Jeffing Marvellous on indefinite hiatus
First of all, sorry for not updating this blog for such a long time. The last few months have been fairly hectic and all of my time is now devoted to running my new sports translation business.
Sadly, this will be the last post on Jeffing Marvellous for the foreseeable future. I hope you have enjoyed reading it and that some of the posts will continue to be useful, especially for those thinking of entering the Guild of Motoring Writers Sir William Lyons Award.
My new site is http://www.firsttouchtranslations.com – I have a blog there and I regularly update it with pieces related to sports and translation. Check it out – you might find some interesting stuff.
Thanks again and all the best,
Joe
What’s in a name? A fair bit, if your name is Hulk
Brazil is a hot country full of warm-hearted, touchy-feely people who embrace life and are supernaturally gifted at kicking ball-shaped things around. So the national stereotype goes. It’s understandable, then, why Brazilians might enjoy giving out affectionate little nicknames – especially to their footballing heroes.
Samba boys: Ricky and Little Ron
The names Kaká and Ronaldinho conjure images of flair, flamboyance, skill and excitement in the minds of most foreign fans. They also roll off the tongue a bit better than Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite or Ronaldo de Assis Moreira. Quite whether or not an English player named ‘Ricky ‘or ‘Little Ronald’ would inspire the same level of enthusiasm is debatable.
Anyway, that’s the way Brazilian footballers have always been and frankly, when you’re as good as they are, you can pretty much call yourself whatever you like. Right? Well, not exactly.
My opinion on the subject has changed quite dramatically over the last couple of years with the rise of a young Brazilian talent in the Portuguese Liga Sagres. On his birth certificate, he is Givanildo Vieira de Souza. On the back of his FC Porto shirt, though, is a name so ridiculous that even his Brazilian passport would wince.
His name… is Hulk. Hulk, like the ‘incredible’ Marvel superhero (and not like Hulk Hogan, as I had previously hoped).
This isn’t simply an affectionate moniker given to him by Brazilian fans alone – it’s what we all have to call him. I feel like an idiot just saying the name in my head. If he makes it into Brazil’s 2010 World Cup squad and plays well, that’s the name commentators will be yelling out for the entire month of June. Hulk will be all over the back pages, and just imagine if fellow striker Grafite were to be named in the squad as well. The potential puns are too terrifying to bear thinking about.
Even if he does bear an uncanny resemblance to a big green humanoid monster, Hulk really has taken things too far. The Brazilians’ exotic names have always added to the national team’s magical aura, but this time the line dividing glamourous and gaudy has been breached. And it’s got me thinking: if Brazilian players can print whatever the hell they want on their shirts, why shouldn’t the England squad be allowed do the same?
Who knows, maybe if our players started using nicknames, they too would take on an enigmatic air of mystery and invincibility. It might even help them win the World Cup. So, here is the squad I hope to see take to the field against the USA on 12 June, complete with the names I want to see printed on the shirts:
Calamity James (Portsmouth)
Snoop (Liverpool) – JT (Chelsea) – Ferdz (Man Utd) – Cashley (Chelsea)
Wally (Arsenal) – Fat Frank (Chelsea) – Stevie G (Liverpool) – I’m Joey Cole!!! (Chelsea)
Shrek (Man United) – Donkey (Aston Villa)
If you are looking at this line-up and thinking “there’s no natural finisher in that team” or “who’s going to provide service for the front men?”, fear not; Midget Gem and Golden Balls are on the bench. Whether or not Postman Pat decides to use them is another matter entirely…
Sir William Lyons Award 2009: Article 2
Between moving out and in, overseas and all over the place, I found some time in the summer to work on an entry for the Sir William Lyons award – a writing competition run by Jaguar and the Guild of Motoring Writers.
Outside the Royal Automobile Club clubhouse
A few weeks after I’d sent off the articles, I got a call from the Guild’s secretary to say I’d been shortlisted for the prize. Only three others had been selected and we all had to go for interviews at the Royal Automobile Club clubhouse in Pall Mall.
I was grilled by a panel of four industry experts: Tim Pollard (associate editor of Car Magazine online), Paul Horrell (writes for Top Gear), Chris Wright (chairman of the Guild) and a Jaguar representative whose name I was too nervous to remember.
The judges really liked my work, but felt the other candidates had more hands-on experience and were thus more deserving of the prize. I’ve never had any formal training and I have no professional journalistic experience, so just making it to the final interview was a prize in itself.
For the main article, I chose to answer the question “Does the UK need to have a motor industry?” It’s a subject I could write about for far longer than anyone would care to read; my dad’s 30-year career in the motor industry began thanks to an apprenticeship at a local garage, and Citroën UK continue to keep a roof over my family’s head to this day. Things might have been very different if it hadn’t been for the motor industry. I hope you enjoy reading it.
Does the UK need to have a motor industry?
When PSA Peugeot-Citroën slammed and bolted the doors to its Ryton factory in April 2006, the heart and soul of the local working community was torn out and trampled all over. With the collapse of MG Rover at Longbridge still raw in the memory, the West Midlands’ identity as a hub of the UK motor industry lay battered and bruised on the ground as 2,300 ex-employees watched on, reeling from what they saw as an act of bitter betrayal.
The true extent of the damage caused by the closures, however, is almost unfathomable. A thriving car industry is a prolific source of employment, but each time a plant closes or a manufacturer goes bust, the shockwaves reach so far beyond the factory floor that few in the local area are left untouched. Third-party parts suppliers, sandwich delivery boys, even the small company that provides hand towels for the washrooms – all of them suddenly find their livelihoods under a very real threat.
For future generations of school leavers in particular, this type of chain reaction can have a seismic impact. The demand for mechanical apprenticeships outstrips the supply at the best of times, but the absence of a strong local car industry makes finding hands-on training a near impossible task. Teenagers with dreams of working in the motor industry – or simply those who are not cut out for higher education – suddenly find a dirty great brick wall where the first step of their career path should have been.
Today, as the soaring number of young people NEET (not in employment, education or training) fuels fears of a new “lost generation”, the UK needs its much-maligned motor industry to step out of the shadows, with many believing it could play a key role in the nation’s post-recession recovery. The government’s new scrappage scheme appears to have given the weary industry a much-needed shot in the arm, but this is only a short-term boost, one that ultimately counts for nothing if the talents of budding mechanics, designers and engineers are left to go by the wayside.
If that is to be avoided, vocational education and careers need to shake off their unspoken – but very real – social stigma. In my high school (a state comprehensive) an enormous amount of support and guidance was offered to those aiming for university places, but the alternatives were scarcely hinted at. There was a real sense that pupils more suited to work-based learning were looked down upon, cast aside and left to figure things out for themselves. This, surely, cannot be right.
A recent spell living and working in France gave me a glimpse of how different things can be. Instead of bearing the unflattering tag of an escape route for dropouts and no-hopers, vocational training courses and careers in the motor industry are highly valued. Underground stations, train carriages and local newspapers are all adorned with colorful adverts encouraging teenagers to “earn as they learn”, by studying for work-based qualifications such as the BAC Pro and BTS.
During this time across the Channel, I was struck by the positive attitude held towards apprenticeships and an overall greater willingness to back the potential of young people. Working as an English teacher in Lyon, I regularly gave classes to a group of Bosch employees from a large manufacturing plant in the underprivileged suburb of Venissieux. Before the global financial crisis took hold, the factory was producing tens of thousands of parts per day and was a major supplier to, among others, PSA Peugeot-Citroën. As European car sales began to plummet towards the end of 2008, so did the demand for Bosch’s services and within months, production at the plant was at a virtual standstill.
To fill the void created by three-day working weeks, a number of employees decided to make use of their individual training entitlement (known in France as DIF) by taking English lessons. I learned that the vast majority of them had joined Bosch as teenage apprentices and have been there ever since, going on to train as turners, mechanics, machinists, even computer technicians. Many of them were quite adamant that if Bosch had not given them a chance, they would have struggled to find an opportunity to flourish elsewhere.
In effect, the motor industry opened a door for them that might otherwise have been shut firmly in their faces. The workers I came into contact with seemed well aware of this fact, and showed an infectious sense of pride in their daily work. The idea that parts made by their own hands are fitted to Peugeot and Citroën cars – universally recognised as icons of France’s culture and national identity – is something that clearly gives them a great feeling of satisfaction.
France is often criticised for overprotecting its cultural industries and is far from perfect when it comes to managing its motor industry. Nonetheless, the UK could certainly do worse than take a few leaves out of the French ‘livre’; after all, encouraging teenagers to train for highly-skilled careers and to work with a sense of esteem and purpose can only be a positive move. The UK government’s new Diploma qualification is an encouraging sign that attitudes at home may be changing, but the system is very much in its infancy and its success in the long-term remains to be seen.
The UK’s automotive industry has been wreathed in gloom for several years now, and it would be very easy to write it off as a lost cause. Yet, all the time cars continue to roll off production lines around the country, we should be doing everything possible to squeeze every last drop of potential out of the industry and ensure that it continues to be fed with bright young talent long into the future. In a time of chronic financial uncertainty, with youth unemployment at record levels and with a nation in search of a renewed sense of pride and identity, the UK’s need for a motor industry has never, ever been greater.
Sir William Lyons Award 2009: Article 1
This is the first article I wrote for the 2009 Sir William Lyons award (more about this in the next blog entry). The brief was to construct an overview of a topical / legendary figure in the world of motorsport, and in my opinion there are few more topical or legendary than the man I chose to write about.
What flies around light bulbs at 100 miles per hour?
I started inflicting this joke on my playground pals long before I really knew who Stirling Moss was. When asked by these befuddled buddies to explain the punch line, I would proudly proclaim that Moss was the greatest racing driver of all time. Clearly, they would say, I had never heard of Nigel Mansell.
Moss at the 2009 Goodwood Revival
In some ways they were right. After all, Mansell’s record of thirty-one race victories in Formula One remains to this day unmatched by any other British driver. Yet, there is so much more to Moss than F1 and podium finishes that comparisons with Mansell – or any other driver for that matter – simply don’t cut it. And besides, my dad told me the joke, so there.
The first time I saw Mr Goodwood in the flesh, the occasion couldn’t have been more fitting. Leaning against a bale of hay just yards from the track, I watched as he drifted his beloved Maserati 250F through the famously fast chicane at the inaugural Goodwood Revival meeting in September 1998. To see the then 68-year-old Moss racing flat-out, on the same track that had brought him so much success but which so nearly took his life in a career-ending crash thirty-six years earlier, was truly spine-tingling.
It was also a living, roaring testament to the man’s class and strength of character. The event’s organisers had made painstaking efforts to ensure the Goodwood circuit would be every bit as demanding as in its heyday, but Moss’s effortless style made it look like he was driving a life-sized slot car.
Incredibly, Moss never won the Formula One title in an otherwise glorious career that saw him win more than two hundred races across all formulae. Indeed, it was a well-documented show of characteristic sportsmanship that ultimately cost him and his Vanwall team the World Championship in 1958. In such a relentlessly competitive sport, Moss seemed to prefer losing with honour over winning without, a trait which goes some way to explaining the great regard in which he is still held today, culminating in a knighthood back in 2000.
The 2009 Revival meeting coincides with Sir Stirling’s eightieth birthday and will see a collection of eighty of the ninety-six cars he raced during his career, specially assembled to mark the occasion. It is sure to make for a wonderful tribute, but it leaves me wondering: will we be honouring any of our current British motor racing stars in quite the same way, fifty years from now?
With Formula One in its present state, so dominated by money and team politics that even Moss himself no longer considers it a sport, it is hard to imagine the likes of Lewis Hamilton or Jenson Button being remembered with quite so much fondness. We might find ourselves making jokes about them in the future, but it is perhaps unlikely the punch lines will have anything to do with extreme speed. Or for that matter, moths.
Digger, listener, Blackburn boss?
I finally know the answer to a question that has been troubling me for quite some time. About a decade, actually. Not a day has passed in that period without a moment when I suddenly find myself staring blankly into space, turning this particular conundrum over and over in my head. I am not talking about the meaning of life, the solution to world hunger or how to combat global warming. Lord no. This is way more important.
At face value, the issue I’ve been wrestling with for all these years isn’t all that complicated. Yet due to its extremely subjective nature, it’s a question that requires a great deal of measured consideration and a thorough investigation of all possible solutions.
Indeed, I’m sure that at various stages in your life, you too will have stopped to ask yourself: What on earth is the name of the cartoon animal that Sam ‘Big Sam’ Allardyce reminds me of?
Well, I can now put you out of your misery. The big ‘n cuddly Blackburn Rovers manager is in fact the human incarnation of General Woundwort, the equally enormous but slightly less cuddly leader of the Efrafan rabbits in Watership Down.
Big Sam and the General
And the similarities don’t end at the pair’s startling physical resemblance, no sir. Woundwort is a “hard and brutally efficient” animal, a “tyrannical” leader with a ruthless survival instinct. Allardyce is famed for his strong and direct style of management, imposing punishing fitness regimes on his players and encouraging a physically uncompromising style of football. Rabbits, apparently, can also be bratty, willful, destructive and vengeful – which happily means that I can extend the comparison to one or two of the players he’s worked with during his career.
This revelation would also explain why, prior to his appointment as manager, Allardyce insisted on having a complex network of tunnels built under Blackburn’s Ewood Park stadium. It could also be the reason behind the current spate of twisted knees and players randomly tripping over at the club’s training ground {{citations needed}}.
By the way, if you’re in need of a laugh (or fifty) have a look at this website. It’s an online ‘lookalikes agency’ and as far as I can tell, they’re all supposed to be serious. My personal favourites are the first ‘Kelly Holmes’, ‘Peter Crouch’ and all three ‘Wayne Rooneys’. I’ve noticed there’s a bit of a gap in the market for a convincing ‘Linford Christie’ – time to dust off the old CV methinks…
The Lemon Stole
Back in the summer I* was lucky enough to win a competition in the The News (Portsmouth’s daily paper) and received a £20 voucher towards a meal at the Lemon Sole – a well-known local seafood restaurant. Great, I thought; my girlfriend had just got a new job and what better way to celebrate than with a meal out.
As soon as we entered the restaurant though, I could instantly hear a rattle from my pocket as the building’s under-floor suction system started its job of extracting as much money from my wallet as possible. The Lemon Sole’s owner (Sunil Sood, to whom we’ll return later) sounded utterly charming when he called earlier in the day to confirm my booking. However, on arriving he seemed extremely put out by our presence, saying that if we had read the ‘small print’ on our prize we would have seen that the voucher was only valid on meals before 7pm.
Yep, you read that correctly. There was small print on our prize.
After Mr Sood had begrudgingly shown us to our table, my girlfriend and I sat down and told each other not to worry. Just keep an open mind, stay positive and enjoy the evening. Looking around the restaurant, there’s no denying that the place looks good; the building has a cosy feel to it, the decor is vibrant but tasteful and the waitresses (apparently all young women) were smiley and well-presented. But then my eyes were drawn to an A5 piece of laminated paper on the table, and suddenly things started to make sense.
I initially took this sheet to be the restaurant’s fire evacuation procedure. In fact, it was offering advice on how to order your food, bearing the slogan “If you’ve ever had fresh fish this good… welcome back!” A bold assertion, one that few restaurants would be brave [arrogant?] enough to make. It’s also a claim that gives the restaurant absolutely no margin for error and puts immense pressure on the staff to deliver. Anyway, as instructed we went up to the ‘fish counter’ to order our food, where the Ralph Lauren-clad Mr Sood was waiting to take our order. If any of you have been on the Lemon Sole’s website (not sure why you would, but nevermind) you’ll probably have read about the owner’s professional pedigree; he’s worked for some of the biggest retailers in the world, including Harrods, Fortnum & Mason and a number of prestigious Indian hotels. With this knowledge, you quickly understand what Mr Sood and his restaurant are all about: glossy exteriors and maximum profit.
We looked up at the menu board and decided that we would order from the ‘Classic Dishes’ menu; I chose the homemade fishcakes, my girlfriend the moules mariniere. At £15.95 a shot, these dishes are by no means a cheap option, but at least our £20 prize would soften the blow. It was at this point that Mr Sood chipped in again and informed us that, if we’d read the small print, we’d have seen that the prize was only valid for orders from the ‘Market Menu’ – the prices of which are based on the fish’s weight – and must include a starter.
Ordering our food was more akin to negotiating a mobile phone contract
So, I reluctantly ordered the restaurant’s speciality dish – the lemon sole – and waited as Mr Sood selected the fish and slapped it on the scales. My jaw cracked a hole in the floor as £26 kerchinged onto the till display. The price of my girlfriend’s sea bream was every bit as eye-watering, and combined with starters and drinks, the bill was starting to push £80. Between each item ordered, Mr Sood proposed a number of extras including breadsticks and dips, olives, vegetables, salad – all of which came at an extra price. Ordering our food was more akin to negotiating a mobile phone contract, and at this point I decided enough was enough. I asked Mr Sood where exactly the ‘prize’ element of our prize was hiding, and explained that not many people would see paying the thick end of £100 as a reward. To this he responded, “I’m sorry sir but we have to make money too. We can’t give food away’.
The urge to pick up that piece of gold-plated fish and slap Mr Sood around the face with it was very nearly irresistible. However, the thought that he’d probably charge me for dry-cleaning his clothes quickly made me see sense. To cut our losses, my girlfriend and I decided that we would be better off not using our prize and simply ordering the cheapest dishes from the Classics menu. The word cheap, by the way, is a word that is used somewhat loosely in the context of this restaurant; our eventual choices of plain old fish ´n chips and a simple fish pie came to a total of £25.90. I’m sure Captain Birdseye would be turning in his grave.
The infamous 'fish counter'
Despite being a student on a self-effacingly modest budget, I have absolutely no problem paying over the odds for quality food if I’m made to feel genuinely welcome with good, honest service. But I can’t even say that the food was good; the fish pie was flavourless and sickly, the vegetables were overcooked and both my girlfriend and I agree that the fish and chips from Clarence Pier are infinitely superior to the flaccid offering served up by the Lemon Sole. After Mr Sood had amended the final insult of over-charging us for a drink, our bill came to £35 – an amount that would get you a full meal, dessert and Naval send-off in most other restaurants around the city.
A quick spot of Googling will show you that our experience is far from unique; a 1.5-star average from more than 20 reviews should tell you something. Why, then, does The News continue to support the Lemon Sole and leave their ‘prize winners’ out of pocket? Portsmouth is positively bulging with restaurants of real quality, so why not offer a genuine, no-strings-attached free meal in one of those instead? Well, none of that really matters now; I won’t be buying the paper for a while (read: a day or two) and I’ll never go near that restaurant again. I’m almost tempted to recommend that you go for a meal there, simply because it’s difficult to find words to express just how bad it is. But really, just trust me on this and stay well away. You, your taste buds and your pocket will thank me for it one day.
*If you know me and / or were in my maths class at school, it’s probably quite obvious that I didn’t do the prize-winning sudoku puzzle myself – I just put my name on the entry. All credit goes to Cashew and her mega brain for that one.
Edit: since I wrote this entry, the Lemon Sole has boarded up its windows and stopped trading. I am positive that this review had absolutely nothing to do with it, as it merely joined a queue of other rants that already stretched half-way around the city. It’s never nice to see anyone go out of business, but the Lemon Sole seemed to have no intention of listening to its customers or changing with the times.
Rom-com or vomathon?
Good job I was barefooted when I declared that Sol Campbell would return to Tottenham on Wednesday. Fearless German filmmaker Werner Herzog once vowed to publicly eat his shoe if his friend and fellow director Errol Morris managed to finish and screen his film “Gates of Heaven”, a documentary on the pet cemetery business (yep, there really is one). Morris succeeded and Herzog, a man of great integrity, kept his word. Mmm, leathery.
Speaking of cinema, 500 Days of Summer wasn’t anywhere near as annoying as it could’ve been. The signs are never good when a film is billed as ‘kooky’ or ‘postmodern’, especially if it’s a romantic comedy and Zooey Deschanel is involved. But actually, the “rom” was rather touching and the “com” made me laugh out loud more than once. The Regina Spektor-heavy soundtrack was a bonus, too.
That said, there was one thing that really grated on me. That thing was the film’s nauseating, misplaced and totally unnecessary narration. Instead of leaving the actors and music to do the talking, the film’s makers decided we needed a smug, Honda-style voiceover to tell us what we should be seeing and feeling at any given moment.
Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt: not nearly as annoying as they could have been
At one point, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character – whose job is to write greetings for a card manufacturer – stands up in a meeting and goes off on an interminable rant about our collective inability to express our emotions unless somebody else puts the words into our mouth.
Either this was intended to be ironic, or the film’s creators genuinely believe that cinemagoers are so stupid and unperceptive that they too need to have every bit of action and subtext explained to them. Luckily the voiceover didn’t feature often enough to ruin the film, but it was very nearly the difference between “go see it” and “get the rusty nails out”.
