• The Clash
• Give ‘Em Enough Rope
• London Calling
• Sandinista!
• Combat Rock
• Cut the Crap

Time to discount the ones that will not make the cut because even the second best band in the history of rock n roll made some god awful tunes along the way: -

• Sandinista!
• Cut the Crap

Sandinista has some of my favourite Clash tunes on it, such as, Junco Partner, Something About England and the wonderful, The Sound of The Sinners. However too many of the 36 tracks are not, in fact, any good.

Cut the Crap. Hmmmm. Well, what can you say?

So, out of the first three albums and the comeback kid, Combat Rock, which one is my favourite? Such a hard, hard choice. If we simply assess them on tracks that you tend not to skip out of total number of tracks on the album then you get the following: -

• The Clash 9/14
• Give ‘Em Enough Rope 8/10
• London Calling 14/29
• Combat Rock 6/12

Okay, Combat Rock obviously falls away here even though I love the look of the boys on the front cover. Shot in Thailand too, which wins it brownie points because Thailand is just plain cool. It also has a higher percentage of non-skippers than London Calling, which is surprising, as that album is considered by most to be their best. In fact it was named album of its decade in America. The problem Combat Rock has is that most of the non-skippers I tend not to play at all, whereas with London Calling it still has great choooooones amongst the other tracks.

So we are left with the final three: -

• The Clash
• Give ‘Em Enough Rope
• London Calling

One thing I will point out here is you might be wondering how I can like a band so very, very much when their album scores are, in the main, not as high as some other bands I like. Well, dear student, because liking a band is more than just the material that they release. It’s the look, the feel, the passion, the realness, the soul, the place, the time, the meanings, the everything of all their cells put together that amounted to….The Clash. Listen to them live, look at their photographs, read the lyrics, have a cup of tea. They quite simply had it all and even today there is not a band quite like them.

Anyway, back to the lecture (?) people. Time is getting on and I want buttered scones for tea. And some pink champagne (cheers Joe!). So before me I have laid out the three remaining cd’s. Now which one of them has the real killer tracks? Those tracks that just get the goodness inside you pumping or your righteous anger to fly like spittle across a packed barroom during a venomous diatribe, railing against the world and all it’s injustices?

• The Clash 5
• Give ‘Em Enough Rope 5
• London Calling 8

So London Calling wins, right? Well, maybe. Let’s hold our horses, so the four horsemen can take a sip of their sun-ripened grapes. The first two albums “get me going” more than London Calling. They have the youthful energy and passion that first attracted me to the band. London Calling on the other hand is a more musical beast. Layered and certainly more in–depth.

So, which to choose? And it will be a choice. I don’t think I can analyze a “best” album out of them, as they are all wonderful and deserve their place on your IPod (god forbid!) or turntable or dvd player when you should really be concentrating on playing poker and not singing loudly enough to make your cat give you “one of them looks”.

So, for the third so to open a paragraph in a row, my favourite Clash album of all time is…….Give ‘Em Enough Rope…or London Calling…..or The Clash. Sigh! It’s hard you know. I’m supposed to be cooking my tea not waffling on here. Okay, top three in today’s order of merit for I know they will all change tomorrow is: -

• Give ‘Em Enough Rope
• London Calling
• The Clash

Mini emblems of national pride stuck on to windows and the tops of cars. Stuck on with the spit that they usually keep for those that they feel do not belong here. Nothing appears more chav like than seeing the fluttering remnants caked in petrol-fumed blackness. The new England flag…red, white and black. Ironic, no?

I feel tempted to fly the flag of Argentina but know that doing so would incur me having to brush up broken glass and find a use for the free brick so lovingly thrust my way.

Don’t get me wrong. I will be supporting England during the world cup, as it’s hard not to still be drawn to the country of your birth, no matter how much you wish there was a single flag for Earth. Perhaps the Flag of Europe is a start but I fear there are too few among us that share my belief in the unity of womankind.

So, back to my original question. What do you really think of them? And I don’t mean the media driven aspect of how you should feel about them. Do you truly like seeing them strewn around pubs like a badly wrapped anaemic present? Do they fill you with pride or a fear that the real reason they flutter is because the person who embraces them is more often than not a racist thug?

Enjoy the world cup. I am going to. Tonight I will cheer on England even though I have a bet on the USA to win. Before that I will get behind Argentina. Isn’t that what sport should be about? Not alcohol fuelled national pride that ends up face down in it’s own vomit?

Maybe I should invest in a light box…or move to a sunny land somewhere…or just start stockpiling the alcohol ready for November and beyond.

Let’s enjoy the next few months for we know what comes our way.

I’m feeling somewhat lost the way the night fizzled out. We never really got a chance to talk or catch up or have some quiet time together. I have an awful fear that one situation and my response to it will cause you to travel further in to the shadows of my life, when for a while I thought a beacon of hope had been spied amongst the trees.

I can’t stop running certain events of that night through my mind…certain looks people gave me…utterances made…wishful thinking on others behalves. Was I seeing all that was not really there?

All I have left is…what if?

He repeatedly asked me if I was sure about the money and then repeatedly thanked me. A ll I could mumble was “just take care of yourself”, as I felt like crying. I just couldn’t speak more without fear of losing it.

I know what some of you on here will say, that he will only spend it on booze, as somebody said to me after giving it to him but while I carried on waiting for my bus he came over to me and asked me again if I was sure. Then he told me that at least he could eat today and proceeded to walk very slowly, shuffling, over the road to a fast food place and brought himself something. He may well piss the rest of the money up the wall but so what? I’m guessing that you need some barriers between yourself and the streets, the cold, the people who think themselves better, your own dignity.

I looked in to his eyes and saw true gratitude in them. Something you rarely see off people today. I looked in his eyes and saw what I could be. Sometimes you have to sod the world and what it thinks and do what feels right to you at that moment in time.

I’m glad I gave him the money. I just wish I didn’t have to. Good luck to you. Just wish I had asked you your name.

Now the point to this blog is that it never used to be that way and I think I know why. Up until last year I always seemed to have a couple of squids and a few pennies in my purse (along with an absence of notes) but ever since Gordon Brown changed the VAT rate from whatever it was to some arbitrary number he saw on the back of a scratchcard he bought to try and win TeamUKGB (or whatever we are called) out of this recession I have so much change that I can no longer fit it all in my purse. I’m sure you’re the same? Go look now – do you have unsightly bulges in your Louis Vuitton purses? Do you have excess change neatly stacked up in it’s correct piles on the fireplace? Or worse – in one of the over-sized empty (but not now! it’s full of fucking change) whisky bottles? And where the hell do they come from?

Anyway, the VAT rate change. Now we always used to buy something for, say, £9.99 and get a solitary penny to tuck back in to our purse or more realistically say, “keep the change”, as it was not even worth the effort of holding our hands out for. But now that price is, say, for example, £9.76 ( I know it’s not but it’s an example, ok?) and so we get 24p change. Which isn’t so bad right? Three coins, 20p and two 2p’s. So why the huge increase in how much we all have to lug about? Well, it’s in the words, “sorry luv, I don’t have any 20′s…or 2p’s…will pennies do you?”. You see the poor shopkeeper has to give out so much more change these days that they have the reverse problem and never have enough change. But I guess they can now get their own back by dishing out all those 1p’s we were too busy/rich for in the past but now need to suck down and grasp as the economy goes down the plughole.

It’s a funny old reversed world.

A vow to myself to never become a facewhore has been broken and I feel somewhat shabby about it – BUT – already after just a few hours I can see the appeal of it – oh god! Maybe it’s similar to a crack addict after their first hit or an alcoholics first drink but I fear my life will never be the same again. The constant search for long lost friends or people I only bumped in to for milliseconds at a second rate house party has begun – and I want to find them all!

All I can say, not that I think it will be read by the person who needs to read it, is don’t give up on me. Please. I am dying inside.

I love you.