Interview with Shadow Defence Sec Liam Fox
June 5th, 2009 at 18:23

I went down to Westminster today to see what was going on, and to check if Gordon Brown was still the Prime Minister or not. I bumped into Shadow Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox whilst down there – so seizing the moment I thought I better ask him something. I am now officially a citizen journalist:

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More reasons to love London (and Twitter)
February 4th, 2009 at 23:26

One of the best things about living in London is that there’s so much going on in almost every sense of the phrase, and thanks to a superb public transport network, you can string together different activities to have the most eclectic of adventures. For example, on the same day you may find yourself at a talk in a pub on UFOs and then less than half an hour later be watching a rap battle. Or you might spend the day at some fairly academic science lectures putting faces to authors of books you’ve read, and then spend the evening watching punk poets in a squat surrounded by people flouting  the smoking ban and all sorts of other European laws covering health and safety.

It’s even more exciting if the activities are fairly impromptu and unplanned. The other week I visited the Imperial War Museum with @katyhaughey (this was pre-meditated), and later on found a cinema showing the George Bush biopic ‘W’ for dirt cheap, starting just 15 minutes after we walked past. A couple of months ago now after a day at uni, my friend Eve and I ended up going to see the Dark Knight at the IMAX for FREE because we happened to be walking past and some people were (inexplicably) trying to give away their tickets). If I were a less rational man I might claim that mystical forces were at play. Though then again, if I were a less rational man I might also claim the Holocaust didn’t happen, so it’s probably good that I’m not.

The reason I tell you all of this is not just to provide some “SEO” for my blog, but because something similar has happened again this evening. Whilst in a fairly mundane seminar at uni today, I noticed that celebrity comedian Chris Addison had twittered that he was doing a gig at the British Library at half six. It was about half five at the time. I messaged him asking for details and he explained that his fellow comedians Rory Bremner, Paul Sinha and Andy Zaltzman were going to be there too.

So I hopped on a tube to Kings Cross as quickly as I could, got to the British Library and learnt that it was an event called “Political Animal“, part of the civil liberties exhibition they’ve got on at the moment, and that tickets were still available and only a fiver. And then I spent the evening unexpectedly enjoying some brilliant political comedy – all thanks to Twitter and living in City of Dreams.

Excellent.

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“Bush Burning” Squat gig in Peckham
January 18th, 2009 at 22:10

I had an amazing day on Saturday, of the type which could only really take place in London. I spent the day at the Centre for Inquiry’s ‘Weird Science’ lectures with my friend Eve. It was pretty excellent – basically Dawkinistas preaching to the choir about how excellent rational inquiry is and how shit creationism is, which is just the sort of thing I like.

The line-up was immense too – there was Richard Wiseman talking about psychic dogs, Chris French talking about psychology and conspiracy theories, Stephen Law, author of the superb Philosophy Gym, explaining how creationism is unscientific and talking about the philosophy of evidence based reason, and ended with Ben Goldacre telling us stories about bullshit science that appears in the newspapers and how I think my job actually makes me partially complicit in it.

This was held at the Conway Hall near Holborn… but it wasn’t the only event being hosted there that day. There was also this:

I assure you that this is 100% real.

The reason I give all of this exposition is because it juxtaposes brilliantly with what I did yesterday evening. Having spent the day surrounded by the most rational people in London, in the evening we – Eve and myself, joined by our friend Sinead – went to a party organised by Eve’s aunt in Peckham, to celebrate the end of the Bush administration. It was a ‘Bush Burning’ party and was being held at a squat. In Peckham.

It was certainly something that a few months ago I’d never have thought I’d do – I mean, a squat… in Peckham? I’d have to be a right plonker to go, right? The chances of being murdered would be ridiculously high.

The bus to Peckham was quite ominous. As we descended further into the depths of the (dare I say) slightly Birmingham-esque south London things became a whole lot bleaker. They say where the trains go prosperity will follow, citing the trans-American railroad or London’s own Metroland metropolitan railway as an example – the opposite seems to be true too. The tube rarely dips south of the river, and as a consequence, Peckham seems pretty grim.

We knew we’d got to the squat when we saw some metal gates that had been hand painted and covered in pictures of sunbeams and the sort of hippy tat that allows a place to be described as unique or having ‘character’. The trouble was the gates were locked. So how else could we get in? On the wall adjoining the gates there was a wooden doorway – like a shed door complete with shed door handle – and we could see the glow of light eminating from behind it. After dithering for a while, we determined that this must be the way in.

Opening the door was quite a shock. Rather than seeing unemployed wasters with scented candles doing some collectivised farming like you might expect at a squat, we instead saw what looked like a very close approximation of a third world sweatshop. Hidden away in darkest Peckham in a building partially constructed inside a railway arch, there were Chinese people manufacturing clothes on large industrial machinery in a rudimentary factory. It didn’t look like the sort of place that would allow the workers to take breaks or unionise. When a rather angry looking manager came over to the three of us, we discovered that his dodgy factory was not in fact part of the squat.

So we waited around outside and just as we were planning to leave, Eve’s aunt, the organiser of the party, turned up to let us through the gates.

I don’t think she was the most “conventional” of aunts. I get the impression that she’s probably never been to a WI bake sale or that sort of thing. What was a little surprising was that she was much, much cooler than her niece (or me, for that matter). Despite obviously being about twice my or Eve’s age, she goths up considerably – big boots, black chains and all – she wouldn’t look out of place in Camden.

She opened up the gates and led us to the squat building. To get there we had to walk through what you might generously describe as a “garden” or “car park”. There were parked cars, caravans and greenhouses (I wonder what they were growing…).  Of course, it was unlit – the perfect place for committing murder (we were in Peckham).

The squat itself is a former community centre that was abandoned by the council so the squatters moved in. If you want to get a feel for it, imagine basically a cross between Byker Grove and a crack den.

Taking a deep breath, and with a great sense of trepidation, we stepped inside. And what we saw was a shock: It was actually pretty cool looking inside. There was a stage, a bar and a proper sound system setup – all without having to go the trouble of worrying about things like live music performance licenses, permits and fire exit that The Man tries to force them to have. Screw the law requiring fire exits to be clearly labelled and lit at all times… that’s just The Man trying to tell us where to go in the event of a fire.

There were sofas around the edge of the room and hanging from the ceiling was a spinning yellow polystyrene “smiley face” on one side of the stage and, bizarrely, a cut-out of the word “innit” spiinning on the other. I’m probably not selling this very well, but essentially it came across as cool and trendy, and untainted by the commercialism of, er, legitimate musical venues. Basically it was punk as fuck. This was underlined by the soundman having a mug that had the Starbucks logo modified to say “Fuck off” on the side.

As you might imagine, it was like a different era – not only were there mentions of the miners strike and the struggle of workers, but people were flouting the ban and smoking indoors. I don’t think they were just smoking tobacco either – there was a horrible stench of drugs that wafted across us with some regularity, and I’m about 60% sure there was a man there who was casually toking on his crackpipe. I don’t know what a crackpipe specifically looks like, but there was a young man smoking a pipe, and he didn’t strike me as the Tony Benn type.

The first act on stage merely confirmed the punk credentials of the squat, as if being a legal-grey area, grassroots organisation full of crackpipes and crackpots was not enough. He was a “punk poet”. Attila the Stockbroker, as he called himself, performed some poems that totally stuck it to the man. I’m not normally a fan of poetry – in fact, I like to think that I’ve built my reputation on the back of my loathing of the so-called “artform”, but Attila won himself an awful lot of goodwill from me when right at the start of the set he denounced literature student-esque poetry as being rubbish (confirming my opinions) and then launching into some good old fashioned left-wingery:

The next people on stage were a succession of acoustic artists who had a common theme linking their songs: they were all about the Bush administration. Much like Attila’s poetry, these hard lefties were not familiar with allegories or metaphors, so the songs were pretty transparently political. Excellent.

After this came the main event of the evening: the purpose of the party. The Bush Burning.

In the garden area a bonfire had been constructed close to a wooden frame containing effigies of Bush, Blair and Brown. As you’ll see in the video, it was actually a lot more disturbing than we were expecting. Whilst burning a Guy on bonfire night is all good fun, there’s something that seems slightly more sinister about implying the death of still living people. What’s more, given the ramshackle nature of the squat, there were a lot of visual echoes of mob justice and lynchings and the like – for people who minutes earlier were singing songs about how international law had been broken and the like, they seemed awfully keen on the extra-judicial killing of these effigies. Sure, it was only symbolism, but it still left something of a nasty taste in your mouth.

That said, the taste could have been the embers raining down on us from the fire that looked as though it could get out of control. I’m no council bureaucrat (though I’d love to be), but I’m pretty sure there must be some rules on starting big fires like that, without so much as a fire extinguisher or healthy and safety officer to hand – London doesn’t have a particularly good record with fires, after all. (This said, if the fire had spread, this blog could make me the new Samuel Pepys).

After this, we all traipsed back inside the squat to see an old-fashioned sounding punk band play some songs. I say “old fashioned” because the members of the band were my parents age, played three chords and had one song where the only lyrics were “money talks” shouted over and over again. It was punk as fuck.

We left shortly after this on the basis that going home any later than midnight in Peckham is almost definitely going to get us murdered. Over all it was an amazing, bewildering and bizarre experience – similar to the rap battle in that respect.

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Every hip-hop stereotype is true
December 10th, 2008 at 03:18

A few weeks ago I was joking with my trendy new London friends, Eve and Hel, about wanting to go to a rap battle after watching a few on YouTube. For the uninitiated, a rap battle is when two rappers get up on stage and slag each other off whilst “freestyling”. I never actually expected to end up going to a rap battle, but then that’s what happens when you live in a city which has everything.

So we decided to go to The Jump Off, at The Astoria, which is a monthly festival of hip-hoppery, which pleasingly, is almost exactly how you would imagine it to be, as it turns out that every hip-hop stereotype is true.

What made this all the more interesting is that immediately prior to going here, we attended a Skeptics in the Pub debate on UFOs with psychologist Chris French from Goldsmiths Uni and UFO crackpot Nick Pope. It was very much the antithesis of hip-hop: you’d need a collective noun for Guardian readers to describe the demographics there. This was actually superb – both French and Pope swapped sides and argued using each others arguments, just for the intellectual challenge. The best bit though, was that it provided an interesting contrast.

We weren’t really sure what to expect at the Jump Off, because to be honest, we’re all a bit middle class (Hel especially – she went to grammar school). This is something of a disadvantage in the hip-hop scene because if you don’t have an unpleasant back-story you’re not considered to have much credibility. We did plan to hip-hop up our appearances a bit – the others bought baseball caps and so on, but we didn’t care wear them in the end. We did try to modify our personalities slightly though – for example, Hel had to change her intonation when mentioning her Estate, to being merely ‘the estate’, and I if asked, planned to respond that my degree is from the “University of Life” (it was a BA (dishons) Stabbin’ with Beatboxin’).

We joined the queue for the Astoria and within seconds, a man said to us “Want some weed?”, so we immediately knew this could get interesting. This was only confirmed whem the man on the door asked us what gig we were here for, as we clearly didn’t look like the hip-hop demographic.

Walking through the door frame, I was subject to a rather ominous frisking. Though having your bag searched is quite a regular occurence at London gig venues, usually it’s just a case of the bouncers taking a half-hearted glance at your bag and saying “that’s fine”, though in this case, my arms and legs were thoroughly patted-down and I had to turn out all of my pockets. This certainly exacerbated any anxiety I had about getting murdered.

What struck me on entering the venue was not, thankfully, a knife or some stray bullets, but just how out of place we looked. Not because we were three white people at a gig for a genre with a predominantly black fanbase, but because everyone else looked like they knew about hip-hop and rap and stuff – they all decorated themselves with chains and knives and sportswear. My hip-hop knowledge extends as far as The Beastie Boys and Flobots. Also, I probably have more hair than every other man who was in that room put together.

Interestingly, they were filming it all for YouTube and presumably the telly at some point – so look forward to seeing my face looking slightly bewildered in the background of some promotional material soon!

The bill was an interesting one – it seemed to cover all of the hip-hop bases. We got there a little late, so the first act that we saw was comedian Toju, who was apparently on the dire Balls of Steel, who was described on the poster as being a “militant black guy” – so as you might imagine, his set had some uncomfortable moments for the three people with probably the pastiest skin there, as I’m sure we all collectively prayed “please don’t pick on me”. Thankfully, he wasn’t that sort of comedian, but did enter the stage saying “all the black people in the audience say ‘yeah’” to a humungous cheer, followed by “all of the white people in the audience say ‘yeah’” which led to a few weak grunts from around the room. The rest of his set was jokes and an awful lot of libel about various hip-hop celebrities which I’m sure would be excellent if you understood the references and didn’t just listen to ska.

Afterwards, and in-between acts, a DJ played some tunes (laid down some beats?), in which most of the songs sampled sound effects of gunshots. They songs also sounded more-or-less the same. Unlike ska. Ahem.

Next up was what could best be described as a Whores Fashion Show. Presumably at the behest of one of the corporate sponsors, the apparent finalists for “Miss Hip-Hop” paraded around the stage for a few minutes in what could best be described as clothing designed by the colourblind. In a few cases, it appeared that they’d forgotten to finish getting fully dressed before entering the stage – I assume it was because of time pressure, as the event was running slightly behind the published schedule.

There were also some men on stage (I don’t think there was a corresponding “Mr Hip-Hop” competition), who didn’t seem to know much about fashion either. A lot of the costumes consisted of a hoodie and trousers with the same pattern on. I’m dimly aware that it’s embarassing for women if two women show up for something wearing the same dress, and I experience similar anxiety if I see people wearing the same t-shirt (complete with witty slogan/logo/etc) as me – so I’d assume turning up wearing the same patterned trousers and hoodie are the ultimate embarassment. Not that they seemed too bothered.

The next segment was called “Got Talent”, in which members of the audience demonstrated their hip-hop skill to the audience in a bid to win fifty quid. This was pretty entertaining. There was a mixture of beatboxing, rapping (both with a beat and acapella) and normal singing. Like with any talent contest, the calibre of the talent was varied, and the audience were encouraged to cheer or boo the contestants. Whilst it was harrowing and a little heartbreaking to see people get shot down and their dreams smashed in front of their eyes by a few hundred people booing, this was offset slightly by hearing people in the audience “brap” the rubbish performers. I first learnt this from my mate Dan:”brapping” is when you make a gun shape with your fingers and shout “brap, brap” – it’s gunfire, you see. Way to dispell the stereotypes, hip-hoppers.

My favourite thing about this segment was that most of the contestants were the sort of people I’d cross the road to avoid walking past, and that all of the rappers had given themselves rap names. One contestant, who called himself ‘Stabs’ (no, really), was surprisingly threatening in a Wolf-from-Gladiators sort of way, getting moody when he was knocked out of the competition. As it turned out, most of the raps people did were about how difficult it is living in South London. I’m glad I live north of the river.

In the end the winner though, was a singer who we speculate won only because he was singing in a very heartfelt way about his mother. How much he liked her, I mean, rather than implying that she was a prostitute that he would like to shoot.

After the talent segment, it finally reached the point in the evening we’d all been waiting for – the rap battle. It was a special ‘grudge rematch’ between Micky Negro and Arkaic – who had duelled previously. It was phenomenal.

Obviously, all previously held values we had about racism, sexism and homophobia being bad had to be suspended – not an easy task when you’re there with two fairly militant feminists, but it was an incredible sight to see. Arkaic got served. And it totally made the whole evening worthwhile. The audience were really into it to, reacting to every rhyme with great enthusiasm. The freestyling was genuinely impressive too – the rappers reacted to what was going on around them and to what their opponent was saying. There was, of course, a lot of lazy rhymes calling their opponent “gay” or “whack” but there were also a lot of clever ones too.

I think the battle could have gone either way until Arkaic, a white guy, made the mistake of bringing racial matters to the forum. When he claimed that Micky Negro had a face that looked like it had been “hit by a frying pan” because he was black, he seemed to lose the audience’s sympathy, leading to Micky Negro’s final knock-out line of “This is like Barack Obama versus John McCain”, at which point the audience went wild, leading to a crescendo in which the DJ weighed in with some dramatic scratching, even though he still had time on the clock – it was clear who the winner was going to be.

Content, we left soon after this, not bothering to stay for the final “pillow fight” segment, which surprisingly, was literally just a pillow fight – there wasn’t a hidden hip-hop meaning, such as ‘pillow’ being slang for ‘gun’ or something. It was just people fighting with pillows, which seems a bit tame, really.

It was all pretty incredible really – the sort of thing that we all agreed was well worth going to, but that we should never go to again.

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Gay Rights Protest
November 16th, 2008 at 23:09

So yesterday, I went to a protest outside the American embassy. That’s right – after eight years of a disastrous Bush administration, they finally voted the good guy in, and that is when I decided to go on my first protest and hold America to account by standing in front of their building as part of a mob.

It was for a good cause though – it was against Proposition 8, the Californian constitutional amendment that will re-illegalise gay marriage there, that they bewilderingly voted in favour of on November 4th. See, previously I’d have made funny satirical references to the plight of the constantly persecuted minority of homophobes, but it looks like in California, the homophobes actually make up a slight majority of the state’s voters.

This is an issue very close to my heart, as I had been planning to move to California and marry a man.

I’m overselling my role in this slightly – I arrived horrendously late because I was pretty spectacularly ill, and then when there didn’t join in with the chanting or whatever, I was more an observer. This was mostly because my opinions are slightly more complex than something than can be summed up in a chant or a banner. I was planning to make a banner saying: “I UNDERSTAND THAT PROPOSITION 8 WAS PASSED THROUGH PROPER DEMOCRATIC PROCESS, BUT I BELIEVE THAT THIS INDICATES GREATER SOCIETAL PROBLEMS IN AMERICA, SUCH AS THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN PUBLIC LIFE, AND THE POLARISATION OF POLITICAL POSITIONS DUE TO THE STRUCTURE OF THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM, AS WELL AS A NUMBER OF OTHER ISSUES*”, and then describe my western-European solipsistic bias on the back of the banner for if I was challenged. But I couldn’t find a piece of card large enough.

What was a bit disappointing was that just how few people had turned up – on Facebook, over 800 people had been invited to the “event”, yet on the ground when I got there only around 15 people were present. According to others, at its greatest extent, there were perhaps 25 people. As I approached Grovesnor Square from the opposite side to the embassy, I approached the actually grassy part in the middle expecting to see it swarming with people and whistles being blown, and that sort of thing, but I couldn’t see anything – especially unusual as homosexuals tend to have a reputation for being colourful characters.

Even more bizarely, I can’t actual verify that there were any real life gays actually there at all. I’m straight and I was there with people who called themselves “bisexual” (which I guess sort of counts), “ambiguous” or “gender-queer” (whatever that means)… and if none did turn up, I’m slightly offended that I showed all of that solidarity and they couldn’t be bothered to make the effort for their own damn cause!

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London MCM Expo
October 26th, 2008 at 23:18

I went to the London MCM Expo today, which was basically a big gathering of nerds who like sci-fi, animé, comics, and that sort of thing. So I made a stupid video:

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Camden’s Underworld
October 25th, 2008 at 19:31

London can be a scary place at times. At a gig the other day I got talking to some punk types hanging around outside who within moments of meeting me explained how they were drinking free beer. “How’d you get it for free?”, I perhaps naively asked. “Big pockets”, came the response from a man who would a few minutes later urinate in the street in such a way that it would form a small stream along the street. It seems that in London, maybe not all of the streets are paved with gold – or at least, if they were at one point, a fair chunk of the gold has probably been stolen by now.

Yesterday I had perhaps my first proper encounter with a drug dealer. I mean, obviously a sizeable proportion of the people I went to school with are now inevitably drug dealers, but this was perhaps the first time I’d encountered a drug dealer during trading hours.

I was standing around in Camden (where else?) with my ‘crew’ and we were approached by a drunken looking man with a can of beer, who wobbled up to us and said “Would you like some cocaine?”. It surprised me because rather than do what I’d expect, and refer to the drugs by some sort of nickname, such as ‘Ivory Flakes’, he just said “cocaine”. He could have only been more obvious if he’d said “Hello, would you like some drugs?”

I always assumed drug dealers would be a little more coy. Surely you wouldn’t simply want to announce you’ve got cocaine? If I were a drug dealer, I’d stick to using obscure nicknames, so that only the target market knows what I’m talking about, rather than so any old square, like myself, knows that ILLEGAL DRUGS are what are being discussed. He wasn’t even wearing a long coat with the “merchandise” inside.

I’m sure from the tone of what I’ve written so far, you’ve probably detected that I’m not a big fan of drug dealers. This isn’t because they’re invariably unpleasant and stabtacular, but because they fail to comply with even basic retail practices.

Aside from issues surrounding soliciting business on the streets without a permit and the shirking of obligations under the Sale of Goods Act to provide a receipt for purchases, even more frustratingly drug dealers are seemingly on the side of those awful “Metric Martyrs” types who, Daily Express tucked under their arms, refuse to surrender to the “Brussels beurocrats” by not joining the Englightenment and not going metric. Drugs, as far as I’m aware, are still sold in ounces, which is no longer a valid form of measurement under European law – really if you want to buy an ounce of drugs, you should be asking for 28.35 grams.

If I were a drug dealer, I’d show them how to do it properly.

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In praise of: Transport for London
September 15th, 2008 at 19:38

I’ve decided to write this post now, whilst I’m still a London n00b, and am still awed and amazed by the bright lights and bendy buses of the capital – if the look on the faces of nearly every other commuter are anything to go by, I’ll presumably go through a period of soul crushing disappointments and will soon enough be cursing the day that Ken and his cronies were ever left in charge.

See, I’m really liking London Transport. The tube, the buses, the “proper” trains, and hell, even the riverboat services on the Thames all work as one beautiful machine. Unlike the small town where I grew up, there are train stations every few streets, and bus stops every few hundred metres, meaning that public transport and consequentially access to the rest of London are only a short walk away. Near my house, I have a tube station and an overground station within about five minutes walk. If I walk a little further, I can get to even more stations on a wide variety of lines. Hell, rather than walk, I could take the bus – along most big roads there are bus stops up and down, meaning in a lot of cases, because of the frequency of the buses (literally every four or five minutes, it seems), it could be easier to catch the bus down the road. But then, maybe I’m just incredibly easy.

I’ve owned an Oyster card for some time now – for those oblivious (ie: those north of Watford), Oyster cards are little smartcards that replace tickets, and you can top them up similar to how you do mobile phones. And brilliantly, all of London Transport is compatible with it. This means that today I’ve managed to catch a regular suburban commuter train, then a bus, and later I’ll be catching a tube, all without changing ticket. Brilliant.

Compared to what I’m used to all, this is almost science fiction – there used to be only two trains north and two trains south an hour from the one train station, and buses were so ineptly operated that the paltry four buses an hour in either direction were usually over an hour late.

What makes this all work so well is the TfL website’s journey planner. It’s genuinely brilliant. Put in any two locations in London, down to postal address level, and it’ll tell you exactly how to get there using public transport, and will break the journey down into stages, telling you how long it will take – it will even take walking into account, and it’ll play off different modes of transportation against each other. The reason I took the national rail train earlier rather than the tube was because the journey planner reckoned it’d be faster – even if the Tube Map suggests otherwise (it doesn’t even have national rail stations marked on it).

So I guess my message is: London is brilliant. No surprises there, then. Now I’m off to the South Bank. Excellent.

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London Calling
September 15th, 2008 at 01:51

On Saturday I’ll be moving to London – initially the plan was to study for an Masters degree and seek my fortune, but after a feasibility study, I’ve had to reign in my aspirations and merely study for Masters degree, and instead accept that certainty of living in crippling debt for at least the next decade.

This has meant that I’ve spent a large slice of my time in London looking for somewhere to live. I got over the first hurdle of actually having people to live with with ease – I found some lovely flatmates through a university matching thing (I said I had a “GSOH” and liked “long walks on the beach”). The slightly trickier part has been finding an actual flat to be mates in.

Things started well – we found a lovely flat in the trendy bit of East London on Brick Lane, which seems to style itself as “Camden for the pragmatic” – there’s still a distinctly “independent” “vibe” given off by the lack of chain stores in the immediate vicinity, but it’s helpfully marginally more affordable. We put down a holding deposit and departed London on Friday thinking we’d got it all sorted – and in the nick of time too, as my course starts next week.

Then on Saturday morning, the landlord decided that he was going to be a twat, and move his extended family in instead of us. I know what you’re thinking, because I was thinking it too: “What a wanker, putting his family ahead of strangers”.

So a string of expletives later, and it was Monday (it was a long string), and we were back in London back on square 2. We organised a few viewings and hoped for the best. “Hoped” being perhaps the key word in that sentence.

We headed to Edgware Road to an estate agents. It wasn’t a lovely area, but then compared to a rural market town, anywhere short of South Kensington is pretty poor in comparison, so I decided to give it a chance. It turned out that the estate agents was on the first floor of a row of shops, up a dishevelled staircase. This immediately set off my middle-class alarm bells as usually I’ve found estate agents to be a rather posh affair where they offer you free drinks and stuff (making their money back by selling you a house). Instead, this estate agent’s sign was a printed A4 sheet sellotaped to an internal window and their phone number was a mobile. But no, maybe it’d be fine – what sort of self-styled punk after all would complain about a “DIY”attitude? Who says you need licensing and accreditation in order to legally let property? The Man, that’s who.

After waiting for a few minutes, an old woman led us and some other prospective tenants down the road to a tower block. A brutalist 60s “who cares about aestetics?” sort of structure – the type of place you’d go to murder Damilola Taylor. After having a cursory look around, we all collectively said “Noooooo”.

So we left London on Monday on a low, feeling deflated, not knowing where we’d live. But decided to head back in on Tuesday to start the search again.

By contrast, Tuesday was much more successful. By which I mean, we found a lovely house in Kilburn. It’s pretty damn swish – not only do I have a massive room, but I’ve got a balcony. There’s no furniture in there yet, but I’m assured I’ll have a bed to sleep on by Saturday.

Kilburn is lovely to. It doesn’t seem too murderous, even if a decapitated corpse was found scarily near to my house. Thanks to the wonders of globalisation, the high street has all of the chain stores you could ask for, and better still, seems to have plenty of places to go for live music.

Kilburn is apparently a big area of Irish immigration too, so hopefully I’ll fit in pretty well, given that I’ve got a name with apostrophy in, and something like my grandad’s grandad was Irish, so if discussion of the irish potato famine comes up, I can probably claim to be vaguely related some Irish people who were around at the time maybe. (BBC: If you want a low-rent celebrity for Who Do You Think You?, get me on as I can’t be arsed to research this sort of thing on my own).

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be blogging my experiences in moving to London, and moving out beyond my parent’s tyrannical authoritarian regime for the first time, as well as the start of my Masters degree – so it’ll be an exciting new experience for both you the reader, and me. Expect a video of me failing to use a washing machine soon.

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Holiday in the Lon
August 2nd, 2008 at 17:13

If you’re wondering why it has been quiet on my blog lately, its because last week I was in London with my internet mates. Here’s a video diary of what happened:

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