Hell Everyone
I say that advisedly - some of you may be unwell, or abroad. Bad news in the East Midlands - Nottingham is the most crime-ridden city ever, worse even than Prohibition-era Chicago and ancient Gomorrah. The mayor of Nottingham was on the radio this morning decrying statistics and think tanks in general but hey, the damage is done. Mud sticks, especially when it's stapled in place with a bullet. I am more sceptical, as the people behind these figures are Reform, one of those insane think tanks that thinks selling the NHS and BBC is a good idea. I am inclined to disagree with that, but then again, I'm not planning on walking round Hyson Green in a flourescent shirt any evening soon.
Yucky TV on Sky yesternight - it was called Inside a Bullet Wound, and involved 3D recreations of famous injuries. It's like something off TV Go Home come to life.The second TV nightmare of the week so far, though. Eurovision was on Saturday. James' mum Beryl came down and we all gathered at James's place for dips and cold cuts surrounded by bunting, balloons and the flags of all nations. It was actually very enjoyable and we all got a golden opportunity to be snide at the expense of our European cousins. Blake was especially withering and gave no-one any points at all (did I mention that Beryl had made score cards?) until Lithuania's entry, which was six men in suit and tie singing "We are the winners/ of Eurovision" to the tune of "Ner-ne-ner-ner-ner-ner" from primary school. And the papers wonder why people vote UKIP. Finland's excllent death metal monster winners Lordi local town is now granting them the signal honour of naming a street after them in Lapland.
The man from Sky arrived to install our dish at 8am on Sunday and was drilling within the half hour. That's insane. It's an unexpected thing to be asleep, resting after the previous evening's evening of Eurovision excess) to hear the phone go.
Me - "Urgh... hello?"
Voice - "Mr Burgess?"
Me - "Erm... yes?"
Voice - "Open your door, duck. I'm outside with your dish"
And that was that. My sleep gone I at least had the consolation of satellite TV by 9:30am. Also having a man drill holes outside at 8:45 on a Sunday is excellent for provoking the neighbours, especially the ones at no31 who keep stealing my parking place with their bloody taxi. Eat it, tossers.
A big dinner later I was ready to hit Crime City (formerly known as Nottingham) to see The Brian Jonestown Massacre at The Rescue Rooms. They were OK, but I can recommend the support act, some lovely Canadians called The High Dials. Very good they were and also, as I said, lovely. I ran into their singer as we were leaving and said that I'd enjoyed their set and would look out for their stuff. I know bands like this, because I did. He said thanks, buy our stuff, and then asked me about where I was going and told me he knew Leicester becasue his grandma was from there and it was as far from the sea so you can get and it has a good rugby team. Wow. I know nothing at all about Saskatoon, or even really Montreal where they were actually from. Another one to add to the list of nice Canadians I have met, which is actually all of them. It must be something to do with the Queen.
I am sat at the BBC again, surrounded on all sides by teenagers having MSN converations with eachother across the room. Christ sakes. I hate kids. I went to Mosh recently as a case in point. We know the regular DJ, and usually me and Nick can get what we want played. I got Talking Heads's Once In A Lifetime a little while ago, and cleared the dancefloor. Could we resist the 12" version of REM's Stand? Answers in next week's edition. Last time though it was some guy in heavy glasses who played just that little bit too much Oasis for comfort, although it was end oif term at both universities, so he can be forgiven for playing to the crowd. Well, I didn't know anything at all when I was 18, and know even less now.
They all look so gormless and pretty - 18 and on top of the world. It's not our place anymore - the DJ played Mulder and Scully, and I was forcibly reminded that some of these kids were about 11 first time round. I thought it was rubbish then, but they were probably too busy with Furbies and Key Stage 2 SATS to notice it at all. It's all retro indie now, and I suppose so is most of my record collection. Now, to put it in context, I can guarantee that when we first hit the Fanclub in 1997, brimming with youth and spunk and pith and vinegar, there were a bunch of 25-year-olds who saw us dancing joyfully to Size Of A Cow and thought exactly the same thing.
They are all now 33.
But there are major advantages to entering the very earliest stages of middle age (don't be ashamed). Trying to pull in the rarified atmosphere of evening classes instead of some LOUD club, or the ability to buy material goods. These beautiful dummies settling into their halls of residence are still healthy in body from home-cooked meals and healthy in mind from the recent mental exercise of A-Levels and arguing long into the night at house parties about, y'know, life, and stuff, before heading off to the spare room to put their still new and shiny bodies through some more exercise. Wait until three years worth of living on £10 a week has taken its toll.
Good night, and good luck
Dougal
Friday, May 26, 2006
Sunday, May 07, 2006
City Of Death
Yes, it's me.
I have reappeared, but not for long. This week's endeavour is getting our phone reconnected (Herculean) and then getting the broadband service sorted out (Sysiphean). Do not hold your breath for a fast result there. It will involve two companies and several hours of phone calls to service centres. I am frankly dreading it. Everything else with the house has been painless, except the carrying of a double bed up the stairs which nearly ruptured me and also the sheer expense of absolutely everything whihc made me cry. I now know I own far too many books, but they're on their shelves now and are staying there come hell or high water. I am never moving again.
I like Leicester and don't plan to go anywhere else. A lot of my friends (and I could internet people amongst them) live in dynamic, exciting places like London and Edinburgh and Seattle and New york, but I am ultimately too lazy to move. Also, as I said, I like it there. I live in a decent area with a place to put my car. I like my job and have a desk by a window. My friends aren't far ( one is in the other bedroom in fact). It was in the paper that we have some three billion quid of development going on, so the chances are we will have a branch of Fopp soon enough. Plus more than one good cafe. I don't mind Starbucks and so on, but given the choice I'd rather have a nice Italain place with Rai Due on the telly and home made pasta. Caffe Roma is great, but they know what I want on sight now, and I feel the need to manitain some mystery. I am also inspired by the whole "new start" ethos and am looking forward to summer.Make the most of it now I can. Hopefully our badminton hall won't be full of anxious students taking exams for much longer and I'll be buff for the ladies as well. Oh yeah. Badminton'll do that to you.
Anyway, Blake has agreed to get the digital telly done, which sounds easy - tell the man from Sky and he'll come and bolt a dish to the side of the house at a time of your choosing. The phone will be a nightmare, I know it. I used up a lot of this lifetime's karma on this move and someting bad has to happen now. So I am taking the chance to write now; I am currently sat in James and Louise's flat in Streatham Hill, and they have this kind of thing down pat by merit of being organised and having lived here for two years.
So I am in London again. This is my birthday weekend, and it has been great. Just about all my friends from various places have appeared over the weekend (they all seem to live in London now) and I have another day here to hang with Lousie and visit odd art galleries. Boss. So far we have been very busy. A troupe of French theatrical types have bought a giant wooden mechanical elephant to town, and yesterday Trafalgar square was shut to allow its procession to progress. It was all rather good, with an eighteenth century Sultan theme, a giant girl in a rocket and a band playing lengthy grooves (twenty minutes in D - they did look a bit bored). We looked and were impressed. Afterwards it was to a pub where I saw John Terry of Chelsea and England, who at this rate could be the only football player England have left upright by the time of the World Cup. After some bus fun we hit the evening's chief destination - Vinopolis, London's leading, and indeed only, wine museum..
Vinopolis is quite good, but used to be better. The idea is that as you enter as a clueless heathen unversed in the mysterious world of wine, but leave enlightened and committed to the lifestyle of the conniseur. What actually happens is that several hen parties make they way noisily round from tasting table to tasting table, eat some water biscuits and then go wherever it is that hen parties go next. The rest of you mill about a bit, pretend to read some of the labels on the exhibits and wonder if using all your tasting tokens in half an hour is excessive. After a while it thins out and the sense of urgency is replaced by a muzzy pleasure in pulling silly slurping faces and having competitions to see who has the most horrible drink. "Try this, " said Jonty, "It's quite the worst drink you'll ever have". He was right. You buy more tokens and try whatever is to hand. So Chilean white is nice, ruby port is lovely but absinthe is horrid. It tastes of mouthwash and makes you vomit. If you want to experience a dizzying hallucinagenic high, do it properly and drop a tab of LSD. Absinthe is pointless, and the stuff with wormwood in it is illegal anyway. Vinopolis also translates as "City of Wine", which is a little bit funny. Literal translation is a fine way for a young man to pass the time, and also brings the satisfying realisation that Drugs Czar, the title of the government's chief drug-crime enforcer, means "King of Drugs".
The one thing missing is the "learning about wine" bit. There is an introduction lecture but really all everyone wants to do is get to the booze. You learn to swirl, scan and swirl, but it's all lost really. All I needed was someone to say "do you have a sweet tooth" and on hearing that I don't, say "try this wine then". Knowing something goes well with beef is not enough to someone who is happy to drink Ribena with anything. Eventually my friend Dan did ask and did tell me what to try, but I shouldn't have to rely on the advice of another visitor to the musueum of wine to tell me about wine. The other thing I learnt was that the more expensive a wine might be is no reliable indicator of how nice it is. Louise and I found some waylaid premium wine tasting vouchers and went off for two glasses of the most pricey we could find. They were both horrible, and it's a valuable lesson - given the choice between a bottle of 1998 vintage claret and a new pair of shoes, go for the shoes. They'll last longer and if they don't suit you can take them back.
We then went to Masters Superfish, the very best chip shop in the universe. They do gurnet, which you only get in London and north Kent. I used to get it from the chip shop all the time when I was little, but it doesn't exist in Leicester. It's a rare treat. Masters is a nice mix of old-fashined and posh. There is a winelist and choice of breads, but the table tops are formica and you get a plate of pickled onions whether you ask for them or not. The ketchup and tartare sauce is called the sauce trolley. Terms like this have died out everywhere else, but live on in this one corner of Waterloo Road. Every taxi in London is parked outside, and if the cabbies say it's good, it must be good.
Then back to the flat, which is lovely. It's in a nice sreet in a nice area just south of Brixton. There are three international supermarkets on Streatham Hill selling wierd Turkish cuts of meat, Polish jars of pickles and drinks labelled only in Armenian. We bought strawberry juice to go with this morning's croissants, and if I can find it in Leicester I'll be a happy man. Also the flat has a clear window in the bathroom, which means you can have a piss whilst looking out over Streatham, a pleasing feeling. I suppose it also means Streatham can look straight back at you too, but the window's above waist height and I'm not excessively tall.
Anyway, it's coming up for dinner time now. I have been sat tapping away for the length of Maximo Park's album now whilst James tidies and Louise cooks. I feel terribly guilty, and it's all your fault. No, not really. I love you all. So until Talk Talk decree otherwise, I'll say goodbye.
Good night, and good luck
Doug
I have reappeared, but not for long. This week's endeavour is getting our phone reconnected (Herculean) and then getting the broadband service sorted out (Sysiphean). Do not hold your breath for a fast result there. It will involve two companies and several hours of phone calls to service centres. I am frankly dreading it. Everything else with the house has been painless, except the carrying of a double bed up the stairs which nearly ruptured me and also the sheer expense of absolutely everything whihc made me cry. I now know I own far too many books, but they're on their shelves now and are staying there come hell or high water. I am never moving again.
I like Leicester and don't plan to go anywhere else. A lot of my friends (and I could internet people amongst them) live in dynamic, exciting places like London and Edinburgh and Seattle and New york, but I am ultimately too lazy to move. Also, as I said, I like it there. I live in a decent area with a place to put my car. I like my job and have a desk by a window. My friends aren't far ( one is in the other bedroom in fact). It was in the paper that we have some three billion quid of development going on, so the chances are we will have a branch of Fopp soon enough. Plus more than one good cafe. I don't mind Starbucks and so on, but given the choice I'd rather have a nice Italain place with Rai Due on the telly and home made pasta. Caffe Roma is great, but they know what I want on sight now, and I feel the need to manitain some mystery. I am also inspired by the whole "new start" ethos and am looking forward to summer.Make the most of it now I can. Hopefully our badminton hall won't be full of anxious students taking exams for much longer and I'll be buff for the ladies as well. Oh yeah. Badminton'll do that to you.
Anyway, Blake has agreed to get the digital telly done, which sounds easy - tell the man from Sky and he'll come and bolt a dish to the side of the house at a time of your choosing. The phone will be a nightmare, I know it. I used up a lot of this lifetime's karma on this move and someting bad has to happen now. So I am taking the chance to write now; I am currently sat in James and Louise's flat in Streatham Hill, and they have this kind of thing down pat by merit of being organised and having lived here for two years.
So I am in London again. This is my birthday weekend, and it has been great. Just about all my friends from various places have appeared over the weekend (they all seem to live in London now) and I have another day here to hang with Lousie and visit odd art galleries. Boss. So far we have been very busy. A troupe of French theatrical types have bought a giant wooden mechanical elephant to town, and yesterday Trafalgar square was shut to allow its procession to progress. It was all rather good, with an eighteenth century Sultan theme, a giant girl in a rocket and a band playing lengthy grooves (twenty minutes in D - they did look a bit bored). We looked and were impressed. Afterwards it was to a pub where I saw John Terry of Chelsea and England, who at this rate could be the only football player England have left upright by the time of the World Cup. After some bus fun we hit the evening's chief destination - Vinopolis, London's leading, and indeed only, wine museum..
Vinopolis is quite good, but used to be better. The idea is that as you enter as a clueless heathen unversed in the mysterious world of wine, but leave enlightened and committed to the lifestyle of the conniseur. What actually happens is that several hen parties make they way noisily round from tasting table to tasting table, eat some water biscuits and then go wherever it is that hen parties go next. The rest of you mill about a bit, pretend to read some of the labels on the exhibits and wonder if using all your tasting tokens in half an hour is excessive. After a while it thins out and the sense of urgency is replaced by a muzzy pleasure in pulling silly slurping faces and having competitions to see who has the most horrible drink. "Try this, " said Jonty, "It's quite the worst drink you'll ever have". He was right. You buy more tokens and try whatever is to hand. So Chilean white is nice, ruby port is lovely but absinthe is horrid. It tastes of mouthwash and makes you vomit. If you want to experience a dizzying hallucinagenic high, do it properly and drop a tab of LSD. Absinthe is pointless, and the stuff with wormwood in it is illegal anyway. Vinopolis also translates as "City of Wine", which is a little bit funny. Literal translation is a fine way for a young man to pass the time, and also brings the satisfying realisation that Drugs Czar, the title of the government's chief drug-crime enforcer, means "King of Drugs".
The one thing missing is the "learning about wine" bit. There is an introduction lecture but really all everyone wants to do is get to the booze. You learn to swirl, scan and swirl, but it's all lost really. All I needed was someone to say "do you have a sweet tooth" and on hearing that I don't, say "try this wine then". Knowing something goes well with beef is not enough to someone who is happy to drink Ribena with anything. Eventually my friend Dan did ask and did tell me what to try, but I shouldn't have to rely on the advice of another visitor to the musueum of wine to tell me about wine. The other thing I learnt was that the more expensive a wine might be is no reliable indicator of how nice it is. Louise and I found some waylaid premium wine tasting vouchers and went off for two glasses of the most pricey we could find. They were both horrible, and it's a valuable lesson - given the choice between a bottle of 1998 vintage claret and a new pair of shoes, go for the shoes. They'll last longer and if they don't suit you can take them back.
We then went to Masters Superfish, the very best chip shop in the universe. They do gurnet, which you only get in London and north Kent. I used to get it from the chip shop all the time when I was little, but it doesn't exist in Leicester. It's a rare treat. Masters is a nice mix of old-fashined and posh. There is a winelist and choice of breads, but the table tops are formica and you get a plate of pickled onions whether you ask for them or not. The ketchup and tartare sauce is called the sauce trolley. Terms like this have died out everywhere else, but live on in this one corner of Waterloo Road. Every taxi in London is parked outside, and if the cabbies say it's good, it must be good.
Then back to the flat, which is lovely. It's in a nice sreet in a nice area just south of Brixton. There are three international supermarkets on Streatham Hill selling wierd Turkish cuts of meat, Polish jars of pickles and drinks labelled only in Armenian. We bought strawberry juice to go with this morning's croissants, and if I can find it in Leicester I'll be a happy man. Also the flat has a clear window in the bathroom, which means you can have a piss whilst looking out over Streatham, a pleasing feeling. I suppose it also means Streatham can look straight back at you too, but the window's above waist height and I'm not excessively tall.
Anyway, it's coming up for dinner time now. I have been sat tapping away for the length of Maximo Park's album now whilst James tidies and Louise cooks. I feel terribly guilty, and it's all your fault. No, not really. I love you all. So until Talk Talk decree otherwise, I'll say goodbye.
Good night, and good luck
Doug
Friday, April 21, 2006
Fear Of Falling Satellites
Fear Of Falling Satellites
Hello, youA week from now and I go off air for as long as it takes me to walk to Nick's and use his computer. For I move house. Goodbye, broadband, until I sort it out in the new place, obviously. Like all of us here, I need my electronic drip. I generally say to myself, I'll spend an hour on myspace and then off to read challenging works of literature or watch high-brow French drama. So after four hours of googling anything that comes into my head, looking for free mp3 and sound recording software and listening to streaming BBC 7 I realise it's 1am and everyone has gone to bed. I won't be able to do that for a while.
And goodbye other things. Sky TV is one, although there is rarely anything to watch, and if there is it's generally stuffed to bursting wth adverts for car insurance or personal injury claims or cheap, affordable loans. If there's one thing the world needs more of, it's cheap personal loans. I also am looking forward to the cricket season, and that's all on Rupert-O-Vision as well. So I'll have to get hooked up, because everyone else I know with digital telly either loathes all sport or will be watching the World Cup. My minor cricketing pecadillo will be left behind, and good though The Guradian's over-by-over coverage is, it's not quite the same.
Goodbye to the cat and dog, and I will miss them. I normally have little time for animals. I don't dislike them, not at all, and I get quite exercised about needlessneglect, wanton cruelty or fox hunting. But I just don't feel the same fuzzy warmth and empathetic bond that some other people do. It used to make my last girlfriend very angry that I felt no need to feed the cute baby goats at petting zoos. She loved everything to do with them. I looked at the feed pellets, I looked at the goat, and felt precisely nothing. I know this makes me the baddie in any number of childrens films, and I am not proud of it at all. It's just the way I am, just like some people are gay or eat their earwax or vote Conservative. But I do like cats, as they are proof of re-incarnation. Well, who gets a cushier number than the domestic cat? Do fuck all but sleep and eat and get stroked for the best part of twenty years. These are clearly karmic remards, bestowed on those who dedicated their lives to the poor and disadvantaged, and as a reward from the Almighty, they get to be cats. QED. My cat used to be Ghandi.
Goodbye to the careless purchase of consumer goods. I have far more CDs than I need, more DVDs than I have time to watch, but still I buy them. I am a sucker for the "5 for 30" sales you get. I buy all five and then put them on a shelf to gather dust. I love music but I own several albums I have never listened to a note of. I will even load them onto my iPod and then skip the tracks when they come up. I may as well be smashing Faberge eggs in the faces of the poor. Well, no more. I will have to pay for council tax and rent and water instead. Goodbye excess income.
But it's not all bad. It's goodbye to having to drive 15 miles to see my friends. Now I know to all my American readers (hello, you two) that's franky no distance at all, and I have absoultely nothing to be complaining about. Very true. And 30 minutes in the car is hardly the very worst thing that can happen to a man. But I am sick of it. I generally ply the way between Market Harborough and Leicester six times a week, quite often seven. I do not drive to work but refuse to use the train for travel on my own time. It's my time, and I don't want to do what I do every working day again at the weekends. So I get into my hateful, whinnet-ridden car and creak along up the wanker-infested and ever clogged A6 to see where my life is kept. As of Frday, no more, and I will catch the train again with a light heart, knowing I am doing it for nothing but leisure.
And so it follows that it is goodbye to giving 110 of my pounds to Midland Mainline every month for the privilege of a bit of floor to sit on on their crappy trains in the morning. The very thing I want after getting up and all that bollocks is to have to sit on the floor in the wheelchair alcove. But then, they must need the four coaches of first class with no-one in them for some reason. Bah, I say. They tempt us on with offers of free tea and comfy seats, promises of convenience and endless ease, but it's all smoke and mirrors. They can't even provide enough seats and room for more than one bike. I would give them 1320 a year, and there are about forty people at my station alone in the morning. Midland Mainline is owned by the National Express group, who last year made 215,000,000 profit.
Lastly, it's goodbye to Mum and Dad, who have taken me back in for the last six months after my life so spectacularly fell apart over one week in September last year. They have let me come and go as I please and not tell them anything, but still left me dinner in the oven. They have listened to me moan, whinge, shout and cry. I have, in short, been a nightmare. And they have asked nothing in return except some money for board and that I occasionally walk the dog. I hope one day to be properly able to tell them quite how much it has meant to me.
Just another week...
Good night, and good luck
Doug
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
The Second Great Train Chase
Time then to tell you all a story. Oh, I know you are dying to hear my opinions on the new Labour Party Political Broadcast with the cycling chameleon that is supposed to be David "Dave" Cameron, or the story of whar really went on at the gala viewing of Doctor Who on Saturday, but if you have read my page before, you can probably guess, i.e not much and nothing.
It is the summer of 1999. I am midway through an Interrailing adventure wth my friend Guy. We had been inspired by the events of the previous summer (there were none) to get out of Harborough as far as we could. To that end we had bought Interrail tickets and spent the whole of the following year planning our route around Europe. Emails passed regularly between me in Leicester and Guy in Lincoln. Our agreed itinerary - Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden (to visit my friend Jana), Prague, Vienna, Rome, Barcelona, Paris, Bayeux, Brussels, Amsterdam and home. An ambitious 4000 miles, in a hectic four weeks. But me and Guy are good mates, we'll be fine. We were 20, crazy and out for adventure.
It is now three weeks in. Having abandoned our plans as early as Denmark (we heard that Berlin was full and so went to... Hannover, I have no idea why now) we had argued our way across the continent as far as Paris. I had just realised I had left my wallet in Bayeux and begged a hundred quid off Guy, who in Rome I had come as near to punching as I ever have anyone. So we were not in the best of moods when we pulled in to the Gare D'Austerlitz, only to find that the metro line we wanted was closed. We had thirty minutes to get our connecting train to Brussels, or pay a fine. Bollocks. In response to our new-found problems, I immediately lost my passport.
Having found it by having a saintly man in a Liverpool FC shirt follow me down the street as I panicked blindly, and who walked off without taking a word of thanks, we found the replacement bus. This took ten minutes as RATP decided that the one thing the replacement bus didn't need was a sign telling us where it was going. We boarded the third bus that came past as the first two had been closed for some reason. The bus took off, and a voice said "Prochaine arret, Gare du Lyon" This was entirely the wrong direction. We got off at the next metro stop, crossed the road and boarded the third bus that came along, the first two having been closed for some reason.
Fifteen minutes, and we were back where we started. Back on the bus to the right place, a gloomy silence descended. Where the fuck is the Gare du Nord? Suddenly, through the insane Parisian traffic, a huge building loomed. We got off. A stop too early. Eight minutes. Bollocks. Again.
Then, a miracle. We were at the right station, just the wrong end. A gate marked "Gare du Nord" revelaed a length of railway track and in the distance, buildings and trains. Perhaps we would make it. The July sun beat down on us. We had been up since 4am; I have a photo of the clock at Bayeux train station saying 0455, a time I was hitherto unaware was possible. I really, really wanted a wee. Our mind wordlessly made up, we ran.
I can confidently say I have never been so uncomfortable. My backpack was pulling my arms off, my boots were rubbing the skin on my ankles through to the bone, my moneybelt was cutting off the blood to my leg. I had sunburn on my neck, arms and shoulders. And you have no idea how far it is from the back maintainence gate of the Gare du Nord to the ticket office. We had to walk up the far end of the furthest platform, over the ticket barrier for the suburban trains and thence to the Grande Lignes terminal. It was about a mile, and every inch was agony. We did it in eight minutes exactly, and watched our train leave from the comfort of the wrong side of the turnstile before Guy fell over. I leant on the counter of the suburban line ticket office and put my head in my hands, which slipped on the perspiration I had worked up running into the staton, and landed heavily against the ticket window, leaving a trail of blood, sweat and tears.
After a while spent laying in silence on one of the busiest railway concourses in the world, we walked to the ticket office to see how much the TGV supplement was for the train to Brussels that was due to leave an hour from then. It was twenty francs. Two pounds. Guy and I looked at each other for a long, long moment.
Good night, and good luck
Doug
It is the summer of 1999. I am midway through an Interrailing adventure wth my friend Guy. We had been inspired by the events of the previous summer (there were none) to get out of Harborough as far as we could. To that end we had bought Interrail tickets and spent the whole of the following year planning our route around Europe. Emails passed regularly between me in Leicester and Guy in Lincoln. Our agreed itinerary - Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden (to visit my friend Jana), Prague, Vienna, Rome, Barcelona, Paris, Bayeux, Brussels, Amsterdam and home. An ambitious 4000 miles, in a hectic four weeks. But me and Guy are good mates, we'll be fine. We were 20, crazy and out for adventure.
It is now three weeks in. Having abandoned our plans as early as Denmark (we heard that Berlin was full and so went to... Hannover, I have no idea why now) we had argued our way across the continent as far as Paris. I had just realised I had left my wallet in Bayeux and begged a hundred quid off Guy, who in Rome I had come as near to punching as I ever have anyone. So we were not in the best of moods when we pulled in to the Gare D'Austerlitz, only to find that the metro line we wanted was closed. We had thirty minutes to get our connecting train to Brussels, or pay a fine. Bollocks. In response to our new-found problems, I immediately lost my passport.
Having found it by having a saintly man in a Liverpool FC shirt follow me down the street as I panicked blindly, and who walked off without taking a word of thanks, we found the replacement bus. This took ten minutes as RATP decided that the one thing the replacement bus didn't need was a sign telling us where it was going. We boarded the third bus that came past as the first two had been closed for some reason. The bus took off, and a voice said "Prochaine arret, Gare du Lyon" This was entirely the wrong direction. We got off at the next metro stop, crossed the road and boarded the third bus that came along, the first two having been closed for some reason.
Fifteen minutes, and we were back where we started. Back on the bus to the right place, a gloomy silence descended. Where the fuck is the Gare du Nord? Suddenly, through the insane Parisian traffic, a huge building loomed. We got off. A stop too early. Eight minutes. Bollocks. Again.
Then, a miracle. We were at the right station, just the wrong end. A gate marked "Gare du Nord" revelaed a length of railway track and in the distance, buildings and trains. Perhaps we would make it. The July sun beat down on us. We had been up since 4am; I have a photo of the clock at Bayeux train station saying 0455, a time I was hitherto unaware was possible. I really, really wanted a wee. Our mind wordlessly made up, we ran.
I can confidently say I have never been so uncomfortable. My backpack was pulling my arms off, my boots were rubbing the skin on my ankles through to the bone, my moneybelt was cutting off the blood to my leg. I had sunburn on my neck, arms and shoulders. And you have no idea how far it is from the back maintainence gate of the Gare du Nord to the ticket office. We had to walk up the far end of the furthest platform, over the ticket barrier for the suburban trains and thence to the Grande Lignes terminal. It was about a mile, and every inch was agony. We did it in eight minutes exactly, and watched our train leave from the comfort of the wrong side of the turnstile before Guy fell over. I leant on the counter of the suburban line ticket office and put my head in my hands, which slipped on the perspiration I had worked up running into the staton, and landed heavily against the ticket window, leaving a trail of blood, sweat and tears.
After a while spent laying in silence on one of the busiest railway concourses in the world, we walked to the ticket office to see how much the TGV supplement was for the train to Brussels that was due to leave an hour from then. It was twenty francs. Two pounds. Guy and I looked at each other for a long, long moment.
Good night, and good luck
Doug
Thursday, April 06, 2006
John Simm
And a big hello to you all.
I was stood reading the magazines in WHSmiths today, and picked up Empire. It seems a lot of bad films are heading our way - Basic Instinct 2 and Failure To Launch are already with us, but more's to come. Marvellously, one is a film called Snakes On A Plane. The story is that the Mafia are after a grass, and have decided to have him rubbed out. So, rather than concrete shoes, concrete overcoat or concrete, I dunno, gloves or something, they decide to... put him on a plane and release 10,000 poisous snakes in mid air, killing everyone and handily incinerating the evidence in the resulting crash. It saves having to explain 10,000 dead snakes, for a start. Those would be some awkward questions. This is the best comedy idea I've heard in ages. I would think that snakes are a bit inefficient, perhaps lions would do a better job. But what's best is that Samuel L Jackson insisted on keeping the working title of the film, lest he walk off the set. Hence Snakes On A Plane. Star power.
My own life continues in a much more ordinary vein. Today for work I took the bus to Ratby, one of Leicester's fine suburbs. And it was there, amongst the bungalows and double garages (it's that kind of suburb) I saw, in someone's front garden, a lovingly restored Gilbert Scott red phone box. This is a very English thing to do. This was bourne out by the experience of my friends James and Louise who live in Streatham Hll, South London. When the last of the London Routemaster buses was taken out of regular service on their local route 159 from Streatham Hill to Marble Arch , South London was full of misty-eyed types waxing nostalgic about lost days and the soullessness of now. So full, in fact, that the people who actually had to use the bloody things every day (who were overjoyed to be rid of them in favour of buses with enough room that were warm, didn't leak and didn't shake fillings from their sockets) couldn't get on them and so were late for work. The big banner on the front of the Lambeth Disabled Action Group building saying "Good Riddance Routemaster" was apparently missing the point, being not a statement regret and sadness at the passing of one of Lodon's icons, but of the joy the disabled have at finally seeing the back of buses they couldn't get on at all. We can now travel from Streatham Hill to Marble Arch in comfort and even some style (save for the ever present man having an argument with himself or girl having a loud mobile phone argument with her boyfriend). I admit, the Routemasters had charm, and jumping on or off one that was moving always felt very cool. But charming means decrepit in estate agent speak. Telling.
Ths may matter if we are still alive tomorrow. The BBC have announced that there is H5N1 bird flu in one dead swan in a village miles from anywhere, in the north of Scotland. So we should all be toes up by teatime Friday. It must be true, the BBC said so. This is annoying, partly because I am moving on the 28th, but also just because it is. One dead bird does not an epidemic make. And hearing that bird flu is endemic in China does not fill us with confidence, because endemic sounds like epidemic. Does that mean epidemic? It means endemic. But does that mean epidemic? Well, that's what it sounds like it means. Plus you can't use the words "bird flu" without using the word "deadly" in front of them. That means that it's invarably fatal and you can catch it from looking at a picture of a chicken. There was a piece on East midlands Today about how this may afftec Lincolnshire's poultry farmers. The last time I looked, Lincolnshire was 500 miles from Loch Fyne, so better stay indoors and try not to breathe too much. Mind that duck.
One day we will have context on the news, and so between stories about England and Wales having the highest rate of people in prison in Western Europe and current rates of taxation being the highest since World War Two we will hear that the rate in the US is four times higher than ours, and at 39 percent of GDP our overall rate of tax is in fact lower than everywhere in the EU except Ireland, Cyprus and Malta. We might also hear that out of 100 people who got H5N1 in China, seventy survived and those who did sadly die lived in mud huts in the middle of nowhere with chickens in their beds, unlike the entire poluation of Europe, say. I didn't hear this on the news, though. I had to look. I am very dull when the moment takes me.
I am, then, an informed person. Konwledge is power. I am as a God these days, thanks to Google and Wikipedia. Just one thing eludes me I need to know is the identity of the woman in the new Nivea ads, exhorting us to "Accessorise your Underarms". Who is she? How must it feel to know that a fair percentagre of everyone has seen your armipts? Do her friends now call her "The armpit lady"? We must be told.
Good night, and good luck
Doug
I was stood reading the magazines in WHSmiths today, and picked up Empire. It seems a lot of bad films are heading our way - Basic Instinct 2 and Failure To Launch are already with us, but more's to come. Marvellously, one is a film called Snakes On A Plane. The story is that the Mafia are after a grass, and have decided to have him rubbed out. So, rather than concrete shoes, concrete overcoat or concrete, I dunno, gloves or something, they decide to... put him on a plane and release 10,000 poisous snakes in mid air, killing everyone and handily incinerating the evidence in the resulting crash. It saves having to explain 10,000 dead snakes, for a start. Those would be some awkward questions. This is the best comedy idea I've heard in ages. I would think that snakes are a bit inefficient, perhaps lions would do a better job. But what's best is that Samuel L Jackson insisted on keeping the working title of the film, lest he walk off the set. Hence Snakes On A Plane. Star power.
My own life continues in a much more ordinary vein. Today for work I took the bus to Ratby, one of Leicester's fine suburbs. And it was there, amongst the bungalows and double garages (it's that kind of suburb) I saw, in someone's front garden, a lovingly restored Gilbert Scott red phone box. This is a very English thing to do. This was bourne out by the experience of my friends James and Louise who live in Streatham Hll, South London. When the last of the London Routemaster buses was taken out of regular service on their local route 159 from Streatham Hill to Marble Arch , South London was full of misty-eyed types waxing nostalgic about lost days and the soullessness of now. So full, in fact, that the people who actually had to use the bloody things every day (who were overjoyed to be rid of them in favour of buses with enough room that were warm, didn't leak and didn't shake fillings from their sockets) couldn't get on them and so were late for work. The big banner on the front of the Lambeth Disabled Action Group building saying "Good Riddance Routemaster" was apparently missing the point, being not a statement regret and sadness at the passing of one of Lodon's icons, but of the joy the disabled have at finally seeing the back of buses they couldn't get on at all. We can now travel from Streatham Hill to Marble Arch in comfort and even some style (save for the ever present man having an argument with himself or girl having a loud mobile phone argument with her boyfriend). I admit, the Routemasters had charm, and jumping on or off one that was moving always felt very cool. But charming means decrepit in estate agent speak. Telling.
Ths may matter if we are still alive tomorrow. The BBC have announced that there is H5N1 bird flu in one dead swan in a village miles from anywhere, in the north of Scotland. So we should all be toes up by teatime Friday. It must be true, the BBC said so. This is annoying, partly because I am moving on the 28th, but also just because it is. One dead bird does not an epidemic make. And hearing that bird flu is endemic in China does not fill us with confidence, because endemic sounds like epidemic. Does that mean epidemic? It means endemic. But does that mean epidemic? Well, that's what it sounds like it means. Plus you can't use the words "bird flu" without using the word "deadly" in front of them. That means that it's invarably fatal and you can catch it from looking at a picture of a chicken. There was a piece on East midlands Today about how this may afftec Lincolnshire's poultry farmers. The last time I looked, Lincolnshire was 500 miles from Loch Fyne, so better stay indoors and try not to breathe too much. Mind that duck.
One day we will have context on the news, and so between stories about England and Wales having the highest rate of people in prison in Western Europe and current rates of taxation being the highest since World War Two we will hear that the rate in the US is four times higher than ours, and at 39 percent of GDP our overall rate of tax is in fact lower than everywhere in the EU except Ireland, Cyprus and Malta. We might also hear that out of 100 people who got H5N1 in China, seventy survived and those who did sadly die lived in mud huts in the middle of nowhere with chickens in their beds, unlike the entire poluation of Europe, say. I didn't hear this on the news, though. I had to look. I am very dull when the moment takes me.
I am, then, an informed person. Konwledge is power. I am as a God these days, thanks to Google and Wikipedia. Just one thing eludes me I need to know is the identity of the woman in the new Nivea ads, exhorting us to "Accessorise your Underarms". Who is she? How must it feel to know that a fair percentagre of everyone has seen your armipts? Do her friends now call her "The armpit lady"? We must be told.
Good night, and good luck
Doug
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