
Chokin’
Sharing it with Sven Goran Eriksson
Smokin’
Steve Coppell is back at Selhurst Park
Chokin’
With the visiting team, who are top of the league
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I finally get to watch Celebrity Big Brother
Chokin’
It’s utter and total crap
Smokin’
Ditto Little Britain
Chokin’
Ditto
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British real ale
Chokin’
I’ve gone off the taste of it
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Good wine stores in England
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Only had time to step inside the one.
Smokin’
Running on the Westwood in Beverley
Chokin’
Running past a tree where two 19-year old lovers recently died in a car crash, seeing all the freshly laid flowers from the previous day’s funeral, and remembering how precarious is our daily existence
Smokin’
Tea Tree Bay in Beverley: Animal, Fenchurch and Bench, along with the requisite US/Aussie surf and skate clothes
Chokin’
Not enough time and money to buy the shop
Smokin’
My Beverley-born mate Pascal Wyse has a music column in The Guardian
Chokin’
He calls it Jamming
Smokin’
Beverley has 500-year old pubs
Chokin’
I didn’t have a pint there
The Monks Walk, Nellys, The Sun and about 200 other pubs all had to do without my custom this January. No douby they’lll survive.
Smokin’
iJamming! Pub nights out
Chokin’
The pubs we hold them in
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Good wine in English pubs
Chokin’
The price of it
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Good food in English pubs
Chokin’
The price of it
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Attractive foreign bartenders at Horse in Lambeth North
Chokin’
Because they don’t speak English, a request for a white Muscadet results in a red Côtes du Rhône
Smokin’
Seeing so many old friends after so long
Chokin’
Not for long enough
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All night sessions in recording studios
Chokin’
Bands that chain-smoke in them
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The modern-day Brill Building that is the Fortress
Chokin’
Some bands live there. That is, they live in their rehearsal rooms.
Smokin’
The Elephant and Castle is being torn down
Chokin’
But not yet
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Free CDs with monthly magazines
Chokin’
Free monthly magazines with your CD
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Running, like Jeni suggested, past Tower Bridge and out to the new London skyline around Docklands
Chokin’
I didn’t bring the camera
Smokin’
The bottle of 1982 Pol Roger Extra Brut that was still drinkable after almost 20 years in my hosts’ cupboard
Chokin’
It would still have been better ten years ago
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Bringin a bottle of Ridge Lytton Springs – a proper bottle of American wine – as a gift for my hosts
Chokin’
They don’t drink wine
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They open it late on a Tuesday night, when one glass will certainly suffice
Chokin’
Only then do I find out that they don’t drink wine
Smokin’
Camden Town by day: a tourist’s picture postcard of a colorful rag-trade London
Chokin’
Petty drug dealers on every corner – and a gang murder by the tube station the day after I visit
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Most of my friends have kids
Chokin’
Half of them no longer live with the other parent of their kids
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Sunny January days on the English south coast
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…That pass too quick
“Only one thing ruins this view,” says my mate Pagey. “What’s that?” I reply. “France?”
Smokin’
Friends having me round for dinner
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We’re all too busy raising families to stay up all night
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My best mate is not too busy raising a family to stay up all night
Chokin’
He just invites his kids to stay up all night with him
Smokin’
Singing karaoke in Bexhill
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Choosing ‘Come On Eileen’
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British trains: every single one of them on this trip ran on time – including all three that got me from Bexhill to Herne Hill on a Sunday evening
Chokin’
The London Underground: A crap shoot even at the best of times
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The Eurostar to Paris
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That anyone would still fly there
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A hotel room near the Eiffel Tower
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Haven’t been up it since I was 8
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Getting taken out for a lovely dinner in Paris by the Seine
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The French idea of a vegetarian entrée
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The Parisian creperie stall holder who practiced his English on me
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He preferred it to me practicing my French on him
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No-smoking hotel rooms
Chokin’
The French obviously smoke in them anyway
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Going to Berlin
Chokin’
Getting up at 6.30am French time (5:30 English time) to do so
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Smokin’
The newly mature me is checked in exactly one hour before my Paris-Berlin flight
Chokin’
The flight is delayed almost two hours due to fog
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Berlin is still a great city
Chokin’
I never got there when it was REALLY a great city
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Berlin prices
Chokin’
It costs money to get there
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Making instant new friends in Berlin through the internet in New York
Chokin’
The smoke at White Trash: the Brits don’t have a lock on lung cancer
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Berlin is a great city to walk around in
Chokin’
But not when the winter wind is blowing straight in from Moscow
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Stumbling on a nice little wine bar, Lilli Divine, in the heart of Berlin
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The only other customer in there is chain smoking
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Thinking that the wine bar’s price per bottle is an acceptable price per glass
Chokin’
The wine I’m served is crap anyway
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The wine bar owner plays New Order, PiL and ESG off his iTunes while I’m there
Chokin’
I don’t have anyone to hang out with and share a bottle for the evening.
Smokin’
The ArtOtel on Wallstrasse: 79Euros gets a room twice the size and twice the cool as any of Ian Schrager’s poncy New York fashion-conscious pads
Chokin’
In-room porn not included in the price
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Berlin traffic, what little there is of it
Chokin’
Paris traffic, far too much of it
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Seeing Corin from Zeitgeist in Berlin, after 20+ years
Chokin’
It’s 3am before we know it and I have to be up at 8.
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The Euro currency
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The Brits still resist
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Brits cutting back on cheap air travel to reduce carbon emissions
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British-based oil giants Shell announces an all-time record profit for a British company: approximately $1.5 million an hour last year
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Football on the telly all the time
Chokin’
Players who think having their salary doubled to £28,000 a week is grounds for a transfer request
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London Traffic – ever since the congestion charge it’s been moving freely
Chokin’
London Traffic – the Jam song is now less a protest than a vision
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Managing to avoid benders in London: too much work on
Chokin’
Having to avoid benders in London: too much work on
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The Specials are reforming
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Simon Jordan will surely take the credit
Location for the likely Specials reunion?
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London Taxis: were they always this easy to catch?
Chokin’
The cost of ‘em. No wonder I never used to catch ‘em.
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London Taxi Drivers: Some stereotypes just never change
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I even ‘ad one in the front of me cab ‘oo got straight onto ‘ow “‘anging’s the solution.’”
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The bulk of the modern British newspaper
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There’s so much copy in there some of it’s bound to be crap
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Ditto the British music press
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Ditto
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Excellent meals at Furnace and Home in Hoxton, the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, Wagamamma in Camden, Quai Ouest in Paris and that nice little luncheonette in Berlin
Chokin’
Eating out costs money, you know
Believe it or not, this vista houses one of the better new restaurants in Britain
Smokin’
The British are all ski fiends; I don’t feel so alien talking about my addiction any more
Chokin’
Missing two weekends of my ski course at home
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The cost of Skype calls back to America
Chokin’
The cost of mobile-to-mobile calls across London
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Texting: keeps those mobile-to-mobile charges down
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Text dating: what’s wrong with a phone call now and then?
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Hosts putting you up – and putting up with you – for two weeks
Chokin’
Waking up your hosts with loud late-night phone calls back to America
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Getting regular pictures of the kids sent over by e-mail
Chokin’
Not being with them in person
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My mum’s gone on holiday somewhere warm this winter
Chokin’
…To Jordan in the midst of Muslim anti-Western hysteria
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The Gatwick Express – a 30 minute journey from Victoria, every 15 minutes
Chokin’
The day I use it, they announce they’re going to cut back the service.
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The array of duty-free shops at Gatwick
Chokin’
Who ever has the time to shop in them?
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The British Smoking Ban in Pubs
Chokin’
It’s not enacted yet