Year: 2006

According to the leaks from the latest report into the de Menezes shooting, Sir Ian Blair didn’t actually lie to the media after all, because the people who knew the truth were too scared to tell him. Apparently, according to some people, that makes everything ok. Well, then… he’s just an incompetent manager, feared by his subordinates, but at least he’s not a liar.

Now, I’ve always felt that he was in something of a no-win drown-him-if-he’s-a-witch catch 22 situation here: he either mislead the media, in which case he should go, or he “runs” an organisation that is so ineffective that it took a full 24 hours for him to discover what many of us suspected within hours of the event.

Either way, I can’t see how he should remain in the job. Can you?

I’ve been rather enjoying the World Cup so far (and not just because my fantasy football team has been doing rather well for once–today’s been particularly good, with both Tim Cahill and Tomas Rosicky in my team). Maybe it’s just because, unlike the European Championships two years ago, this time we’ve got two tellies, so Sal can happily retreat next door with Big Brother leaving me happily ensconced in front of Italy – Ghana.

On Saturday, with Rhys in town, we got up early and headed East to fit a suitable venue to watch the England match. I had briefly thought that maybe we should head for the big screen at Canary Wharf (although it turns out that that would have been a mistake), but instead we had intended to watch it at the Vibe Bar, on Brick Lane, labouring as we were under the misapprehension that their big screen would be in their big beer garden. When it turned out that they were actually showing it inside, in a big hot stuffy room, and that we had to pay for tickets, and that they were in fact already sold out, we decided that maybe we’d go somewhere else. Helpfully, when Sal asked the girl on the ticket desk if she knew anywhere else in the area that was showing the game, she said “Yes”.

So, left to find somewhere on our own, we went to investigate the local pubs, and ended up in a real East-end boozer round by Spitalfields, perhaps the biggest contrast we could have picked from the overtly trendy ShoreditchTwat-esque location where we’d originally planned to watch the game.

The pub we ended up in came complete with an authentic eccentric East End landlady, who popped up with five minutes to go in the game, and began removing furniture. I’d barely got up from my chair to peer around the bloke in front of me whose head was obscuring my view of the screen when she’d whipped it out from underneath me and carried it outside. “I’ve got to make room” she said, as she came back to relieve us of our table. All very sensible, if she’d chosen to do this at the start of the game, but with 85 minutes on the clock this seemed a rather odd move. Ah well, a good result anyway, and the less said about the game itself the better.

Yesterday, we spent a pleasant afternoon loafing about in sunny Regent’s Park, with our picnics, beers, and boules. We even staged our own mini football match, which I enjoyed a great deal (partly because, although I’ve always been rubbish at football, I don’t seem too bad when everyone else in the game is an Aussie more used to kicking a brown oval ball). Now, there’s officially a “no ball games” in the section of Regent’s Park where we’d chosen to picnic, but it’s a rule that’s largely ignored by most visitors. At one point, long before we began our actual football match, a crazy old lady came round the park, telling each and every person in the park who looked like they might be about to break this rule that “there’s no ball games in here, you know”.

“Are you Australian as well?” she said to our friend Andrew, who had been throwing around an AFL footie with a couple of other Aussies who randomly turned out to be in the park too. “It’s no ball games in here don’t you know!”

When he tactfully pointed out that most of the park’s other visitors were ignoring this rule too (some of whom were probably Brits), “Oh no,” she said, “they’re all Arabs,” and with that she was off to tell the rest of the park off, one by one.

Today, I took a late lunch and popped out to catch the first half hour of the Australia – Japan game, before I had to dash back, unpleasantly sweaty, to sit in a meeting. Luckily the guys from IT were setting up the projector/TV tuner combo in our big meeting room, so I got to see the cracking last ten minutes–all three Australian goals–back at the office. Not bad so far, anyway. Roll on Trinidad and Tobago…

In response to a blog post I made almost two and a half years ago, “brookfield” writes that [s]he is “terribly sorry that [I’ve] gone entirely mad”.

From what I remember, at the gig in question, Damien Rice was being a bit of a petulant, precious, artiste, and I believe that was the point I was trying to make in the blog. I do actually quite like Mr Rice’s music, but apparently I “wouldn’t understand, obviously”.

Well, fair dos, Mr[s] Brookfield, you’ve got me: clearly by googling for “Damien Rice Dallas November” and reading something I wrote 2 years ago you know everything about me that there is to know. I’m sorry that I can’t be included in the select group of people who do understand the tribulations of being an emotional man with an acoustic guitar.

I have failed as a human being. Obviously.

I didn’t have my book today, so I found myself sitting on the tube reading Metro this morning. After I’d got past the utterly vacuous Rumsfeld quote on the front page (“no single person on this planet has had the blood of more innocent men, women and children on his hands than Zarqawi”–look Rummy, I know you are contractually obliged to pretend that getting the terrists is the most important thing ever, but think about it: that’s not even close to true, is it. What about Hitler? Pol Pot? Genghis Khan?) I got to a bit about “Get Loaded in the Park”, a Metro-sponsored music thingy that’s happening on Clapham Common in July. I was interested to read that Badly Drawn Boy is playing, but confused about their write up, which talked of him being about to release his new album, One Plus One is One. It’s funny, because I’m pretty sure that came out a couple of years ago and promptly sank without trace.

It was only when I looked at his website to check that I realised what must have happened. You see, the esteemed Metro, rather than bothering to write their own copy, simply swiped a chunk of the description from BDB’s website without bothering to check when it was last updated. Because if they had, they’d have realised that when it says the album will be released on June 21st, that’s June 21st 2004. Now that’s professional, fact-checking journalism in action…

We spent the sunniest weekend of the year so far with my parents, who, opting not to remain in London for longer than was absolutely necessary, collected us from our flat on Saturday morning and drove off into leafy Kent, where they are staying for the week. Prior to the weekend, Kent wasn’t exactly somewhere that I would have chosen to spend any length of time, but it proved something of a revelation, and not without its charm.

Of course we were doing appropriately parent-y, tourist-y things that we wouldn’t normally be doing, like visiting the surprisingly well kept Leeds castle (Sal’s favourite castle so far, apparently), but despite only travelling for an hour or so to the south of London, it all seemed like a very different world: a world of country lanes and village pubs far removed from the pollution, congestion, and crowds of the city.

On Sunday, we visited a town called Battle, where the Battle of Hastings took place. I’d always assumed that this event took place in Hastings, but this turns out not to be the case. Frankly, I’ve a feeling the Anglo Saxons were rather tempting fate there. I wonder how different English history might have been if they’d just had the foresight to name their town “HaveANiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown”.

Another revelation from the weekend came in the form of the English wine industry, which turns out not to be the joke you might have thought it is after all. We pulled into this place to have lunch, but not before we’d tried most of their varieties of really surprisingly good wine. We bought a case, of course (and if you ask really nicely next time you’re round at our place, I might even let you try some).

Oh, and completing our attempts to purchase the most inappropriately heavy items to be bringing back on the train, we added to our case of wine by picking up an authentic (and authentically weighty) set of boules, which we’ll be taking to Regent’s Park on the next sunny day: previously we’ve been struck with a serious case of park games envy, feeling that our only item of park paraphernalia (a Frisbee we got free at Glastonbury a few years ago that says “GM Foods: Pull the Udder One” underneath a picture of a cow) wasn’t quite cutting it. But now we have boules, so we win, obviously.

So today was the big office move, as my work finally swapped its two small floors on the edge of Bermondsey for a single big room in a government building up by the Thames.

The circumstances are rather different to those the last time I was involved in an office move. Back in 2002, in the dark days before this blog even existed, I moved from Richmond to Putney when the imminently defunct software company that I worked for at the time was purchased by its biggest rival (which has itself now been swallowed up in a hostile takeover). Back then, the move represented the end of an era, the final nail in the coffin of the old company, and offered a new office filled only with a selection of worried new colleagues, understandably concerned about the future of their own jobs, and consequently somewhat less than welcoming.

This time, however, it’s all positive–a growing company that has outlived its time in a small, cosy office and that badly needs the extra space. It was all a bit surreal turning up to a brand new office this morning, having my photo taken for a new pass, and meeting the security guards–it almost felt as if I’d started a new job, but for some strange reason all my old colleagues had decided to come with.

The new place is not short of comedy value, either. The other floors in the building are occupied by the Health and Safety Executive, and tales of their amusing bureaucracy’s desperate attempts to foil our attempts to outfit the office had already made it back to us. Today I particularly enjoyed the little warning signs in the bathrooms placed above each and every one of the taps that let us know that the stuff that comes out of the hot taps is “Very Hot Water”.

So I’m watching this charity celebrity football match on ITV. You might think that there’s little entertainment value to be gleaned from watching a bunch of ageing ex-pros and assorted D-Listers hobbling around the pitch as they might on a Sunday afternoon down the park, but it’s been worth it so far for the commentary alone. There’s something utterly hilarious and surreal about hearing the likes of:

“…And England are looking bright now as David Gray makes a run from right back…”

And my personal favourite so far:

“…the ‘Rest of the World’ have the ball as Diego Maradona passes to Craig Doyle…”

I know there’s a film coming out, but for the love of god, no more! As if that silly “trebles all round at Random House” court case wasn’t bad enough (funny how it just happened to coincide with the start of pre-publicity for the film, wasn’t it), Channels 4 and 5’s entire output for the last two weeks has been nothing but promotional material masquerading as factual documentaries about “unlocking the code” (presumably a neat way to fulfil your public service obligations while pumping out populist trash, and/or collecting large cheques from the film company at the same time), and you can barely move in this town for other advertising of the more direct kind (and yes, Eurostar people, I’m talking to you. It clearly says jointhequest.com. Do I get a medal?)

Look. There’s no international conspiracy. I mean really… And even if there was, what does that actually mean? That the catholic church was “founded on a lie”? That’d be the same catholic church with the paedophile priests and the dubious position on condoms/AIDS in the developing world, would it? Hardly an institution that is universally lauded for its uncontroversial ethical stance.

The only “code” or “conspiracy” that I’d be remotely interested in solving would be the mystery of how the hell a plodding, inept, fifth-rate writer like Brown (or as he might have it “the renowned author Dan Brown”) managed to persuade millions of people around the world to read his shoddy book.

Anyone?

Chatting to his mates
pre-Hard-Fi, Brixton, Nandos
Billy Bragg (support).

Er, yeah, so Sal and I saw Hard-Fi at the Brixton Academy last night, in what was the first of their 5 night, ahem “sold out“, residency. [Well, I suppose that “5 nights sort of sold out apart from the “production” hold tickets that we’ve been sporadically releasing ever since the original batch of tickets went on sale (tickets available on the door)…” wouldn’t have fitted quite as snappily onto the top of the venue.]

After spotting Mr Bragg at the table next to us in the People’s Republic of Nandos over the road, we finished our spicy chicken and made our way inside just in time to catch him on-stage, alone except for a couple of guitars and their accompanying feedback.

I suspect, judging from my entirely uninterrupted view of the stage throughout the evening, and from observing the fellow gig goers who wedged themselves onto the Victoria line with us afterwards, that Hard-Fi’s target demographic might be slightly on the younger side, so it’s unsurprising that the reception for a greying socialist like Bragg was somewhat on the muted side. It’s highly likely that a large majority of those in attendance weren’t even born when he was farting around with Paul Weller trying to convince people to vote Labour back in the 80s (back in the days when we actually had a Labour party–oh it all seems so long ago now). Still, he told us that racism and the BNP are bad things, and we all clapped in agreement. Oh and he played “A New England”, complete with Kirsty MacColl-esque extra verse, which pleased me immensely.

Hard-Fi started up rather flatly, actually, as they’d taken the unusual decision to hold back all their “hits” till the end, and stuff the first half of the set full with their less catchy album tracks and a handful of new songs. Of course that meant that the last 30 minutes were fantastically full of the kind of generic anthemic indie pop that I like so much, it’s just a shame that we all had to wade through the slight let-down that was first half to get there.

Personal highlights:

– Introducing “Feltham is Singing Out”, Richard Archer asked us if we’d ever been in trouble with “the law”. Looking around, all I could see was middle class indie kids. I suspect that the closest anyone in the room had come to “trouble with the law” would be forgetting to set the video for The Bill.

– Richard also had a full on “you’re a better crowd than that Shelbyville lot” moment, when he asked us if we could prove to be louder and more enthusiastic than the “arrogant” Manchester crowd who think they’re the best. He decided we were better, in the end, but I bet he says that to all the audiences…

As I gently hinted by my bumper haiku selection earlier this week, we spent last weekend in New York, sleeping on the floor of Sal’s cousin’s apartment in the Upper West Side.

You know, as you do.

Of course, we’ve both been there before, and so didn’t need to bother with all that touristy stuff, although we did find time to saunter over the Brooklyn Bridge on Friday morning and have lunch in the heart of up and coming DUMBO (that’s “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass”, apparently–they do love their acronyms over there).

One thing I noticed this time was that contrary to what Homer Simpson might tell you (and I was reminded of the wonderful dream sequence in that very episode when we passed Flushing Meadows in the cab from JFK…) the New Yorkers that we encountered proved to be a remarkably friendly bunch: struggling to buy subway tickets, for example, several people went out of their way to help us (even though, in fact, our failure to operate the machines was not due to us being the dumb turistics, but rather because it would only accept a credit card if you input your ZIP code–fine if you live in the US and it’s 5 digits, but rather harder to do on a numeric keypad if you come from the UK…)

On the Friday night, Sal’s cousin had got us free tickets to an off-Broadway clown show that her company over there was connected with, called Slava’s Snow Show. It’s rather difficult to describe–one of our group went with “90 minutes of your life you’ll never get back”, but I can’t quite see them sticking that on the posters. I felt it was rather like watching an obscure European film in a language you don’t understand, and without the subtitles, but with no apparent plot (oh, and the characters don’t talk).

Well. It was, um, interesting, anyway. The first half of the show ended with what was effectively a giant cobweb being fed out over the top of the audience, and by the end it turned into something resembling a Flaming Lips gig, as they unleashed giant bouncy balls in the direction of the viewing public. If you could think of the perfect follow up to this kind of evening, then perhaps accidentally stumbling into a Vegetarian restaurant that, ahem, didn’t server alcohol, wouldn’t have been it.

We also went to the baseball, which was of course fantastic fun. I’d previously been to games at Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, and the experience of going to see the Yankees was much the same–any actual sport taking place seems to be largely peripheral to proceedings: all the fans really care about is the statistics, and to the casual observer the event is mostly about drinking beer and eating dodgy hot dogs. The Yankees won, apparently, although I couldn’t tell you the score, a fat guy in front of us caught the ball, there was an actual fight in the stairway next to us (hmm, maybe the locals are only friendly to visitors…), and at the end of the game they actually play New York, New York, which is rather surreal.

Discussing my Saturday afternoon activities with people at work the other day, someone asked me if I understood the rules. “They bring beer to your seat”, I said. “Who cares about the rules?”