Rose's Cantina

The middle child came for dinner last night, armed with a bookbag full of beer. He was going to stay a while. I hadn't seen Stef since my birthday, almost a month ago. I should have known something was up. Before he even snapped his first cap, he was rolling up his sleeve. His left arm was so black and blue, he looked tattooed, like a younger and stupider version of Jessie James. "I got hit by a bike a few weeks ago," he said, revealing contusions that spilled down from his shoulder to his wrist. "Yeah, right," I said. I knew the bike defence from my drinking days. Anyone who showed up at the Press Club, all bruised and battered, had fallen down drunk, and the best defence was the old bicycle courier tale. I'd used it once myself, I am ashamed to say. Stef's story turned out to be true, but as with most stories of its kind, it involved the extreme use of alcohol. In his case, he had been partying with friends in the market when a girl pulled ...

While I'm on the subject of Amy Winehouse, I find it unbelievable that rocks stars and other famous folk, people like Ronnie Wood and Kelly Osbourne, are expressing "shock" at her death. It's not like it was Justin Bieber or Donnie Osmond. We're talking a woman who has been photographed walking through the streets of London with blood all over her feet and track marks on her arms. I went looking for a photograph of Amy, and, in the first one I found, she was sucking on a bong like it was a Jet Pop. All the Hollywood rag shows are quoting stars, who have never met the darling girl, about what a great talent she was. They all say what a tragedy it was and they "knew she had problems". Images of Amy shooting up, falling down, vomiting, bleeding from a variety of orifices and dribbling coke out her nose have already filled an entire hard-drive over at TMZ. That, obviously, is beside the point. People! She was a junkie. In her last recorded appe...