Year: 2004

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was a new (and actually effective) anti-piracy measure: the dodgy copy of the new U2 album that I’ve been listening to for the last couple of weeks has just started to disintegrate: it started by just skipping, but then I took the disc out of the machine and noticed some really funny blotches on the non playing side of the disc. I tried rubbing them gently to get them off, only to discover that that had the effect of rubbing right through the disc, so you can now see through to the other side. Funnily enough it doesn’t play at all now. I suspect it may be something along these lines, although I’m not sure what a CD eating fungus that thrives in “sultry weather conditions” is doing over here in cold, wintery London…

Earlier in the week Sal and I happened to watch a new BBC show about food that raised an interesting question: what does it take for British people to complain in a restaurant. The show addressed this in the way that TV tends to do these days, by throwing hidden cameras at the question, and sending the two presenters undercover to provide shockingly poor service to a couple of tables of unsuspecting punters, who, predictably, accepted it all without making a fuss. Taking the show’s point that if you don’t complain, restaurant service will never get any better, we both resolved to be more assertive in future. I don’t think we were expecting to put this into practice quite so soon, but sure enough, last night provided the perfect opportunity.

We were heading out for drinks with our friends over in Notting Hill, and stopped beforehand for a quiet meal at a Thai restaurant on the corner of Westbourne Grove. The food was excellent, but the service was pitched at the usual shabby standard that is pretty commonplace in the UK: the wine was opened away from the table, for example (and, for that matter, was poured directly without us being asked if we’d like to test it), a request for a glass of iced water returned a glass of lukewarm water poured from a jug sitting out on the counter (with no ice), and my soup spoon was removed from the bowl as it was cleared away and returned to the place setting so that I could use it to serve out one of the main courses that we were sharing. All of which is pretty standard for eating out in London, and not something that would have moved me to bother complaining, were it not for what happened when the main courses arrived: The waitress put down our two main courses and our bowl of rice, and immediately whisked away the lid from the bowl, leaving us with a large bowl of rice going cold on our table as we started eating. So Sal attracted someone’s attention, and politely asked if it might be possible to have the lid back. Ours had already gone back to the kitchen, but a lid was duly found and no less than the restaurant’s owner brought it over to our table. Before we were trusted with it, however, she said this:

“You have to be very careful with this lid, because if it is left like this [holds lid upside down] and it falls on the ground and breaks, it’s gonna cost you ten pounds”

“Er, Ok…” Sal and I said, looking at each other, trying to remember if either of us had ever eaten in a restaurant before where the owner didn’t think we could be trusted with crockery. When we had finished eating, I resolved that I would have a quiet word to suggest, gently and politely, that this might not be an entirely appropriate way to talk to your customers. And so, emboldened by the Dutch courage brought on by a few glasses of white wine, that is what I did. If she had been prepared to take this on board I would have been perfectly happy, but her response was to start arguing with me, telling me how they had had many of their precious lids broken, and they didn’t have many left now, and they had to tell us what would happen if we broke it. I felt like saying (but didn’t) that what she had said had in fact had the opposite effect–it had made us feel like letting the lid fall on the floor deliberately and then refusing to pay for it just to annoy her, but instead I tried to point out that it felt a bit like we were about five years old and not to be trusted with the best china, but she just got even more argumentative, telling me that I had to be more broad-minded, and at one point saying rather sarcastically “yes, I know the customer is always right… so you can tell me off, but I can’t tell you off…?” [Er, well, yes, exactly: that’s how the customer relationship works–that’s my point]

So with that, I said that if that was her attitude then I would like to have the service charge taken off the bill, thank you very much, whereupon she snatched the bill out of my hands and took it off to the till muttering to herself and her staff. She was still muttering as we left the restaurant.

A couple of weeks ago I booked tickets to see a band about which I knew very little, beyond the fact that they were big down under, so to speak. This may have proved to be a mistake: I think Sal summed it up best when she described the John Butler Trio, who we saw last night at our local venue, Islington’s Islington Academy, as being “good musicians…”

That much is certainly true–Mr Butler plays a mean slide guitar–but there’s only so much that even I can take of 20 minute acoustic guitar solos. A few songs into the set we were beginning to flag (although perhaps having been out for Pete’s birthday celebrations the previous night might have had something to do with this), and so we retreated to the back of the venue, and a bit later we even moved upstairs to the mezzanine level where we sat down and watched the rest of the gig on a widescreen telly.

I don’t think that we were the only people tiring–as the band reached the end of yet another extended instrumental break that had taken about three years, the guitarist, who had hardly spoken for most of the gig, suddenly launched into a Damien Rice-esque rant against “the loud c*nts at the back”, inconsiderately talking through his music, asking if they would “shut the f*ck up”. I’m not sure it had much effect though–I could still hear people talking during the 8 minute drum solo with which they chose to end the main part of the set. All very 1975: just like punk never happened.

After that, Sally inadvertently chose to go to the toilet and thus missed the most exciting thing to happen all night, when a woman out of the audience chose to invade the stage, although somewhat inexplicably she chose to do this during the gap between the main set and the encore, and therefore couldn’t do much more than hug the roadie (in mid-guitar tune) before being dragged down by a bouncer (although she did then make it back up onto the stage, only to wiggle her arse at the crowd before being pulled back down again).

And then, my Northern tightness being the only thing that had stopped me from leaving before the end, it was over, and we wandered off to Sainsbury’s to do our shopping.

Sal and I popped up to Southport this weekend to spend a quiet, relaxing couple of days staying with my parents.

Well, it was a relaxing weekend, just as soon as we managed to get there: We’d taken the environmentally dubious decision to avoid Richard Branson’s Train Hell, and instead take advantage of the short flights now being offered by the small Belgian airline VLM between London City airport and Liverpool’s recently renamed (and I’m sure there’s a bespectacled scouser turning in his grave somewhere over it) John Lennon airport. London City Airport’s website suggests that travellers to the airport head for Canning Town station and hop on their overpriced shuttle bus, but being the canny chap that I am, I’d looked at the map, and spotted that there is a much closer station to the airport on the Silverlink line that we would be on anyway (Silvertown), so it seemed rather more sensible to just head there and walk. Well, that would have been a good idea, were it not for the fact that what the map doesn’t show you is that there is half a building site between the station and the airport (the initial work for the new DLR extension that will serve the airport directly from next year), and you can’t actually walk what looks like a simple short distance. Cue 15 minutes or so of us running around a dodgy, almost deserted part of East London in panic (at one point finding ourselves no more than 20 feet away from the entrance to the terminal building, but with two 8 foot metal fences and a half built train station between us and it) before flagging down a black cab that miraculously appeared from thin air and making it to the check in with minutes to spare. Phew.

I’m not sure Sal was actually that happy that we had caught the plane in the end, because we were turbulently bumped around for the full hour journey. Which is not exactly what you want when you are already concerned about the safety aspects of flying on a plane small enough to have propellers (especially when all your boyfriend can do to assuage your doubts is to make crass jokes about flying on a little Fokker).

Back in the big city, this week promises to be a busy one: off to the theatre tonight, Pete’s birthday on Thursday, and we’re seeing some dodgy Aussie band on Friday.

I think the only way to really come to terms with what has happened is to pretend it didn’t happen.

Go on, ask me who won the election?

Go on….

You: So, Matt, who won the election?
Me: No, sorry, I have absolutely no idea. Was it Howard Dean?

Anyway. I’ve been working on my NaNoWriMo thing off and on for the past couple of days. Despite getting off to a good start on Monday night, breaking through my 1666 word target for the day by at least 10 whole words, I’ve had a bit of a setback in the meantime, as I’m only on just over 2000 words now (because I had to spend most of yesterday’s writing time rewriting the utter drivel I’d written on Monday in a desperate bid to make that word count). Whatever, I’m still doing better than last year (by, ahem, about 2000 words).

Hmm. Denial. Glorious Denial. Not a river in Egypt, after all…

And so, with a crushing inevitability, (barring some kind of miracle in Ohio), it looks like four more years of isolationist, neo-conservative rule in the US. On the one hand, this is a matter for the American people, and, if that is what they want, who am I to argue with their right to screw up their country? Who am I to argue with their choice of another four years of recession, job losses, and tax cuts for the richest 1%, the end of a woman’s right to choose, the end of any chances for stem cell research, the state intervening to prevent loving couples who happen to share the same gender from marrying, and the unification of (christian) church and state… I could go on, but if that’s the country that the American people want for themselves, then so be it. At least I don’t have to live there.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world has to live with the consequences: so, without getting a choice, we get four more years of an ill-conceived, illegal war in Iraq. Four more years of the war of terror (sic). Four more years of rejecting international treaties like Kyoto and failing to sign up to intiatives like the International Criminal Court. Four more years of Guantanamo bay. Four more years of Abu Gharib. Four more years of doing exactly what Osama Bin Laden wants.

How can this possibly have happened? Whatever happens in Ohio (and I’m still clinging to the hope against all the odds that something will happen with the provisional ballots), Bush seems certain to win the popular vote. How? Who are these people voting for George Bush?

I. Just. Don’t. Get. It.

UPDATE: And there will be no miracle in Ohio after all: Kerry Concedes Defeat. (Why not take a moment to grieve).

There are many things I have failed to do so far in my 27 years on this planet, but probably should have got round to doing by now. One example is the fact that I’ve never been in a betting shop. It’s not because I hold any sort of moral objections to gambling, more just out of a fear of social awkwardness–of not knowing what to do in one of those slightly intimidating smoke- and old men-filled rooms. It’s probably just as well, though, because the only time I can remember even putting a bet on myself (rather than having someone do it for me) was just before Euro 2000. One of those new Internet betting websites had just opened, and they were giving away free bets (well, it was 2000, there was a lot of that sort of thing going on). I thought that sounded like a bit of easy money, so I put down a couple on England’s performance in the upcoming championships. I can’t remember exactly what they were, but I seem to remember that I stood to make something even if they only qualified for the knockout rounds. Sounded like a fairly safe bet to me, but of course I had underestimated the ability of Kevin Keegan’s England to disappoint, and they crashed out at the group stage.

This week, coming as she does from a nation of gamblers, Sal had vowed to change all this by dragging me into our local Ladbrokes to put down a bet each on the Melbourne Cup, which took place in the early hours of this morning, UK time. It’s a bit like an Australian equivalent of the Grand National, in that virtually everyone has a punt, and last year Sal (who was back home at the time) had put a bet on for me on Mamool, ridden by Frankie Dettori, which duly rode in last, true to form. This year, following on from his surprise win in Dallas over the weekend, I thought he might have the momentum to win the Melbourne Cup, and, failing to learn from my mistakes, plumped again for Mamool (at a pleasing 16/1). Sal picked the favourite, and last year’s winner, Maykybe Diva, bidding for a historic second win in a row. Her choice was for personal reasons: the horse happens to be owned by the uncle of her brother’s girlfriend, whose father, the owner’s brother, sadly passed away earlier this week.

Choices made, along with a pick for some combination 1,2,3 prediction thing involving a third horse, we duly trooped around to the betting shop to find it, um, closed.

So we had to put the bets on over the Internet instead, and I still haven’t been in a bookmakers. I guess I will have to wait until next year now. Then, as we heard at 4am this morning, the time at which Sal insisted I set the radio alarm for 5 Live to wake us up with the race commentary–see! nation of gamblers!–Maykybe Diva come home first and we ended up up by a grand total of 50p. (Mamool, of course, came in about 3 places too far back to count for our each way bet–ah well, there’s always next year).

Perhaps with my great track record of terrible betting I should start betting on things I don’t want to see happen–I wonder what odds I can have on Bush to be re-elected tonight? If I put that bet on, you can guarantee that it won’t happen, and the more money I lay down, the greater the margin by which it won’t happen–maybe I should take the hit, you know, for the good of us all…

Apart from finishing off the new look for the site, I also found time this weekend for three very good, but different, nights out. On Friday, we caught up with Sal’s cousin’s fiance, Wayne, who was over in the UK for a quick holiday, at a bar off Covent Garden called The Langley. Despite sounding a bit like a private members club of some kind, it turned out to be a slick, undergound bar below a quiet back street. It was heaving as we arrived at the tail end of happy hour, and didn’t get any quieter for the rest of the evening, but Sal had booked us a table at the restaurant, something that the management had gone to great lengths to hide away behind a partition in the far corner of the furthest room. I’ve no idea why (the food was actually quite good), but as a result of this subtefuge we virtually had the whole area to ourselves, and just sat back in our oasis of calm drinking the impressive number of beer bottles that appeared at our table at regular intervals.

In another life, back in Melbourne, Wayne happens to captain one of the aussie rules teams, and as we were leaving a couple of random drunken Australian blokes bounded over to shake his hand with a shout of “Go the Tigers!” It must be odd to travel 12000 miles from home and be recognised by complete strangers.

On Saturday, we headed over to the wilds of Acton (a place that turns out to be surprisingly far away when you miss the last train by 10 minutes and end up, through a succession of unlikely occurances, missing the last tubes and catching a collection of night buses home). The occasion was a Halloween-themed birthday thing. My token gesture towards dressing up was to wear the oversized comedy hands we had found in a fancy dress shop on Upper Street, but everyone else had made an impressive amount of effort, as the photos will attest.

Finally, Sunday night saw us at the tiny Borderline club in Soho watching an amiable Australian chap by the name of Carus play some thoroughly entertaining acoustic guitar music, occasionally accompanied by another bloke on mandolin. All in all, rather good really.

After a week or so of hacking about with my CSS and HTML, the new look for Paste is finally live… phew!

Do hope you like it. Please let me know if you spot anything funny, particularly if you’re using a non-standard browser. (It should all work perfectly in IE 5.5/6, Firefox and Opera). If you’ve got an older browser, then it might not be quite right (and you’ll get a text-only display if you’re still using Netscape 4.x), but if that’s the case, then it’s probably time to upgrade anyway…

Seriously, do let me know if you find any problems, Cheers.

By the way: if things look very odd, then you might need to hit “Refresh”, because your browser has probably cached the old version of the stylesheet.

I’m not sure there’s much that I can add to all that has already been written about the passing of a man who meant so much to so many people. He will be sorely missed.