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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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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Trains are great!
August 30th, 2007 at 14:26

Apparently a single report has “proved” that cars are more environmentally friendly than trains. As you might spot on the link, the issue has been needlessly politicised by a bunch of anti-environmentalist cretins who have their heads in the sand, who seem to have no problem with ignoring an almost unanimous consensus that climate change is occurring.

I’m going to be generous and take the bullet pointed headlines of this at face value, and “accept” that cars have been proven to be more environmentally friendly than trains – even though the report only takes into account one hyperthetical journey, and seems to make assumptions about the occupancy of all of the vehicles involved, and the fuel consumptions of thousands of different types of cars.

Despite all of this, I would still argue that if we are serious about tackling global warming, then the last thing we should do is shut down the railways and give everyone cars. Why? Because its easier to make a couple of thousand trains more energy efficient than it is force everyone to buy a hybrid car.

Sure, using fossil fuels to power trains probably isn’t a good idea, but trains can be (more) easily upgraded to run off of electricity… electricity that can be generated entirely cleanly. A lot of railways are electrified – the London Underground, Eurostar (thus presumably the rest of the South East), and so on. Sure, this isn’t going to help if the source of the electricity is burning oil in a power station somewhere, but equally it could be generated by some wind turbines if they’d build some.

Car usage, being a “capitalist” mode of transport, as it is hilariously called on Guido’s blog, suffers from the so-called tragedy of the commons. In other words, why should I cut down on the amount of energy I consume?

Trains don’t have this problem, as its not possible to pick and choose your train. There’s no sports-utility-trains that go to the same places, that consume more fuel and make you feel important.

So I reckon it would be easier to upgrade the train network to more environmentally friendly trains, assuming such things exist or can be invented, than convince the general public to give a damn about the environment.

(Hypocrisy alert! I also drive a band C car… I’ll get a Prius whenever I finally start earning a lot of money. But I still like trains.)

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London II
April 5th, 2007 at 02:27

As you might know, having watched the video blog below, I went to London yesterday with JD and Fundar. We went there to see the third series of That Mitchell & Webb Sound being recorded. It’s basically like their similarly named telly sketch show, only if you close your eyes.

The day began at 11am, when we caught the train.

Coke Price Watch: 500ml bottle; At the station; Cost: £1.00.

About 90 minutes later and we were in central London.

Coke Price Watch: 500ml bottle; London St Pancras; Cost: £1.10.

Our first port of call was Camden market. It was a bit weird, as it was full of people in a different socio-economic group to me. Or at least people who dressed like it. Being a market, the place was covered in people hawking tat – even the shops were open at the front and sprawled out into the streets. It reminded me of seeing a news correspondent walk through a crowded Kabul market place, I mean, if Afghanistan was populated exclusively by goths.

One man even offered to sell us cannabis – not that I realised at the time.

Almost every other market stall was selling t-shirts with “hilarious” slogans. As you might know if you’re a regular viewer of my torso, I quite like t-shirts with slogans on. I’m currently wearing an excellent t-shirt with “I’m blogging this” printed on it, for example. The trouble is, it was like the t-shirts on sale were bought wholesale by people who are a few years behind everyone else. “National Pornographic” isn’t clever or funny and “I’m a bomb technician, if you see me running try to catch up” was old even when the first alchemists were inventing explosions for the first time.

Our next port of call was Leicester Square, where we went to get some lunch and have a look around.

Coke Price Watch: 500ml bottle; Leicester Square Subway; Cost: £1.20.

When I wasn’t buying overpriced Coke, we were trying to be too clever for our own good. We put together an excellently long shot for the video, and then JD phoned his brother to see if he could see us on a webcam. He could, although unfortunately screenshot evidence of this incredible event does not exist.

After lunch we headed to Embankment, which is just next to Whitehall, where all of the big Government buildings are. I love London because its so easy just to stumble into landmarks. It makes it almost unremarkable when you realise you’re standing outside of Royal Bank of Canada head office.

It took us a second to realise that we were standing outside the Ministry of Defence. Unfortunately, as you might see if you’ve watched the video, I didn’t remember to take the opportunity to mention the MOD’s seven paper cuts last year. We walked past it and bumped into the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. I’m the sort of person who finds this exciting.

Standing outside the FCO was Tim Marshall, Sky News’ Political editor. In retrospect, I probably should have gone and harassed him – after all, he is a celebrity, and I assume celebrities love nothing more than idiot members of the public going up to them and talking to them because they recognise them, despite not being able to remember their name.

Sort of next to the Foreign Office is Downing Street. The Downing Street. Despite it just being an old house that you can barely see behind the multiple layers of security (a ramp, a big set of gates, a number of police with machine guns) it was dead exciting. I reeled off as much Downing Street trivia as I could on the off chance that the Policeman near me would say “Hey, you know your stuff, want to go in for a look around?” Unfortunately he just continued to look stern.

Excellently, it was about at this point that I tried to show-off my knowledge of history by explaining that Whitehall used to be one massive Palace of Whitehall before it was destroyed by a fire. Fundar, being a cynic and troll, accused me of making this up just seconds before we passed a sign explaining that a building was the last remaining segment of the Palace of Whitehall.

Just behind the foreign office, when we weren’t really sure where we were going, we stumbled upon the Treasury. Not just any old treasury too mind- Her Majesty’s Treasury. I missed a golden opportunity to see if I could get in because I’m a tax-man – it would have made an excellent scene in the video too. I did, however, have this excellent photograph taken of me:

After a bit more walking we ended up near Parliament and Brian Haw’s anti-war protest. MPs passed a law to try and get rid of Brian, by banning protesting near Parliament without a license a couple of years ago – unfortunately for them, Brian’s still there because he’s been continuously protesting since before the ban came into force. Interestingly, Brian’s patch of green is surrounded entirely by a massive roundabout, and the conspiracy theorist within me thinks that they’ve made it intentionally difficult to get to the centre where Brian is by altering the traffic light patterns, as I was stuck in the centre for a good five minutes before I dared cross the road.

We spent a few minutes standing outside Westminster Abbey. We were going to go in for a couple of minutes, but discovered that it costs eight pounds to visit a church. Although you could apparently “worship for free”. I didn’t think I could get away with pretending to be religious.

We walked down past the Palace of Westminster to the green where they do the live reports on the telly and did a bit for the video, before deciding to head to the Tate Modern. Exciting travel story: we took the circle line from Westminster to Mansion House.

It turns out that St Paul’s Cathedral is right next to Mansion House, and opposite the Millennium Bridge.

Coke Pepsi Price Watch: 500ml bottle; Tate Modern; Price: £1.55 (yes, 55).

Unfortunately, it’s my sad duty to report that the Tate Modern is the most overrated place in history. Even more so than the Auschwitz “theme park” the Nazis set up during World War II.

I feel like an idiot for not being able to appreciate modern art, but most of it is shit. One of the biggest pieces (in terms of physical size) was Matisse’s Snail (click that for a picture). It’s some coloured paper laid out on to a bigger piece of paper. It looks like something a child with learning difficulties could have made.

What makes it worse is the, er, back-story, as it isn’t even deep and metaphorical. According to the textual description next to it, Matisse saw a snail, and then laid out some coloured paper in a shape (very, very, very, very) vaguely resembling a snail. That’s it? That’s shit.

Beret-wearing sycophants probably look at the same picture and say in their trumped-up posh accent and say to each other “that’s bloody brilliant, oh, it’s just so inspirational. My god, it’s a work of genius.”

Another incredible work was a canvas painted almost entirely orange, apart from a strip down the right hand side which was painted a slightly darker orange, the premise being that the darker line is “disruptive”, or something like that. I’ve never seen such pretentious bollocks, and I’m a regular viewer of Newsnight Review.

It must be great being an artsy twat, as you’d experience such an exciting life. “Fuck me! It’s a lightswitch… that’s just, like, so powerful… on and off, representing despair and consequence“.

One of the more ridiculous things was some metal tiles on the floor. Apparently this changes the viewers interaction with art by allowing you to walk on it. That’s fucking incredible. I mean, walking on tiles. Genius.

Judging by my experience with one of the members of staff, they seem to have employed the snootiest minimum wage workers available. I was carrying a sealed Pepsi, bought from their own cafe through one of the galleries, and a Zoe Wanamaker-esque woman approached me, and said without even mentioning the brand, “I see you have a carbonated drink, could you put it away please? We’ve had people drop them before causing spillages”. I can’t imagine the disasterous repercussions of Pepsi getting near birdshit on a canvas, or whatever. I’d have thought the artsy Tate people would enjoy interpreting what the Pepsi stain represents.

In fairness, it wasn’t all terrible. Roy Lichenstein’s Whaam! was good. And there was a gallery of some framed pages of an old Soviet magazine showing the industrialization of the USSR, which was interesting. And I can’t really complain about the entrance price, as it was free.

After we left the Tate bitterly disappointed, we thought it finally time to head to the Drill Hall to see Mitchell & Webb. We took the tube to Goodge Street.

Coke Price Watch: 500mlish glass; Goodge Street Hamburger Union; £1.65.

Before the show, we went to Hamburger Union, which seems to be a medium-speed food chain exclusive to London. We filmed some more video here.

Coke Price Watch: 330ml can; The Drill Hall; £1.

Finally, we got into Mitchell and Webb ready for the recording. Our tickets had been validated and we had been allocated seats. Unfortunately, before we could go in the theatre, we had to wait in a tiny bar for around an hour standing up with around 200 other people. It was almost unbearable after a day of running around London. My legs hurt and I was overheating, but we stuck with it, as, after all, we were now at the primary reason why we were in London.

Mitchell and Webb recorded two shows at once, so we got approximately 90 minutes of new sketches from them, supported by Olivia Coleman and James Bachman And they were excellent. There were a few about a doctor arguing with a patient who got diagnosis’s off of the internet, which got progressively more surreal. If this sketch makes the translation to their second TV series, I imagine “I’m Bill Paxton” will become a well known catchphrase. You’ll know why when you see it.

Other memorable sketches were “Celebrity Fame Zepplin”, in which Mitchell reeled off hundreds and hundreds of reality TV clichés in quick succession and parodies if Radio 4’s Afternoon Play.

In retrospect, I should have taken my iTalk and covertly recorded it so I could write more about this. I can’t remember many more of the things they did, but I remember enjoying it immensely. So, er, I guess I win.

I had an incredibly good day over all, and I don’t think even if I had bumped into Hitler on the train home he could have dampened my spirit that much. London late at night is surprisingly non-threatening, but we were in a reasonably posh area- right near Tavistock Square, of London Bombings fame, in fact. I imagine I’d be telling a different story if they’d been recording the radio show in Hackney or wherever. And you’d be reading this from my will rather than my blog.

It was also a research packed day – our serious scientific survey has conclusively proved that London prices are infinitely more expensive than rural England. Which, er, is no surprise really.

I would highly recommend listening to That Mitchell & Webb Sound when it’s broadcast on the radio – I’ll plug it on here when it is, as it’s dead good.

Well done for making it through nearly 2000 words too. Why not watch the video?

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London
April 4th, 2007 at 13:07

Full, exciting, write-up coming: soon.

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