When YOUR OWN NAME is not your own.

Facebook. It has it's good points but by Christ does it have its bad points.

I am lucky enough to be friends (and not just Facebook friends) with Wreckless Eric. You may or may not have heard of him, depending on your musical tastes but Wreckless Eric was one of the heroes of my youth. He was one of the STIFF record label stable that included Ian Dury & The Blockheads, Dave Edmonds, Lene Lovich, Nick Lowe, Dr. Feelgood, Elvis Costello, Madness, Kirsty MacColl..... I could go on.....

Wreckless Eric was to his parents and contemporaries, plain old Eric Goulden. To the rest of the world he is, and will always be Wreckless Eric, composer and performer of the great “Whole Wide World” (amongst others).

I've been a fan since those great days when we all purchased records instead of downloading them from a file-sharing site for free. Vinyl was king. I had 3 paper-rounds plus a Saturday job, so I was a great customer for Woolworths and Graduate Records (Dudley). I was a happy record shopper and absorbed every far-reaching strand that music reached out to. I had my phases as a Punk, A Rocker, a Mod, a New Romantic, everything you could name, I've been it. Good God. Thinking back. I must've looked a bit of a freak. Well. I'm sure I did, as much as I'm sure I still do now.

Wreckless Eric has been a friend since he played a gig at my pub, The Dolls House, in March 2010. I've seen him and his excellent wife and co-performer Amy Rigby a good few times, whenever they are in our area. They are FANTASTIC. No other way of describing their art.

Last gig of theirs that I went to, Eric said “Hi Kris” to me from the stage when he spotted me amongst the audience, right by the bar. I felt like jumping up into the air.

We keep in touch by Facebook. It's useful for this as you can let everyone know what you're up to and what is having effect on you.

He is following the progress of my Band, Pearl Necklace and has offered help whenever we feel the time is right to record. He is a friend now, as well as still, one of my heroes.

Today, after doing the tiny bit of work I had to do, I opened up the computer and went to Facebook. Checking up what's on peoples minds. Passing comments and passing on news. I saw a status from Eric Goulden which was complaining that the powers that be, within the Facebook organisation had altered his account details from WRECKLESS ERIC to his real name.

What right do these people have to decide for Wreckless Eric that he must be Eric Goulden.

I am appalled.

Firstly, do they not understand the concept of a stage name? Are they so shallow?

Are they also saying that I now must call myself Christopher John Tarplee rather than my preferred moniker of Kris Misery-Guts Tarplee which I feel better expresses my inner self. Surely it's up to me? You can call yourself whatever you want to and I'll call myself whatever I want to. Surely that's right. Surely.

I've recently put a “presence” on Facebook for my band, Pearl Necklace. The idea being that everyone who wants to know more about us can easily look us up and keep abreast of whatever we are doing or wherever and whenever we are gigging. What happens now then? How do we sort this one out? Pearl Necklace as a single person doesn't exist, obviously. Do I have to close the account? Or maybe the little Napoleon at Facebook would allow me to keep it, so long as I changed my name by deed to Pearl Necklace. Trouble is, Pearl is a girls name and I'm still a boy.

Oh shit. It has just become clear to me.

I'm gonna have to seriously consider my musicianship over my gender and whether I give up as the singer in a Rock and Roll Band and keep my testicles, or disappear for a few weeks, have my swingers lopped off and my sword de-porked. Call myself Pearl Necklace and carry on with the band.

I'm being silly, of course, but so are Facebook.

What's the point of it?

They accuse Wreckless Eric of being fake. Not a bit of it mate. Not a bit. He's one of the most REAL people you can meet. Fake, he most certainly is not.

If (and I ain't checked up either way) Cliff Richard had a Facebook page do you think he'd be forced to change it to Harry Webb? Would my Mom still love him if he was Harry? I don't suppose her devotion to him could ever be moved after all these years but would she have ever followed Harry Webb the same way she followed Cliff? Impossible to answer but food for thought. Imagine if she'd been so compulsive about Cliff when I had been born. Jumping Jesus. I might be Cliff Tarplee. Feck me with a stick.

Come on Facebook. Show some sympathy and some taste. Lets not be simpletons. Lets put a bit of perspective to work here.

Wreckless Eric Forever.

There's no choice in Healthy Choices

Have you ever had a bag of chips from a chippie that cooks in the good old fashioned way, using Beef Dripping to cook the chips, instead of the modernist Vegetable Oil?

If you haven't, buddy, you ain't lived.

In those golden times before every fecking thing you ate was poisonous or at least dangerous, food actually used to taste of something.

It's been a hell of a long time now, so most of you wouldn't remember, but thankfully, I'm quite old.

I can quite clearly remember how delicious chips were, cooked in Beef Dripping, plastered in salt and vinegar and wrapped up in newspaper. Even better were the Batter Bits (odd shaped left-over scatterings of batter that had been tipped into the fryer). Batter Bits were often just given away free with your chips as a bit of a treat.

Eating a bag of chips in the street was fantastic. You tore away at one end of the wrapped up chips. I wonder why it was always known as a “bag” of chips when no-one ever used a bag back then, but nonetheless, a bag of chips it was and is.

School dinner-breaks on cold winter days were actually a delight thanks to eating a lovely bag of chips from one end of the bag. Total concentration. As you and your mates wandered back towards school, blowing on your fingers as they absorbed the heat from the chips. Steam rose from the opening, filling your nose and making your other senses useless as your single-minded determination to get every last delicious morsel out of the bag took priority over everything else.

Those precious days are gone, it seems, forever, and not just for me but for everyone. We live in a society and time where you're not allowed to eat things with any real taste to them. This is of course because of fats and cholesterols and healthy lifestyles and such nonsense.

How long before your local chippie is barred from offering you salt on your chips?

Things have gone too far to be redeemed now and I may as well acknowledge that I've gotta give up this, that, and the bloody other, whether I want to or not. The things that make me mortal and who I am are the things that I enjoy and have enjoyed. Eventually, we will all be identical and live without salt, sugar, milk, butter, chocolate, eggs, chocolate eggs, alcohol and sex. It's a future we allow to creep upon us, like a slowly moving shadow, crossing the land. A future that I simply don't care for but must accept.

We had to say goodbye to another outpost of the past today. A place of deliciousness which has succumbed to the inevitable.

My wife, Jo and I were out shopping and having not yet eaten for the day, decided on the age old love of Traditional Fish & Chips.

There is (or rather was) a great little chippie in the High Street of Blackheath, Rowley Regis called, rather smashingly, “Batter-Bits”. The name itself won me over instantly with its tug-of-love to the past. What was amazing about “Batter-Bits” was that they cooked their chips in Beef Dripping. Jo and her Mom used “Batter-Bits” every week as part of their shopping ritual together, often bringing back a bag of Fish & Chips for me.

It was always delicious. Beautiful chips. Beautiful Fish in exquisite batter. Fabulous Peas and fabulous gravy.

So we popped in there today for a sit-down meal of Fish & Chips, Peas & Gravy. I was so looking forward to it that I could hardly wait to park the car.

We walked into the shop expecting to see Chris & Gemma, the girls who work there but instead received a greeting from the new owner, an Asian gentleman with a neatly sculptured goaty & tosh.

“Good afternoon Sir, Madame, can I help you?......”

Jo and I looked at each other. “Where's the.... er ….. lady?” Jo enquired.

“Lady is here!” said he. “She in back” and he pointed toward the rear of the property to where the back kitchen area was.

We looked but could not see either of the girls we knew, only other young Asian men wandering about trying to look like they knew what they were doing.

Under New Ownership read the sign. Hmmm.

“Do you still fry in Dripping?”

“No Mate.... Dripping no good. Not healthy. You need look after yourself Ennit? Healthy Lifestyle Choices Ennit”

“Hmmm.... Mate. Listen” I offered a little advice of my own. “I made a Lifestyle Choice when I came into this shop with the intention of eating Fish & Chips....... Ennit”.

I didn't continue with the discussion as, as much as I enjoy preaching, I know instinctively when my congregation ain't listening.

We ordered our meal regardless of the expected disappointment, hoping against hope that it would be what we wanted.

It wasn't.

The chips, although the equal to any chips you can buy elsewhere in Blackheath, were just that.

Just the Equal. No longer The Best.

And there ain't no use in complaining because I can't back up my argument with data and statistics. I have the whole horrid pansy-mamby-pamby brigade against me and only my opinion for me.

I used that Chippie because I loved the REAL TASTE that touched my soul and reminded me of my childhood.

I made a lifestyle choice about cholesterol before I entered a fecking Fish & Chip shop. I don't want this or any other healthy choice. I want to be able to make a taste choice. There are 3 other Chip Shops in Blackheath, all already cooking in Vegetable Oil. I already had that choice and had made my choice.

So. I will submit. I will give up another of those things that please me because someone, somewhere has decided that I need a healthy choice which in the end means I have no choice at all.

Goodbye “Batter-Bits”. As a great man once wrote, “....... goodbye...... and thanks for all the fish.