From a preview report on the Everton v Liverpool derby match, which takes place tomorrow:
“PREDICTION: You just can’t predict this one. It is a derby match with so much resting upon it. As I have to, I’m going to go for a draw.”
Reminds me a bit of these.
In the end it only took me an extra hour to get home last night. I may have waited 20 minutes for a train that didn’t come; got a bus to a tube that wasn’t going anywhere; sat on the tube for 10 minutes in the station; got off the tube; shared a taxi to Islington; got on another (surprisingly on-time and quick) train to Richmond; and finally got another taxi home, but it could have been a lot worse. If I’d left a little earlier I would have probably been stuck in a tunnel [CAUTION: article satisfies legal obligation to make reference to “Blitz spirit”].
The only reason I mention it, is because the whole London power-cut incident brought to mind a rather prescient article by David Aaronovitch in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago following the one in New York: “Stiff upper lip? Don’t make me laugh“.
Read it first, and then you may want to read these:
“Demand for power cut answers”
“Tube sell-off blamed for blackout“
Oh, it was lovely and hot. If you want to see more, you’ll have to e-mail me.
When we finally got there, after spending a fun-filled 5 1/2 hours hanging around Gatwick while Air Europa fixed the dodgy left engine on the plane we had almost left on (there’s only so much sock shopping one person can do, and 5 hours is pretty much the limit), we discovered that Madrid is a lovely city. It may be oppressively hot at times, but if you need to cool down you can always catch the air-conditioned subway whether you need to go somewhere or not. They even have TVs on the underground, which altogether makes it is something of an improvement over the Victoria line. Maybe I’ll move there; the commute would only be marginally more ridiculous, after all. If you’ll forgive the awful pun, Madrid is also a city apparently overflowing with fountains, which is always good for cooling down. Judging from the Plaza de Espana opposite our hotel, I wondered whether perhaps, if he’d been around today, Franco would be something of a Ground Force fan. Parts of the city seem to be one great big water feature.
The locals are also surprisingly friendly, like the chap we encountered selling (or more accurately not selling) cheap sunglasses on the street near the Palacio Real, who was more than happy to take group photographs of a succession of passing tourists without seeming to mind that none of them bought anything. Or, for that matter, the guy selling knock-off CDs near Sol who opened the (apparently) hermetically sealed plastic casing containing the memory card I had just picked up for my camera with his keys (one up from the pen that I had been struggling with). Comically, before opening the package, he pointed to the little picture of a pair of scissors and a dotted line that the good people at Kodak had seen fit to include on the back (perhaps to taunt those without scissors while explaining how to open things to the hard of thinking at the same time). It was all I could do to mutter “No tengo” and laugh. As if I’d be trying to open it with a biro if I did carry a pair of scissors around with me. Then again, maybe he thought I was just a bit thick.
On the other hand, they were probably all just happy that we weren’t the Policia Municipal, who seemed to have nothing else to do but harass street traders. On Saturday evening we were sitting outside a cafe in the Plaza de Santa Ana when we saw at least four or five police cars converge on the square as their occupants got out to start chasing street handbag sellers around. One of them dropped a selection of handbags, which were instantly seized as evidence by the crack Spanish police force, who, committed to the hunting down of the purveyors of shoddy merchandise to unsuspecting tourists, returned to drive round the square several times over the next hour or so.
It was all surprisingly entertaining, actually.
Part of a continuing theme: “Best Picture Ever“
The problem with reading things like this (UPDATE: or, for that matter this) that I totally agree with, is that I have nothing to rant about. Where’s Metro when you need it?
Have you ordered your copy of the London News Review yet?
I just picked up the new Elbow album, Cast Of Thousands, on which I sing. And there I am on the middle page of the sleeve, between Matilda James and Matt Arrowsmith.
Ah. Fame at last.
Orange jacket bloke at entrance to V2003 arena: You can’t bring that in here [points to 2 litre plastic water bottle in my hand]
Me: Why not? We brought it in yesterday. [This is true]
Orange jacket bloke: Well you must have hidden it or something. [This is not true]. You can’t bring that in here. If you look on the back of your ticket it says you can’t bring more than 1 litre of water in here.
Me: Why not? What do you think I’m going to do with a large bottle of water?
Orange bloke: That’s not my problem, there’s plenty of water inside.
Me: Yes. That we have to pay for. That’s why we just queued for 20 minutes at the campsite’s only tap to fill this one up.
Orange bloke: There’s plenty of taps in there [This is also not true. But I didn’t find that out until much later – it hadn’t been a problem the previous day because we’d been able to take in our large bottle of water – after searching for the first aid point (that we only knew about because Rhys had earlier found it) for a good half an hour, during which time we were sent the wrong way by at least 3 orange blokes who had no idea where there was free water (or were under the misguided impression that the arena was positively drowning in taps, if you’ll excuse the pun). The free water/first aid point was conveniently hidden behind the dance tent in an empty corner of the arena field. Without signposts. Funnily enough the stalls selling small bottles at £2 a go were highly prominent.]
The first thing that you have to remember about the V festival is that it’s not Glastonbury. Budweiser is £3 a can. You have to queue to buy beer tokens so that you can then stand in a bigger queue to exchange those tokens for warm, fizzy beer. Don’t like Budweiser? Or Virgin Coke? Sorry, well you won’t be drinking anything else. You also won’t be taking any of your own food or drinks inside. You can buy hamburgers that taste of plastic at “high-street prices” inside instead (although I’m not quite sure which high street it is that sells small burgers for £3.50 a go). Interestingly, you can take in as many drugs as you need to; I saw enough coke being snorted over the weekend to coat most of the £10 notes in London. Presumably it’s ok to take that in because there isn’t a stall inside selling Virgin-branded drugs at several times the going rate.
As I said yesterday, though, once we got over the blatant profiteering and silly rules, it was still a great weekend. The Super Furries were probably my band of the weekend (they played The Man Don’t Give a Fuck and Herman Loves Pauline), but I also enjoyed seeing Ash give one of their better performances, as well as The Cardigans, The Coral and Shack (although Mick Head’s vocals were worryingly off-key in places, and he was babbling incomprehensible scouse inbetween songs). The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, even though I’m not a particularly big fan, provided a suitably large end to the festival.
Now I just have to deal with the dreariness of being back in the real world. Again.
I might be able to wash regularly and not have to queue to get near a bathroom, but I think I’d still rather be at the festival. Still, at least it’s a short week for me as I’m off on holiday on Friday.
I’ll probably be writing something a bit later on about this weekend’s excellent V festival (sorry Rob, ‘fraid you missed a goodun) with only a slight rant about the outright extortion (£3 a beer and your only choice of beer is Budweiser? come on…), and the generally poor organisation/silly rules enforced by jobsworths in orange coats. For now, though, I will mostly be drinking coffee and trying to do some work.
You may want to have a look at these:
– Statesman or Skatesman? Warning: includes photograph of Maggie Thatcher on a toboggan.
Not Photoshopped.
Today, I am reliably informed, is “Fair and Balanced” day on the Internet. In response to the decision by the (un)fair and (un)balanced Fox News to sue a US satirist for breaching the trademark they claim to hold over the English-language sentence “Fair and Balanced” (he’s about to publish a book called “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right“), people all over the world are creatively using the words Fair and Balanced all over their sites today.
Part of me suspects that this whole thing might have begun as some massive publicity stunt, but it seems like an appropriate topic to post here, as it fits rather nicely into my recent theme of mass Internet-related action (cf. Amazon reviews and flash mobs).
My only concern is that it might take longer than one day to googlewash Fox out of the search results altogether…
Links: Neal Pollack (who started this), some fair and balanced websites, Google search for “Fair and Balanced”.
