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Eddy Says
Eddy Says: I remember when all this was fields
By Eddy Temple-Morris | Published on Monday 30 November 2009
I’ve at last found somewhere to live. Unfortunately, it wasn’t my first choice, and it’s, erm, on the small side, so I’ve put my last 20 years of possessions (that are over the size of a vinyl album) on eBay. Still, on the day I have to leave my current abode, I do now have somewhere to go.
As you read this, that will be yesterday, and it will have been a day from hell. I’ll have got maybe three hours sleep at The Big Reunion, in between the sound of drunk and munted clubbers, thunder flashes and sky rockets, followed by the most boring four hour drive in the UK. Oh, and a house move. Actually, by the time you read this I’ll probably be in traction, or in a padded cell, crouched in the corner and rocking to and fro.
I’m moving to south London for the first time, having lived west, east-ish, and north for the past year and a half. I’ve discovered that Clapham High Street is the best street in London for food, in that every place in the world, more or less, is represented there. Belgo, Nandos, Bodeans, Strada, all your bog standard Indian, Thai, Chinese, plus a few randoms, Mexican, a couple of really good Spanish places, Polish, a great Aussie breakfast place that makes its own delicious bread, and the best butcher I’ve ever been into in my life.
Ironically, despite them being butchers, you’d do great at this place as a veggie, because they stock so many interesting ingredients. They’re called Moen & Sons. I was blown away by the quality of stuff in there, and how reasonable it was. I bought wild boar sausages, so Tone (my Asterix-loving little boy) could see what all Obelix’s fuss was about. By the way, Tone said they were the greatest thing he’s ever tasted. I made homemade baked beans to go with them and, although I say so myself, they were extraordinarily good. I should start a recipe blog…
Most importantly re the move, I have found a great school for the aforementioned Tone. I asked him about the move before I made the decision, to see if he’d be OK with it. He just said: “Please can I go to a school that teaches history properly, Dad?”
I know what he meant. Sadly the best school in our current neighbourhood is a Church Of England school. It’s very good, considering it’s in one of the pikiest neighbourhoods in London (at another local school I’d seen two mothers fighting by the gates, calling each other every flowery Anglo-Saxon/Afro-Caribbean expletive in the book while attempting to claw each other’s eyes out), but they have an agenda and they are not afraid to push it.
At Tone’s current school, the don’t teach ‘History’ per-se, they teach ‘RE/History’. Now, I’ve no problem with my or any other child learning some charming stories from religious tomes, but what this school did was teach these stories – and let’s not forget they are just stories – as history. They were teaching The Good Samaritan, for example, as HISTORY.
I was flabbergasted. I mean, you expect it somewhere as stupid as middle America, but in this day and age, in a place as intelligent as central London, to teach stories from a spurious book written HUNDREDS of years after an alleged event, do me a favour! They actually have the audacity to teach that Darwin was wrong and that the first two people on earth were Adam and Eve! We’re talking about Holloway in 2009, not Canterbury in the fucking dark ages here!
Oh dear, I seem to be ranting again! Somebody tweeted me the other day to say “I love your rants in the Update, but you used to be so mild mannered, what happened?” This made me laugh. Don’t worry friends and colleagues, I am still the same polite, approachable and mild mannered person I always was. I guess columns like this lead to people like me venting the rage they never show in the physical world.
Let’s get back to The Big Reunion shall we? We’re half way through the latest edition of this great festival as I write this.
Friday night I felt old, really old. It’s not unusual for me to be wading through a sea of people young enough to be my children, but watching Tinchy Styder really made me feel my age. He was on stage, doing his thing, his DJ looked bored witless, but the crowd of mostly teenagers were lapping it up like a lorryload of kittens in a cream factory after a major explosion.
He sells millions of singles, and next to no albums. It’s weird how record sales have now split into two completely different markets. Tinchy shames all in singles, but gets embarrassed by Florence And The Machine when it comes to albums.
Somebody texted the show when I played his single that samples Olive’s ‘Your Not Alone’. They said: “Thanks Eddy, I didn’t know what grime was, but cheers, now I know it’s somebody talking shit over someone else’s track”. Simple, nail-on-the-head analysis, I thought. Then at the Remix stage at The Big Reunion there was a bunch of us backstage with our jaws floored at how utterly shit we thought it was, but then it occurred to me that we were, all of us, old enough to be his father. We were sounding like our parents did when punk came along.
Oh God. Somebody shoot me now, please.
X eddy
Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.
