Smokin’
London pubs
Chokin’
London pubs

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The Arctic Monkeys album
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The Arctic Monkeys album cover

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Record buyers who put teenage working class poetry back on top of the charts
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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
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Snap gets the cash-in treatment

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A memoir by David Lines called My Life With Paul Weller
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A biography on The Jam by Dennis Munday

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So many books on The Jam
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I haven’t written mine. Yet.

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The cover story on All Mod Cons in the new Uncut reminds me of my introduction to the music business
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Did Paul really once look that young?

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Sitting in the directors box at Crystal Palace
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The lack of atmosphere compared to the Holmsdale

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The free half-time buffet in the Director’s Lounge
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Sharing it with Sven Goran Eriksson

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Steve Coppell is back at Selhurst Park
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With the visiting team, who are top of the league

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I finally get to watch Celebrity Big Brother
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It’s utter and total crap

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Ditto Little Britain
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Ditto

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British real ale
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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.

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Running on the Westwood in Beverley
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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

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Tea Tree Bay in Beverley: Animal, Fenchurch and Bench, along with the requisite US/Aussie surf and skate clothes
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Not enough time and money to buy the shop

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My Beverley-born mate Pascal Wyse has a music column in The Guardian
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He calls it Jamming

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Beverley has 500-year old pubs
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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.

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iJamming! Pub nights out
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The pubs we hold them in

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Good wine in English pubs
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The price of it

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Good food in English pubs
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The price of it

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Attractive foreign bartenders at Horse in Lambeth North
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Because they don’t speak English, a request for a white Muscadet results in a red Côtes du Rhône

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Seeing so many old friends after so long
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Not for long enough

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All night sessions in recording studios
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Bands that chain-smoke in them

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The modern-day Brill Building that is the Fortress
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Some bands live there. That is, they live in their rehearsal rooms.

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The Elephant and Castle is being torn down
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But not yet

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Free CDs with monthly magazines
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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
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I didn’t bring the camera

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The bottle of 1982 Pol Roger Extra Brut that was still drinkable after almost 20 years in my hosts’ cupboard
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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
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They don’t drink wine

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They open it late on a Tuesday night, when one glass will certainly suffice
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Only then do I find out that they don’t drink wine

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Camden Town by day: a tourist’s picture postcard of a colorful rag-trade London
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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
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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?”

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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
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He just invites his kids to stay up all night with him

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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
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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
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The French obviously smoke in them anyway

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Going to Berlin
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Getting up at 6.30am French time (5:30 English time) to do so

Bonjour Paris. Auf wiedersehn Berlin.

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The newly mature me is checked in exactly one hour before my Paris-Berlin flight
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The flight is delayed almost two hours due to fog

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Berlin is still a great city
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I never got there when it was REALLY a great city

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Berlin prices
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It costs money to get there

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Making instant new friends in Berlin through the internet in New York
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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
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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
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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
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I don’t have anyone to hang out with and share a bottle for the evening.

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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
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In-room porn not included in the price

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Berlin traffic, what little there is of it
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Paris traffic, far too much of it

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Seeing Corin from Zeitgeist in Berlin, after 20+ years
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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
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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
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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
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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?
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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
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Eating out costs money, you know

Believe it or not, this vista houses one of the better new restaurants in Britain

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The British are all ski fiends; I don’t feel so alien talking about my addiction any more
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Missing two weekends of my ski course at home

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The cost of Skype calls back to America
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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
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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
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Not being with them in person

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My mum’s gone on holiday somewhere warm this winter
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…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
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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
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Who ever has the time to shop in them?

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The British Smoking Ban in Pubs
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It’s not enacted yet