Yeah, I quite likegoing to zoos. Katy and I decided to “up the ante” today (whatever that means) and take a trip to a Safari Park, where we’d actually get dangerously close the animals.
One thing I worried about before going, aside from potentially being eaten by lions, was the car insurance implications. I mean, do the park pay for any damage the monkeys make? Or do I have to swap insurance details with the monkey, then ring my insurer and try and explain to them how a primate smashed in the bonnet?
Unlike most worries, this was not baseless: a monkey did actually jump on to the car, and wouldn’t go away. So I ended up driving along with a monkey on the roof to try and knock it off.
After the drive though bit, where we came up-close with a rhino, a bear, a lion – all of the scary animals basically, you can park your car and look around a more traditional Zoo-like area. Unlike zoos though, the animals don’t tend to be behind fences, and you can get right up close to them. Here are some photos to prove this point, in case you, er, don’t believe me:
Lots of Wallabies at feeding time.
A lemur? Something like that.
Me, scared of a peacock.
Hello, new Facebook profile picture.
The best bit though was undoubtedly an aviary, where you can just walk in and be surrounded by birds. Whilst this doesn’t sound too spectacular, you could buy nectar in little cups, so that when you walk into the main area, half a million birds swarm around you and land on you, fighting over the food. Here’s a short video (and I do mean short- it’s only 26 seconds, unlike the eight minute epics I’ve been producing lately):
In retrospect, instead of saying “Hello” to the bird at the end, I should have said “So, do you come here often?” to maximise the gag. I guess this is why proper film makers write scripts.
I was in Leicester earlier today with Katy, and we were walking past some road works. For the past eternity they’ve been re-paving the majority of the city centre. For some reason, when discussing how long it is taking with Katy (we’d exhausted discussions on the sciences and the arts, clearly) I thought it’d be suitably wry to claim that it’s “political correctness gone mad!”
Cleverly, not only was I remarking on the redundancy of the term, satirising the right-wing obsession with applying it to all sorts of tenuous situations, but it was also highlighting how ridiculous it was that they’re still digging up the pavements. Er, basically I was just talking shit and proving that I’m not very witty in real time conversation.
So I exclaimed “it’s political correctness gone mad!” waving my arms about to emphasise my words, when completely unexpectedly, a passing pedestrian decided to take me to task on my misapplication of the term.
The man, who to paint a picture , was about 35, of moderately large build with short black hair, quite excitedly said “It’s not political correctness gone mad! They’re [the builders are] all white! Where’s the Muslims?!”
Whilst he had a point, it strikes me as slightly odd that you’d interrupt other people’s conversations you’re overhearing to point this out. It was just a bit… unexpected. If I wanted to be engaged in conversation by strangers I’d hang out near some charity muggers or post a deliberately contrary opinion on an internet forum.
So I’m going to award him my Nutter of the Week award. I admit this is probably the lamest yet.
So yeah, if you’ve watched the video below, and I hope you have done considering the sheer amount of toil involved, you probably know that yesterday I went with Katy to London, and watched a historic day in the history of History unfolding: the transfer of power from one Prime Minister to another.
If you had the 2560×1920 version of this, it’d be your desktop wallpaper too.
We tubed to Embankment station and walked down Whitehall to College Green. The plan was to get to Parliament and see if we could blag our way into the last Prime Ministers Questions. We were unsuccessful, unsurprisingly. But walking down Whitehall, who should we see heading towards Downing Street, but none-other than TV’s Huw Edwards. I’m not sure if he noticed me excitedly saying to Katy “Holy shit! It’s Huw Edwards… fucking hell! Huw Edwards!”, whilst wildly pointing at him. I hope he did.
Bizarrely, despite the old adage saying that the camera adds weight, he seemed to have a fatter face in real life than I remember from the TV. Rubbish geeky quip: maybe the BBC studio uses 2.35:1 ratio cameras and they squash the picture?
When we got to Parliament, we were told by a woman working there that there were no tickets available until “about 12:30″ (the time PMQs ends) – she seemed completely oblivious to the significance of the day.
It was like a village fete. I even saw a vicar walking about.
College Green was a hub of excitement – and according to Wikipedia – the roof of an underground car park. All of the news crews were there. You can tell its a big day when they’ve got the gazebos out. The BBC were there, Sky were there. ITN were probably there but they didn’t make themselves very visible. Even the Austrian national broadcaster, ORF were there.
Quentin Davies, a man who claimed the Tories had no principles, being interviewed. He jumped ship to Labour, presumably because he had, er, no Conservative principles either.
As we got in everyone’s way, we noticed a number of big names. There was Julie Etchingham (Newsround circa-1996) presenting live for Sky, Jon Sopel (a man who is fluent in French, unneccessary fact fans) presenting live on News 24. I was surprised to see Andrew Rawnsley there, not only because ITV seemed to have opted for broadcasting mindless bullshit in the form of This Morning, rather than covering the most important political event in ages, but because his jaw is even more massive in real life. I’m not sure why I keep judging celebrities on their faces.
Quentin Davies, the Tory defecator defector was there being interviewed too, as was Tessa Jowell. On watching the News 24 coverage when I got home I was impressed with her. When Jon Sopel interviews her if she thought she still had a job, the ultra-Blairite said that she’d love to stay in the cabinet, despite it being obvious that she was destined for the figurative rolled up carpet in the back of Brown’s figurative Mafia car. Knowing this, quite incredibly, she said “but that’s not what today is about”, religiously defending the incoming Brown regime. That’s pretty impressive, as if I were sacked, I wouldn’t religiously defend my former employer. But then, I don’t do anythingreligiously.
As PMQs drew to a close, we wandered down from College Green back to Whitehall, where by now crowds were starting to gather. There are some hinged barriers in front of the gates of Downing Street which are used to keep the proles back whenever people need to get in and out – despite the barriers being in use, as we were all standing in a big crowd waiting for Tony to fuck off, normal pedestrians, seemingly uninterested by the day’s festivities tried to push their way through the crowds carrying multiple bags of shopping from Tesco’s, only to get frustrated and turn back when they realise the barriers were in use.
Not being funny, but who goes and does their shopping, then on the most important and widely publicised political day of the year decides to go home via Whitehall? Would they just have walked past Downing Street without giving it a second thought? Is that how Londoner’s operate? “Oh, it’s only Downing Street, so what?”.
We witnessed Tony come back from PMQs as his car swept into Downing Street for one final time. After maybe half an hour the gates opened again and his car whisked him off to the Palace. It was a bit underwhelming in a way, as the whole car passing bit lasted maybe twelve seconds, and the windows were tinted so we couldn’t even see him.
Across the road were some anti-war protesters dressed as Guantanamo detainees – despite having the best viewing spot of everyone gathered there, they unfathomably decided to wear black bags over their heads so they couldn’t see what was going on. I’m all for staying in character, but this was history in the making, and they missed it.
Gordon Brown lightens the serious mood by walking like a robot.
After this, following a tip-off from the political blogs, we headed down to the Treasury, as we knew that’d be where Gordon Brown was leaving from before heading off to the Palace himself. Katy and I got a spectacular viewing position – if it weren’t for the hundreds of armed police officers in the vicinity, I could have easily happy-slapped Gordon Brown as he left. Take a look at the video to see for yourself.
Sky’s Jeremy Thompson (doing a pre-record, in which we were clearly visible in the background) and Jon Craig were there (doing a live), and the BBC’s Carol… someone or other was there. Michael Crick was there for Newsnight too.
Man gets into car, shock.
Again, this only lasted a few seconds after quite a long wait. Brown walked out, waved a bit, got into a Ministerial car and was off. The media were calling it a “limousine”, whereas Katy rightly pointed out it was a red Vauxhall of sorts… which doesn’t look or sound too fancy.
After this was over, we headed down Horseguards Road, round the back of Downing Street, heading towards the Mall. Excellently, parked up on Horseguard’s Parade were Tony Blair’s Removal Vans. Here’s a photo with me by them:
Worldwide relocation? Blair’s not moving to The Hague is he?
I could have been standing literally inches away from Tony Blair’s guitar or Cherie Blair’s juggling balls.
Yesterday, Katy and I went down to London to watch the big Prime Ministerial changeover. Here’s what happened in video form. Words and pictures to follow shortly:
Long term readers, assuming you exist, are probably vaguely familiar with some of the stupid videos that I’ve made. I think its fair to say that my three “best” videos thus far have been maybe the time I went to the Space Centre with Katy, my trip to London in April, and a trip to Twycross Zoo. Yesterday, being someone who has horrendously original ideas, and doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase “flogging a dead horse“, I, er, went to London Zoo… with Katy. And did a video:
As you can probably tell from the video, the zoo portion of the day went swimmingly (think back to the aquarium bits and this is puntastic). We saw lots of animals, as, er, you might expect: zebras, monkeys, pigs with moustaches, lions, lizards, llamas (with excellent faces), a ferret, which bit the trainer’s arm, and an excellent guinea pig. (Photos? Here.)
Travel logistics seemed to be a bit of a recurring issue all day though. First off, as I explain at length in the video, actually finding the zoo was a lot of hassle – its not as well sign posted you might expect, and Regent’s Park is a few magnitudes larger than a “normal” park too. Here’s a map of the route we took. (I think this is easily the most web 2.0 blog entry ever).
On leaving the zoo, it turned out that it was actually really close to what a countryside person like myself would describe as Camden town centre. So after eating we got the tube back to the train station to go home, only to discover that because it was now “peak time”, our tickets weren’t valid. Bugger. So we had about two and a half hours to kill, so we did the most obvious thing and went to Westminster (via the circle line clockwise, tedious travel fans).
I love Westminster. From the second we left the tube, I was reeling off near-guidebook calibre trivia (slight exaggeration) constantly. “Bloody hell, it’s the Cenotaph!”, “Look! Banqueting House! That’s the last remaining part of the Palace of Whitehall! Oh My God! Ofgem!“. I think my boundless enthusiasm for all things London began to irritate Katy at this point. Probably because aside from enthusiasm for seeing the road where the Channel 4 Headquarters is, we both knew that I was sort of cheating, having studied up on the area only a few months ago.
We ended up sitting outside Parliament just in time for the six o’clock news – where we saw Sky News’ John Craig do a piece to camera live, and another broadcaster (I guess ITN) do the same thing. It was especially interesting to see that by ten past six, with the live done and dusted, they packed up and went home. Presumably they were all home in time for the regional news.
When we got back to St Pancras station to try and get home, the train had been delayed for yet another hour, and worse still, the trains that were scheduled for later on seemed to drop certain stations to presumably get back on track faster – meaning that it was nothing but hassle trying to get on the correct train. I’d call Midland Mainline the Stasi again to try and kick up a fuss, but I think that’d be too much of a compliment – presumably the Stasi were well organised, efficient and knew how to handle a crisis – completely unlike Midland Mainline.
I was travelling to university on the train today, and I met Katy on there. After a few minutes, our conversation got on to the topic of the TV series 24. All of a sudden, a head popped up from the seats behind where I was sitting, and there was an old man with a battered face and a raincoat staring at Katy, who was sitting opposite me.
“I do not wish to hear your conversation”, he said in a quiet, considered way. We were probably being quite loud by the standards of the rest of the carriage, so Katy apologised and we spoke more quietly, with no projection in our voices.
A couple of minutes passed, and he popped up again, and still seemed to have an issue with the volume which we were speaking at. After repeating that we were speaking too loudly, he offered some advice: that you express things with words and not volume. He laboured this point quite a bit – and Katy who had merely been slack-jawed and making a monotone squawking sound prior to this sagelyadvice, changed her tune.
We reduced our volume further – literally speaking no louder than a “loud whisper”, in the sort of way you do if you’re whispering but want to make it obvious that you’re trying to conceal something.
A couple of minutes later, and nearly at the station, the man’s head appears over the top of the seat again. He seemed pretty irate this time, as you could hear the anger in his voice as he stressed each syllable: “Words… Not… Volume“. I was getting pretty worried at this point- he seemed to be focusing all of his anger on Katy and not me, so I was worried that I might have had to intervene and try and mediate the situation, by saying “leave it out, it’s not worth it”.
I thought Katy was going to explode with anger, as you could see it in her face that was covered in pointy eyebrows and a tense jaw. I could see her clenched fists as she calmly, but firmly replied something along the lines of “I’m sorry sir, but I have reduced the volume at which I am speaking, and I am sorry if this offends you. I’m getting off at the next station so you only have to put up with it for a couple of more minutes”. Imagine her saying that entirely in italics and underlined, as that is what it sounded like.
The unfortunate thing was that the bloke, the Nutter of the Week, seemed to win. Slightly shocked at what had happened made us a bit lost for words, meaning that all we could do was silently look at each other with an expression of “what the fuck?”. As we left the train, a couple of other passengers commented that he was an arse, which was fun.
I think the strangest thing is that he seemed to only pick on Katy and not myself – despite me being equally as loud an, er, loudmouth, and at least twice as arrogant. We’ve come up with a few working theories to explain his actions:
He watches 24, and doesn’t want to hear any spoilers from, er, season one.
He’s old, and thus assumes that women should be seen and not heard, hence why he didn’t mind me shouting my mouth off.
He’s old, and thus homophobic, and possibly Christian, because at the time Katy was explaining that she thought one of the actresses in 24 was “pretty”. And the word “pretty” is obviously a youth slang term for her desire to have a lesbian encounter with the person she is describing… and this offends him?
He’s just a nutter.
I think the last theory is the most likely – after all, you’d have to be slightly unhinged to pick an argument over a minor issue on an almost empty train. I think most sane people would simply opt not to cause a fuss and move seat if they can’t bear “raised voices”, as that’s the British thing to do.
Today Katy and I went to the National Space Centre in Leicester. Neither of us had been before, and I think its fair to say that it’s probably the closest either of us are going to get to actually going into space, so it was all good.
Here’s a picture of me and a rocket (Katy refused to be pictured, presumably because she thought you readers would be too busy looking at me to notice her anyway):
It was much like you’d expect- exhibits, old spacey things, and visual metaphors to illustrate the relative mass of the planets.
There was one exhibit there that claimed to be a “Martian meteorite”- I’d love it if any scientists reading could explain to me how a bit of rock can go from Mars, float up out of Mars’ atmosphere across space and then hit the Earth, as I can’t even make a ridiculous uninformed assumption to explain that.
On the journey there, I also thought of another irritating science question that seemed to scare Katy a bit: gravity is proportional to mass, right? So if we keep sending stuff into space and not getting it back, there’s less matter on Earth, and thus Earth’s gravity will decrease? Similarly, if technology gets to a point like in Red Dwarf where we’re mining on Jupiter and bringing resources back to Earth, surely it will reach a point where Earth’s gravity will increase, fucking a few things up? I realise these will only have a tiny difference, but surely even that will (eventually) make a difference?
And energy and matter can be “changed into each other”, for lack of a scientific sounding word… and energy doesn’t have mass, right? Thus, if we keep burning all of the oil and so on, surely the earth will lose a lot of mass and thus gravity?
I’m not sure what point I’m making. I’m probably talking rubbish.
But anyway, also there was an IMAX style cinema, where the pictures are projected on to a dome on the ceiling, meaning that you get essentially 180 degrees of video. Disappointingly, the film was a Toy Story-esque computer generated, but it was still interesting. Beforehand there was a safety announcement, with the advice being that if you feel nauseous, you should, er, close your eyes. The one scene that stood out for me was when a character had the dangers of space travel humorously demonstrated on him- freezing and weightlessness, and so on. At the end of the scene the character took revenge on the professor character subjecting him to these things by sending him up into space on a firework.
As the firework was being set-up on screen, the narrator told us how most space fatalities occur on take off and landing. The firework takes off and explodes in almost exactly the same way as the Challenger space shuttle. Tasteful.
Perhaps the scariest part of the day was when I had a go at presenting the weather. (You’ll see me explain all this on the video below too.) Inexplicably, like every museum or place of learning that I’ve been to, all have a chromakey setup going that lets you pretend you’re a weather presenter. I think the tenuous link here is that satellites are used to forecast the weather.
So I enter the booth, and press the “go” button, and the TV instructs me to read the autocue and point at things on the map. It starts up, so I try my best for a few seconds, reading accurately and pointing and everything, before suddenly becoming incredibly self concious. I believe I just stopped, looked out of the booth towards Katy and remarked “what the fuck am I doing? I look ridiculous”, before leaving. Unfortunately for me, the booth had been recording my performance, and played it back on a TV outside after the autocue had finished doing its thing. And it had a loud speaker. So all we heard was “What the fuck am I doing? I look ridiculous” echoing all over the Space Centre, with me on the TV screen… which was being watched by a few small children. Whoops. I think it must have played it back a few times as well – it certainly felt like a long time.
Here’s a video of my day:
I’d like to thank Katy for coming, and TomTom for getting us there. And the Cold War for developing the technology that made the Space Centre possible.
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