On hating jazz

I like Pret a Manger, even though I don't buy my coffee there any more, as I have a wonderful Bialetti Mukka Express stove-top cappuccino maker which I use to make my morning shot of latte which I bring into work in a flask, I do still sometimes buy a breakfast baguette or croissant there occasionally, when I'm too lazy or too late to make breakfast at home.

Pret has a problem though; they insist on playing jazz in their outlets. This is usually only mildly annoying as normally you're not in there long enough to get too narked (I could never work in one for that reason). This morning though, they were playing a particularly egregious example of the genre which sounded like it was the theme music from some '60s ITV action drama serious called The Adventurers or something similar, the sort of music they'd play over the obligatory but hilariously contrived fight scenes those sort of shows used to have.

(Digressing wildly, I'm currently working my way through the complete box set of Blake's 7 DVDs and I have to say that bad as those '60s series' fight scenes were, they've got nothing on the dire fight scenes in B7, which usually consist of a bit of grappling that wouldn't even pass muster on a primary school playground followed by a karate chop to someone's neck which would always render them unconscious - I mean, I know it was the late '70s and the aftermath of the kung fu craze, but really. It seems the B7 production staff knew these scenes were laughably bad, as they comment on this on some of the commentary tracks on the DVD, and claim it was due to a lack of budget and time to do it properly. I don't believe this myself, I think it's because B7 was on before the watershed, and the BBC chiefs were worried that kids would copy any violence they saw on such shows so deliberately toned it down to be relatively harmless - I know this must be the case 'cos I can remember how many times other kids would karate chop me on the neck and they must have learnt it somewhere.)

Anyway, jazz. I mean, come on, who likes it? No-one, except a sub-set of middle-aged men who are scared off by the intellectualism of classical music but are too snobby to admit to liking real popular music and so claim to like jazz because they think it's sophisticated to do so. These men (you never see a female jazz fan - women are far too intelligent) are a menace: until a couple of years ago yours truly and corrector of bah used to take the train into Victoria rather than Cannon Street of a morning, and many times we had the misfortune to share a carriage with a pair of 40/50-year old men who we christened "the Jazz Wankers" who'd spend the whole bloody journey discussing the merits of this recording or that performer until you prayed for some Network Rail navvy to have removed a rail from the points ahead just so they'd SHUT. UP.

Now it is possible that the reason why so many middle-aged men like jazz is because that's what they grew up with. I don't buy this - I don't believe that anyone can have ever really liked jazz, even when it was new - they just had no choice because real popular music hadn't been invented yet. OK, perhaps I say that because I'm a bit worried, as I am now nearly a whole year into my 40s, and so I am myself officially middle-aged. Does this mean that sometime soon I'm going to walk into a Pret and suddenly find myself saying to myself "yeah, schmoking, this is actually quite good, yeah, I am from Belgium and I like yazz" (apologies to Bill Bailey). God, I hope not. I think that I will treat finding myself liking jazz the same way as I'd treat finding myself liking golf: proof that I am finally, irrevocably old and that, sorry corrector of bah and any bahlets we might have accrued by then, it's time to jump off the nearest bridge.

Bah.