George Harrison/Nigella Lawson...not a lot to choose really.

July 12^th – The only constant is change; often for the better sometimes for the worse depending on which side of the change you’re on (that reads very sexist, but you know what I mean) and also on whether you embrace that change.

It’s said there’s nothing new under the sun just adjustments that are made through time and knowledge, although I suspect Cro-Magnon Man’s ability to craft a really good chilli-dog with mayo and a side of double-cooked fries was somewhat lacking. That aside, the adjustments to what’s gone before were brought into stark relief the other day…well, they were to me but I’ve got far too much time on my hands, so.

What’s your motor-response to violence when it happens near you? Mine is a deep feeling of;

‘Oh, shit, why did it have to happen by me; now I’ve got to do something’

in the pit of my tummy. This feeling is compounded if there’s no-one else in view who can at least gather up your severed limbs and stack them on the ambulance gurney should things get really sticky. Still, I try and defuse the situation as best as I can whilst also trying to avoid losing too much in the way of dignity, testicles or blood…that sounds like I have testicles to spare; not so and I’m very attached to them.

That sort of reaction, I guess, should have been the front-line help that Nigella Lawson could/should have expected in her recent tiff with her husband, Charles Saatchi. What she got, in fact, was snapped by paparazzi and passers-by, the mobile ’phone being such a useful gadget with which to capture unusual events… What? It’s a phone? For making telephone calls? What, to friends…or in a what? In an emergency, oh, really…? Wow…I just thought…

This sort of sub-human response found its nadir in the fun pastime of happy-slapping; slapping it was, but, happy? Like change, it depends on whether you’re the slapper or the slappee. Neither works for me, does that work for you; neither? That highly amusing social change was probably brought about, in turn, by the original you’ve been Tango-ed ad which, after its original release and the ad-men’s realisation, was changed from a slap to a kiss; too late, Tango-ad-man.

‘Mazin’ innit. Like that skit in Robin Williams’ stand-up routine, where he says that, when you have a four-year-old strapped in the back seat of your car as you drive to drop him or her off at your mother-in-law’s house for sitting, you can talk all of the journey about society and kindness and good things, but you only have to be forced to jam on the brakes to avoid someone’s bad driving and involuntarily shout out;

“Fuck it, you ass-wipe, what th’ fuck you playin’ at?”

and mark me, that’s the only thing they’ll remember from the journey and the first thing they’ll come out with as the door opens. Well that’s obviously what stuck from the few, infrequent Tango-slap ads that were broadcast; all the ones that followed, the kissing ones? Nada.

So it was that the News of the Screws had the mother load on the story of Ms. Lawson’s contretemps, well supplied by snaps taken (and no doubt sold) by passer’s by…such a support ‘cos, of course, she can have access to them at the divorce proceedings and so be able to produce them as evidence of just what an arse her hubby was and then review them over cake and coffee with her grandchildren. You’’d think though that this is a modern phenomena; not so, I’m afraid.

When George Harrison crashed his Jag in London on this day in 1964 one would have expected folk to come to his aid, even though his injuries were minor; well, sorry to disappoint. What they actually did was gather up shattered pieces of his car as souvenirs, as they were no doubt given the benefit of foresight that foretold of the coming of e-Bay and Flog It! Both of which swiftly followed the invention of the mobile ’phone and camera… Only change is constant.