A blog about actual things that I’ve done for once
February 10th, 2008 at 02:22

I went to London today with my friend Bouff, and have unexpectedly got three interesting, yet unrelated stories out of it. I’ve ranked them least interesting to most interesting – which is incidentally also chronological order – to keep you reading to the bitter end.

STORY ONE

Bouff suggested we go to London a couple of weeks ago, and I readily agreed, as I bloody love London. A few days ago when discussing what to do there, I suggested to him that we could, say, go to Highgate Cemetery, and have a look at Karl Marx and Douglas Adams’ graves. Bouff replied “I was thinking of H&M”.

“Nah, we won’t end up simply shopping”, I thought. Then we ended up in the Vans shop on sickeningly fashionable Carnaby Street, so he could buy the sort of shoes skateboarders wear to show that they’re totally sticking it to the man, from a large multinational corporation. Here is an “action shot”, and I use the term “action” incredibly loosely, of a man you don’t know purchasing shoes to validate this story as truth:

STORY TWO

I was shocked this evening when I checked the news earlier and found out about that massive fire in Camden. Why? Because I was there only a couple of hours earlier. Its a bit weird switching on the news and seeing the street you were just on (the one with the shop with the aeroplane on the front) covered in flames.

We went to The World’s End pub, which is famous enough to have its own Wikipedia page. Well, some people do predict that the world’s end will be in a hellish scene with lots of fire and destruction.

Whilst not technically in Camden so not relevant to this half-baked story, but it’s not like it was actually going anywhere in the first place. We also ventured to Holloway Road, which is basically just a suburban street somewhere in north London, but we went there because it was all about the destination: the club Nambucca, which is apparently some sort of famous Indie venue – I vaguely knew of it because its referenced in a Frank Turner song. Yeah, its horrendously obscure, but Bouff was excited, going through his phone book, texting everyone he knows. All I really saw was a closed building. Here is another exciting picture:

STORY THREE

This is the best story. If you’ve skipped the other two to see what’s here, then it was worth the effort. You’ve seen Shaun of the Dead, haven’t you? Well, do you recognise this newsagents:

No? Its the one from Shaun of the Dead. Really, it is. That’s why we took what looked like an unlicensed mini-cab half way across North London to a small parade of shops in a heavily residential area devoid of a Tube to take photographs of ourselves standing outside a newsagents.

Annoyingly, the shop was sold out of Cornettos.

Here’s Shaun’s house. It’s changed a bit since the film:

It was dead exciting. See, that’s a pun there. Sort of.

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Happy New Year!
January 1st, 2008 at 16:18

Happy New Year, readers!

I know what you’re thinking: “how did James spend New Years Eve?”. Perhaps somewhat predictably, I went down to London to watch the fireworks and all that. It was certainly a once-in-a-lifetime event. I mean, sure, you could do it again, but whether you’d want to is another question all together.

We drove down to London, parking at Finchley Central tube station on the outskirts, and caught the tube in. We made our way to Westminster, and more specifically, the excellent pub at the Namco Station on the South Bank. Unlike normal pubs, this pub is built into an arcade, so has a bowling alley, arcade games and dodgems. Its literally the best pub ever. So we spent the last few hours of 2007 behaving like teenagers.

Unfortunately though, at about ten o’clock, they closed off the whole South Bank, because that was where all the fireworks were going to be – so we were kicked out on to Westminster Bridge with two hours to spare. There were no drinks for sale on the bridge, and we didn’t have the foresight to bring any, which meant the two hours passed exceedingly slowly.

I tried to pass the time by doing some Peter-Kay-esque observational comedy. “Remember stuff from years ago? Eh? Eh? Remember when we had to manually type custom ringtones into black and white mobile phones? What’s with that? And when you go in a lift, right, you press the number of the floor you want to go to… but why is there a doors close button? The doors are going to close anyway! What’s with that?”

Eventually, midnight arrived, and some fireworks exploded, that sort of thing. Unlike poor Diamond Geezer, we had the best place in London. Being on Westminster Bridge, we had a full view of both Big Ben striking midnight, and the fireworks display on the London Eye. The fireworks were pretty spectacular, as you’ll see in the video:

After the fireworks display, the organisation of the event sort of fell apart, as nearly all 700,000 revellers descended on Waterloo tube station to get home (Westminster and Embankment were closed). And it turned out that the pub wasn’t reopening after midnight, so we had to join them. After faffing about for about an hour I cleverly hatched a plan to head to Southwark station which was just a bit further a long – which turned out to be a good idea, as there were only around 100,000 people who had that same idea.

But we eventually got back and it all worked out alright. I think being in London was a good idea. Really.

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Stranger; Things have happened.
December 18th, 2007 at 18:39

Last week I wrote a rather polemic piece advocating the secularisation of Christmas. Whilst I stand by my obviously well-thought-out points, I’m worried I may have forgotten about the Christmas spirit, and ruffled a few feathers, caused quite a stir, and committed various other tired clichés. So this week, I want to tell you about the sort of story you only usually get at Christmas, a heart-warming tale about the kindness of strangers.

To set the scene, on Saturday night, I was on the last train heading back from London, when I realised that my phone battery had run flat. It was annoying because it was a new mobile phone – a posh one that does everything too: internet, satellite navigation, plays music, takes photographs. I think it even makes phone calls. The only drawback with it is that if you decide that you actually need to use one of its many exciting features, it drains the battery in a matter of minutes.

The trouble was that I needed to ring my parents to let them know that I hadn’t been murdered in London – they worry like that. When it got to about half past eleven, an hour after I told them I’d be home I realised that if I left it any longer, they’d probably start kicking up a fuss and have most of London’s emergency services looking for my battered corpse, so I had to think of something.

I knew I’d have to ask another passenger on the train if I could borrow their mobile phone – which is a ridiculous request. The most you should ask of a fellow train passenger is if you can sit on the empty seat next to them – asking for anything more is breaking a big social taboo. What I wanted was far, far beyond the call of duty.

So I decided to ask an older couple on the train if I could borrow their mobile phone, to call my mum. The difficult thing was the phrasing of the question – I’m not very astute at the best of times, as I tend to just let the key words in a sentence fall out of my mouth in a jumbled order when talking to people. I needed to convey the genuine nature of my problem so that I didn’t sound like I was euphemistically saying “Hello, I’m a scruffy looking bloke and I’m going to mug you for your expensive mobile phone, so I can sell it in a pub and buy drugs with the proceeds”.

Eventually, I plucked up the courage to ask, and amazingly, these complete strangers let me use their phone – even though I could have been, say, a murderer, or something for all they knew (I’m not).

I’m dead impressed by this – I’d previously assumed that everyone who didn’t know me, especially those I encounter on public transport, are just out to get me, in some way, but it turns out strangers are really nice people.

So what’s the moral of this story? Er… could it be the complete opposite of what we’re taught growing up? “Talk to strangers more”?

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Impulsive Day
November 24th, 2007 at 01:07

Today I got up bright and early at 8am for university – I had my usual rushed shower and check of my emails, before heading to the train station little over an hour after waking up. Still groggy, after a few hours sleep, I met Katy on the train and went into university for a lengthy two-hour day. Unfortunately, this exposition was building us up for disappointment: the lecture and seminar were cancelled, meaning that we had both travelled into university for no reason.

It was at this point we decided to be impulsive. This isn’t something I do very often – I like to plan things with an autistic level of detail. If I go to anywhere big, I like to have a Google Map printed out, all relevant details with me, a map book, and a back-up plan for almost every eventuality. And I’ll constantly run through potential scenarios in my head: “What if a terrorist appears right now and challenges me to a short trivia battle to determine whether I live or die?”, and so on.

We decided to go to London, more specifically to the British Museum.

So we spent thirty pounds each on train tickets down to London, plus an extra fiver for the tube, and hopped on to the direct train down to London. 15 minutes into the journey, I learnt why being impulsive doesn’t pay off – quite literally. I remembered that I was going to see Mark Thomas tonight (which has already happened at time of writing, and was excellent, if you’re asking), so had to cut the trip short by a good few hours, decreasing value for money somewhat considerably.

But we got to the British Museum eventually, which was pretty excellent, although we’ll have to go again in order to fully appreciate all of the old tat on display there, given that we were rushed for time.

You’d think what with it being a museum full of all the best antiquities that Britain has nicked from around the world, full of priceless monuments to human civilisation, like the Rosetta Stone, I’d have taken loads of photos and maybe even done another stupid video. Unfortunately due to the ridiculously impulsive nature of the trip, the batteries in my camera were running very low. So the only two photos we managed to squeeze out of the camera were the following:

Me, standing in front of a placard looking slightly worse for wear, in order to make a horrendous, horrendous lolcat parody:

And what we bought from the British Museum café. Guess how much a couple of drinks, a chocolate muffin and some sort of strawberry/chocolate hybrid. Go on, have a guess.

£8.20. Eight pounds twenty. Really. I could have cried.

The Rosetta Stone was pretty excellent though. And it was much better than having a boring lecture. So hooray, I guess?

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London Yet Again
November 13th, 2007 at 02:08

I can’t help but think that my blog is slowly degenerating into a poor man’s Diamond Geezer, given the amount of times I’ve been to London. I went to London again today with my ginger friend Bouff. Where we did some London things.

Westminster Abbey

We went to Westminster Abbey – actually paying to go inside a Church. It was surprisingly worthwhile, as there are stacks of dead people in there. I saw the tombs of stacks of royals: Elizabeth I, Henry III, William & Mary, Mary Queen of Scots, and Mary I, for example. Unfortunately though, they are sort of hidden between a lot of filler. Nobody really wants to see the ex-MP for Exeter, whoever he was.

There were also lots of other important people: Newton, Darwin, Thomas Hardy, various old-timey Prime Ministers and so on. Now no one can say that I haven’t drummed on top of Chaucer’s grave.

It was also sort of funny to see the spot where Oliver Cromwell was buried, until Charles II got it removed. There’s some sort of RAF memorial there now.

By far the best bit, though, was what is apparently BRITAIN’S OLDEST DOOR. Here is a photo of me, knocking on BRITAIN’S OLDEST DOOR:

There’s even a sign explaining that it is BRITAIN’S OLDEST DOOR. It even made the news.

David Davies

It seems like only last week I was slagging off David Davies. Whilst walking through Westminster today I spotted him being interviewed for the telly. Here is a picture of me stroking my beard with him in the background, as if to imply that he is saying stupid things and is a twat:

We also saw Sanchez from Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace walking down Tottenham Court Road, but I don’t have a clever picture of me arsing about with him in the background.

Apple Store

We walked up Regent Street to find the Apple Store. And I got to have my first ever go on an iPhone. And it turns out that I really, really want one. Anyone from Apple reading? Send me an iPhone for free, please? I’ll review it and say nice things!

It was literally the best thing since sliced bread – the interface was incredible. The scaling, the scrolling, everything. The picture was sharp as anything. Its just a massive shame that £270 is ridiculously expensive, even before you consider the £35 a month contract.

We also had a go on the Apple TV – which is a set-top box/media server sort of thing, and I ended up watching my own YouTube videos on a massive plasma telly in London. Which was cool.

Conclusions

London is still cool. iPhones are excellent. Important dead people are interesting. But perhaps the most pertinent conclusion is that I am still a dreadful tourist. However much I try to fit in, complaining about tourists, reading the Metro on the Tube, walking around like I know where I’m going, I’m still Oyster-less and have to get about by using the most humiliating ticket known to Londoner: a national rail day travel-card.

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The Stasi Strike (Again?)
October 25th, 2007 at 20:12

I thought today I’d have an easy blog entry. For some reason, Midland Mainline had decided to go on strike today – presumably in a bid to irritate commuters even more than usual. This has basically meant that all day they’ve have a more limited timetable, with only one (maybe two?) trains going up and down between London and Derby – and stopping at every stop along the way.

I thought the blog would be easy, as I’d just be able to moan about the horrendous conditions on board- how it was overcrowded (I got the first northbound train of the day) and how awful the passengers were. That sort of thing: a rant by numbers.

Unfortunately for me, though the trains were overcrowded, and shock horror, there was no “MM’s bar” catering, catching the train today was surprisingly painless. I got a seat both times – so I can’t really complain.

Sure, I could call the Stasi who were working ’scabs’, but that seems a bit cheap. And all of the foaming at the mouth calls for some Thatcherite union-busting I was doing last night seems a little mean, in retrospect.

The closest thing I’ve got that even begins to approach an anecdote is that on the way to university, I sat next to a businessman, wearing a business suit, with his business smart phone out. “No doubt doing some important business”, you’re probably thinking – peering over his shoulder revealed him to be playing some sort of golf game on his phone for the entire duration of the journey.

I, meanwhile, the unkempt young person, who you’d expect to be playing obnoxious ringtones because of my proximity to public transport, was actually reading The Economist (running gag: apparently they’re having trouble forming a coalition government in Argentina).

Told you it wasn’t a very good anecdote.

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The Summer in Numbers
September 30th, 2007 at 21:23

Today is the 30th September. The last day of summer, more or less. Tomorrow is the start of my first week back at university (er, not that I have any lectures until Wednesday). I had an incredible summer and managed to do an awful lot, so here is my summer in numbers (aka: some statistics generated between two moderately arbitrary dates: June 1st and September 30th):

Capital cities visited: 2

I took a trip to Paris with my friends JD and Fundar in August. We saw tonnes of sights, art galleries, museums, and, er, dodgy parking techniques.

Trips to London: 8

I also went to London many, many times. With Katy, I saw everything from BBC Television Centre and the Foreign Office, to the Houses of Parliament and National Gallery, to London Zoo, to the Natural History Museum (and Science Museum, but I didn’t blog that), to the Tower of London and the London Eye. I bloody love London.

Prime Ministers seen: 2

I was also down in London for the big Prime Ministerial changeover day. I saw Tony Blair leave Downing Street for the last time, and Gordon Brown leave the Treasury on the way to Buckingham Palace.

Internet friends met: 20 or so

My other website had a big meet-up, and it was one of the most amazing days ever. I met around twenty people I’d only ever known via the internet before and they were all wonderful, excellent people.

Money spent on non-Paris holiday rail travel: £226.35

I knew, er, logging my train tickets would come in useful someday. I’ve used the trains quite a bit this summer. This explains where all of those savings I used to have have gone. This massive amount of money is why I feel comfortable getting all self-righteous about rail travel.

Bands seen live: 35

According to another spreadsheet, I’ve seen 35 bands live since June 1st, at 11 different gigs. It’d be 38 bands if I counted the night of May 31st. I saw quite a wide variety of people: Tom Morello, Me First & the Gimme Gimmies, Citizen Fish, Leftover Crack, Send More Paramedics, Frank Turner, Lethal Bizzle and Gallows, RX Bandits, and Hadouken, to name a few. All of this live music has empowered me to try and tell bands how it should be done.

Musical instruments I’ve failed to master: 1

Earlier this summer I thought it’d be wise to try and learn the trumpet to take on a friend in a stupid bet. Unfortunately, I’ve since lost my enthusiasm for the instrument, after it turned out that its really hard.

Films seen at the cinema: 5

Fantastic 4 2, Ocean’s 13, Die Hard 4, The Simpsons Movie, and Transformers.

Miscellaneous events I’d like to link to but can’t think of context: 2

I met Ming Campbell, and went to Woburn Safari Park.

Number of Cokes consumed: 498

I haven’t written about this for a while, but I’m still tracking my Coke intake. Over the summer I had 498 Cokes – or on average, 4.08 a day. Which is, er, rather a lot. The average (calculated by records beginning in early 2005) has gone from 3.131 to 3.252 – and this summer’s coke intake accounts for about 15.8% of Coke consumed since records began.

271 one of them were Coca Cola, 3 Diet Cokes, 52 Coke Zeroes, 119 Pepsi, and 45 Pepsi Max.

There is still officially “little to no purpose” for this data existing.

Blog Entries: 121

That averages one post every 1.008 days. And every single one is pure gold. Cough.

If you include this one then its averaging exactly one a day.

Change in amount of currency in ISA: Down 29%

Bugger.

Not doing a Master Card parody gag: Priceless

Summer was excellent. Hooray!

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Parliament / The National Gallery
September 21st, 2007 at 01:32

Today, Katy and I went down to London for the final time this summer to do some tourism, and went to arguably the best place yet: The Palace of Westminster. So I’m going to attempt to review the tourist attraction like a proper blogger would.

The tour was really good – it followed the route the Queen takes when she opens Parliament. It turns out she first walks up some steps and goes into a ridiculously opulent room decorated with paintings of King Arthur. In here, she makes a great faff of putting on a crown, before waltzing on down to the House of Lords through a corridor decked out with yet more pictures of royalty – and two massive paintings of Waterloo and Trafalgar.

After this, we broke with what the Queen does (disappointingly you’re not allowed to sit on the throne), we went to the Commons, and we actually got to stand about on the floor of the House. Which is more exciting than it sounds – sure, you’re just surrounded by a load of green seats, but they’re a load of really exciting green seats. Its pretty amazing being somewhere you’ve seen on TV so often, and knowing whats gone on in there in the past- although one thing that surprised me was how tatty some of the seats were – certain opposition benches looked really well warn.

Perhaps the most notable and easily describable thing (that isn’t already written about on Wikipedia) was the tour guide. She was a rather posh woman, who was undoubtedly a Tory voter. It was the lack of references to the system being corrupt, unfair and a desire to smash it that gave it away.

Throughout the tour, she was keen to make as many references to David Cameron as possible, simply dismissively referring to Gordon Brown as “The Government” whilst sneering. When showing us the statues of famous Prime Minister’s in the Common’s lobby, she said “But this is the one everyone wants to see – the marvellous statue of Margaret Thatcher” whilst wiping away a tear and going weak at the knees. Metaphorically, I mean.

Sensing the end was near, I thought I should ask a question, as its not every day you get to ask questions to people who are experts on the Houses of Parliament. Unfortunately, the best question I could muster was “Are the green seats in the ‘No’ lobby [just outside the Commons chamber] upholstered in the same way as the seats in the chamber? They were really comfortable.” I even said the second sentence which really, is unnecessary detail and isn’t part of the question. The tour guide said that they were.

Like all of the best tourist places, the last stop on the tour was the House of Commons gift-shop, which was located in the chamber that used to be where the Commons sat. What used to be a hall where laws were made, the place where slavery was abolished, where all men regardless of land ownership were given the vote, where representative democracy began, now contains a stall hawking teddies dressed as Yeoman warders and, bizarrely, baseball caps with the Parliament portcullis logo on it, which no doubt does wonders for your street cred. I’d have bought the latter as a hilarious prop to wear “ironically” if it wasn’t a ridiculous £7.50.

I wonder what Charles James Fox would think if he knew that his statue is now surrounded by stationary with “House of Commons” written on in Tahoma?

The tour was dead good though – I’d recommend it. But does that constitute a review? I don’t know.

After Parliament, we took a trip to the National Gallery, in a bid to look a bit high cultured. I mean, I’m already pretty damn cultured, but Katy was making decisively low-brow references to tabloid newspapers and greyhound (instead of horse) racing, so we had to sharpen her mind.

One thing the National Gallery does better than the Louvre is that it puts all of the famous stuff in one room. Top tip: walk in, first gallery on your right, is where all of the famous shit is, the rest is mostly filler. They’ve got some Van Gogh’s: one of the versions of sunflowers, Van Gogh’s chair and another, er, famous one, that, er, escapes me.

I was also shocked to see a Monet hanging on one of the walls. Specifically: the one of the bridge over the river. I was sure I’d seen it in Musée D’Orsay in Paris. Disappointingly, it turns out that Monet painted no less than seventeen of them. I didn’t realise they were so ten-a-penny. There was also a massive picture of a horse. You know the one. You’d know it if you saw it. Yeah.

As you might have guessed, I’m not an art critic. The National Gallery was pretty good too though. Parliament was better though.

* Yeah, I know, everyone else already knows too.

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London Open House: TV Centre and the FCO
September 16th, 2007 at 23:50

This weekend was London Open House – for some reason loads of places in London decided to let in members of the public for free. So Katy and I did the most obvious thing and pursued my favourite hobby: being an awful tourist in London.

There was a lot to choose from – we could have gone to the top of the Gherkin, or to the Bank of England, or even to the Argentinian Ambassador’s official residence. Presumably if we’d gone to the latter, we would have seen tourists taking photos of a man lying on his sofa watching Last of the Summer Wine and the Antiques Roadshow.

So we decided to go to BBC Television Centre, and the Foreign (and Commonwealth) Office.

BBC Television Centre

Before the tour began, we walked over to the BBC Broadcast Centre (where transmission actually happens) and the Media Centre. It was here when I visited TVC a few years ago that I saw Director General Mark Thompson striding across the plaza like he was crushing the lives (and jobs) of tiny people. Unfortunately, rather than celebrities this time, we bumped into a woman who looked a bit… stoned. “Can either of you two do me a favour? If you do it, I’ll give you my phone”, she said, waving her phone at us. “…”, we replied. “Do either of you have a bus pass?”. We didn’t, as we’re not proper Londoners, so she had to keep her stolen phone and go and pester some more people.

TVC though, is an incredible building, because there’s so much famous stuff in it, and best of all, there’s a metal detector and security guards who keep the nutters out. Being the massive BBC nerd that I am, I’m already pretty well versed on the history of the building, the BBC and what goes on inside, but its still pretty spectacular to actually be there. The tour took us first to the central doughnut area where Roy Castle famously broke the world record for… tap dancing or something.

“The ground is covered in glitter as last night we hosted The National Lottery Awards Ceremony… which you might have seen on BBC One”, the tour guide told us, shortly before losing eye contact with everyone in the group.

Next, we were led into studio 2, the smallest studio in the complex. It wasn’t being used so there were no sets erected in there, but it was still interesting to see. Apparently it had been used for filming Red Dwarf, and they didn’t have the money to actually build a set, so they just ran around the gantry as it looked quite space age anyway.

Next stop was the former main reception and current “star entrance” that lead to the dressing rooms and so on. We all managed to crowd in one of the poshest dressing rooms, which was a bit like a rather upmarket hotel room with no windows. The tour guide explained that a lot of celebrities who come to TVC make demands on what is in their dressing room – Paul McCartney apparently demanding a bowl of fruit when he visits. He told a story, and I’ve no idea how much of this is verifiable fact, about Madonna when she came to appear on Top of the Pops once, demanded a life-size cardboard cut-out of Pope John Paul II. Apparently the BBC had to borrow a waxwork from Madame Tussauds.

Next up, we went to the Blue Peter garden. Its pretty weird seeing something you’ve seen on TV hundreds of times in the, er, flesh. It turns out that the vast majority of the stuff in the garden is bunched into one corner, as that’s where the camera tower points. I wanted a photo of me doing a thumbs up next to the pets graves, but, alas, there wasn’t really time, and I guess the BBC wouldn’t have been too pleased with me.

Interestingly, just outside the garden was a mural on the wall of Studio 9 (the former CBBC studio) of all of the Blue Peter presenters (and pets) past and present – including Richard “Sacked for Cocaine” Bacon.

The final stop on the tour was the news centre. We got to sit in the conference room whilst they told us about the news. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any actual news studios, but then, I guess its pretty difficult to present a rolling news channel if you’ve got some tourists turning up to look around.

The tour was excellent though – the icing on the cake was the TARDIS in the BBC reception. Apparently it isn’t just a replica, and was used as the, er, actual, TARDIS for quite a while on the old series of Doctor Who. I dare-say that it was a little bit disappointing that there’s nothing inside, but I guess I’ve just been deceived by TV, again. First faking Bargain Hunt, now this!

The Foreign Office

We also went and had a look around the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, which was formerly the India Office. This was especially cool as its usually closed to the public, because its quite difficult to manipulate weaker states for your own evil ends if the general public are watching – they might blow the gaffe.

A couple of things surprised me about the building. First of all, it wasn’t just a load of offices with out of date computers covered in post-it notes like other branches of government. It was one of the most ridiculously ornate buildings this side of Paris. There were statues of famous generals everywhere, opulently decorated domes and the walls were practically caked in historical tat and nicknacks.

There was one particularly fancy room that had apparently been used to sign a treaty to ease European tensions in 1925. Needless to say it couldn’t have been a particularly effective treaty.

The second thing that surprised me was the massive courtyard in the middle of the FCO – which seems to be the same for most massive governmental/palace buildings in London (and indeed Paris). They look like huge structures from the outside – yet get inside and there’s just a big empty space. One advantage of being allowed into this courtyard was that there’s an archway that links both it and the front door of 10 Downing Street. So you can get a front-on view of Number 10, rather than an obscured sideways view like you get from standing on Whitehall. It was like watching telly, only from slightly further away, on an arch-shaped screen, without Nick Robinson jabbering on in front of the door.

The third surprising, and perhaps most worrying thing was that at the FCO I didn’t actually see anyone working. I mean, obviously there were security people and guides, but there didn’t seem to be anyone doing any actual foreign policy. Because it was Open House weekend, did they just send all of the staff home? Do foreign affairs not happen on a Sunday? Do they tell Iran to call back on Monday? What if North Korea were to ring up and threaten a nuclear war… will they just get an answer phone message? “Thank you for calling Britain. Our opening hours are weekdays from 9am until 5pm. Please leave a message after the tone or call back later. BEEP.”

Either way, the FCO was pretty good.

London is excellent.

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London Again
September 1st, 2007 at 23:53

Over the summer, I think I’ve been to London more times than I have to the town centre of my own town. Yesterday was no exception; I went to London to be an awful tourist again with Katy. The day was alarmingly expensive, as rather than go to free museums like skanks, we went and had a look at attractions that you have to pay for.

First of all, as it was an important day – Princess Diana was supposed to be descending from Heaven or something. So we went to Buckingham Palace and the Chapel where the service was being held to see what was happening… she was the Queen Of Our Hearts after all. There were just a lot of people about, so we didn’t stick around or see any celebrities, unfortunately.

We decided to go to the Tower of London. And it was pretty good – it damn well should have been for the £13 entry fee. A Yeoman warder gave a brief tour of the grounds. He was more “fun” than you’d expect him to be – making jokes about the horrible murder of the two Princes at the Tower a few hundred years ago, that sort of thing.

The tour had four stops, and concluded in the church that’s within the grounds, where Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Gray and her husband were buried. As a republican atheist, I think its safe to say that it felt a tiny bit awkward.

The Crown Jewels are housed in the Tower too – you can tell where they are as they’re the only bit where the guard outside, rather than being an old beardy chap in a dress, hold a machine gun with a bayonet, marches and never smiles. The jewels themselves are pretty good, if not a little bit gaudy. I mean, I get it, the Royals are an anti-democratic institution who have a fair bit of cash – there’s no need to flaunt it that much.

After the Tower of London, we decided to head to the London Eye, but we took the river boat rather than the boring old tube. It was expensive, at £12, but well worth it. Not because of the views – I’ve been to London loads of times recently, and know the area like the back of my hand – it’s got to the point where I no longer get excited when I see the Royal Institute of Civil Engineers. I liked it because of the commentary.

It wasn’t a tour boat. It was essentially a train that could float and inexplicably carries exclusively tourists. A voice came over the tannoy explaining that whilst it wasn’t a tour, the driver felt compelled to give a commentary to not let down the tourists. He was a proper cock-er-ney too, and this made it excellent.

He said “Nahh” instead of “now”, and dropped the leading ‘H’ on words. He even said “Not a lot of people know that”, a few times, sounding exactly like the Dead Ringers impression of Michael Caine (aka Greg Dyke). He also had exactly the mindset you’d expect a proper Londoner to have:

“Nahh, this ‘ere to your right is the London Ass’embly. It cost forty-two mill-yon pahnds ahnd two mill’yon of ‘at was spent on consultants to come up with a name. Ahfter ahll ‘at, they called it City ‘all”.

It was hilarious. I think cockneys are generally hilarious. I guess this might become a problem if I ever live in London.

The London Eye was excellent, narrowly justifying the £15 it costs to go on it. The views it gives are pretty incredible – you can see everything from the ground directly below the Eye to the roof of the Houses of Parliament, where bang in the middle is a portacabin. Classy. Apparently it’s where Parliamentary employees go for a smoke now that it’s been banned indoors.

Unfortunately, this was the one trip to London where I forgot to take my camera. Its a good job I didn’t see anything terribly famous I might want to have a photo of me in front of.

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