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And so I find myself back at my desk, following a somewhat lengthy return journey on Sunday, the second half of which took place on a very hot, very full, Singapore Airlines jumbo on which, gasp! the on demand entertainment system wasn’t working properly and kept having to be reset, resulting in among other things, a 20 minute break to my viewing of that journey’s episode of Kath and Kim (thanks to the rotating selections on their entertainment system, over the course of the 40,000 odd miles we’ve flown with them in the last few months, I’ve nearly seen a whole series of consecutive episodes of this now. It’s possible that buying the DVD might have offered a cheaper and marginally more convenient alternative, though.

As always, by the time I get round to writing about it, it’s as if I’ve never been away.

But of course I have, and I have the photos to prove it. We were mostly in Australia this time for the occasion of Sally’s brother’s wedding, which he most inconsiderately opted to hold a mere 3 months after our last trip (surely it would have been the least he could do to have had it in November, when we were there for a whole month…) But no: the Friday before last I struggled into my suit on a sweltering 35 degree day as we sat out on the terrace at the Crown casino to watch the service, (which was presided over, I was very excited to discover, by a celebrant who had previously officiated at the wedding of Lou Carpenter on Neighbours).

The rest of our all too brief stay mostly consisted of eating and drinking, but there were a few highlights I might write about properly if I get the chance.

We even found time to catch up with Alex for lunch and shopping [for the record, by the way, we did indeed make it to the music shop in time to purchase the banjo, thus saving the day for Sally’s dad’s birthday–we got him the “Fender value starter pack” in the end, which contains just about everything you need to get started with that most peculiar of string instruments (although when I asked the chap in the shop if this included a sixth finger, he just laughed and said he hadn’t been to Tassie in a while…)].

Jordan and Andre,
With entourage and filming,
walking up some stairs

Far be it from me to suggest that some minor celebrities are now so desperate for attention that they are actually resorting to paying for their own people to follow them around with video cameras on a regular basis, but that’s certainly how it looked to us as we stood waiting to check in at Heathrow last night. Well, it was just as well they had the cameras there. I mean, could you imagine if some crucial “walking up stairs at Heathrow” footage wasn’t captured for posterity. Presumably we should expect to see it aired on ITV2 later this year. Clearly it’s what multichannel digital telly was invented for.

Anyway, so I’m in Singapore again, and the Internet is still free here. All rather painless so far, and only another 7 hours to Melbourne.

And it’s not just my company that’s in the process of moving. Last week Sal and I squeezed all our belongings into a small white tranny and headed over to our new home around the other side of Regent’s Park. And it looks like we have finally managed to extricate ourselves from the whole messy Landlady not paying the mortgage debacle that was the last year of our lives, without either being evicted or ending up out of pocket at all.

As you may recall, we spent much of July last year wondering if we were about to be forcibly removed from our home. After a short respite, things kicked off again in October, with the arrival (rather wonderfully, in a “you couldn’t make this up” stylee on my birthday) of a court summons addressed to our landlady for the possession proceedings, which were due to take place at the end of November (when we were going to be in Australia).

The hearing itself never actually took place, but we didn’t find that out until a few days before it. A week before the court date, the claimant’s solicitors sent a copy of their evidence to the flat. Although we were both in Australia at the time, a friend of Sal’s who was house-sitting for us helpfully emailed us the details. This made for very interesting reading, especially the parts where the solicitor stated that “the claimant has not consented to any letting of the whole or any part of the property and to the best of [her] knowledge and belief there is no other people other than the Defendant and family who could apply to the Court for relief”. Not exactly words to encourage you to believe that your interests are going to be considered, especially if you happen to be several thousand miles away and can’t attend the hearing. This also made for interesting reading considering that I’d previously contacted this firm of solicitors and told them that Sal and I were occupying the property as the tenants.

Luckily, I happened to be staying with my solicitor sister at the time, and she helped me draft a witness statement that we then faxed over to the court. A few days later (on the day of the hearing) a letter arrived at the flat back in London letting us know that the case had been adjourned. Who knows what really happened–maybe she paid her arrears in full–but I like to think we played our own small part in keeping a roof over our heads for the remainder of our tenancy.

Of course the problems didn’t end there. As the end of our tenancy approached we began to wonder how we might go about recouping our deposit payment (a month’s rent). Unfortunately, it turned out that this was held not be our landlady, but by the dodgy management agency, the Spencer Michael Consultancy, who, we then discovered, had entered into a Corporate Voluntary Arrangement at the start of November 2005 in an effort to avoid bankruptcy.

After spending much of Christmas worrying about how we were ever going to get that back, we ended up gently persuading the landlady to sort us out and attempt to recoup the money from the agency herself instead. Who knows, perhaps she felt guilty for the events of the last year…

Of course, although we’re now essentially settled in, a new flat brings its own new raft of problems. Most of those seem to be sorting themselves out fairly quickly, though, and so far the utilities lottery that has become an annual fixture of my life seems to be going off in a reasonably painless way: for the third time in a row I have had to get a BT engineer out to activate my phone, but it certainly didn’t require a full street’s worth of engineers this time. And sure, one of the previous residents might appear to owe the council a couple of hundred quid, but that’s nothing compared to the events of the past year. [The increasingly threatening letters that had arrived at the flat over the course of the past several months (while it was unoccupied) do make for amusing reading, though–you can clearly see the progression, as the early empty threats (“notice prior to committal to prison proceedings”) morph into what appear (judging from the fact that several months have passed without it actually happening) to be rather baseless promises to send the heavies round (“in your area this week”) and relieve the chap of all his worldly goods. With each letter, a bit more red appears on the page–the most recent claimed to be the “final notice”, but sadly I’ll never get to see if that too is just an empty promise, as I phoned them up to tell them he doesn’t live there anymore. It would have been fun to see where they go from there (entirely red paper? red ink? death threats?) but I didn’t want to take the chance that they might actually pop round and relieve me of my iPod. So I’ll never know…]

Idly flicking through the channels last night, after returning from a lovely curry with friends to celebrate Sal’s birthday (and to avoid any of that hallmark sponsored nonsense that might have been going on elsewhere), we chanced upon a late-night “adult” episode of the shabby student soap Hollyoaks. For reasons that were never adequately explored or explained, everyone appeared to be in the North West’s finest shabby seaside resort, my old home town of Southport. I shouldn’t be surprised, really, given that Hollyoaks is made by Phil Redmond’s Mersey Television, who occasionally used to film snippets of Brookside in the town (and I seem to recall that at least one character from that show came to a rather murky end buried beneath Southport’s miles and miles of golden sand dunes).

Last night’s episode of Hollyoaks mostly covered various characters hanging around in rather drab, chintzy looking hotels (yep, that’s Southport alright). The only exterior shots consisting of a couple of blokes wandering around a small area (well, round about here, actually) near the fair and the sea front (and there appeared to be some kind of sub plot about the characters having previously ridden on Southport Funland’s very own low-budget answer to Blackpool’s Pepsi Max Big One roller coaster, the Tizer Traumatizer).

(Sorry, I’ve just realised that there’s no actual point to this entry, I don’t have anything funny to say about it, and I’m not quite sure how to end it, so why don’t we just stop now and pretend this never happened. Right. Carry on…)

I’m sure that “bosses” at Camelot must be rubbing their hands with glee at the “lottery fever” (copyright all tabloid newspapers) that has been “gripping the nation” recently.

Now, I know that this is all essentially a tax on those with a shaky grasp on the concept of probability (Londonist tells me that the odds on a single ticket winning the jackpot in the EuroMillions draw–76 million to 1–are roughly the same as playing a single number on a roulette wheel five times the size of the M25), but that still hasn’t stopped me from buying a couple of tickets for this week’s draw. [Well, why would you want to not win only £5 million, when you can not win £125 million instead?]

I’ve also opted in to our work syndicate, although that is more because, as unlikely as it is, I wouldn’t want to be the only person in the company who has to come in to work on Monday. 3 people have apparently opted to take this chance, but that does mean that any winnings we do get will be split between 51 people. That’d be fine if we were to win the top prize (if we’re the only ticket holders to do so, that’d be a cool £2.5 million each), but given that the prize distribution in this particular competition is so heavily skewed towards the jackpot, it’s far more likely that we could “win” one of the minor prizes but get back less than our collective initial stake. Hmm. Looks we’ll probably all be back in the office on Monday after all, won’t we?

Not that it’s the most original thought in the world (and I can hardly be the first person to have spotted it), but I never cease to be amazed by the shockingly high fees some ticketing agencies will slap on top of already inflated gig ticket prices.

This morning I picked up a couple of tickets to see Hard-Fi at the Brixton Academy in May. I went through ticketweb, even though they’re part of evil ticketmaster, because their fees are always the cheapest (and you can pick the venue pick-up option, which is not only cheaper because you don’t have to pay an over inflated delivery charge, but also generally better because there’s no relying on the Royal Mail to worry about, and–at Brixton at least–you get to avoid the queues by going in through a separate entrance). Even so, they were charging 12% of the face value in fees (or £2.22 per ticket). Now I know that this is how they make their money, and that they don’t get a cut of the ticket price itself, but still, what the hell is the £8.88 I’ve just paid them for 4 tickets actually paying for? I booked through the website, so at no point was an actual human involved in the transaction, and the tickets will be printed out on the day of the show and stuffed into an envelope at the box office. Two quid for printing the name of the gig on a small bit of paper with a hologram on it? I don’t think so.

I know for a fact that the same agency can happily print the tickets for First Friday at the Islington Academy for only 85p booking fee per ticket, so I’d be interested to know why it costs an extra £1.37 per ticket to wing the details over to Brixton electronically instead. Is this some special pricing structure that BT apply to electronic ticketing agencies? Do they charge more per kilometre that the data has to travel?

Then again, it could be worse. “As a favour to the band’s fans” (I discovered on browsing their message board yesterday) they were running a presale yesterday through The Way Ahead/Seetickets/Gigsandtours.com (or whatever they choose to call themselves these days) agency (they of the Glasto ticket shenanigans fame). I could have picked up the same four tickets yesterday in the presale and paid a total of £15.70 in fees (this to buy four tickets with a face value of £18.50 each). That’s a total charge of 21%. So I decided to pass on that gracious advance offer from the band and take my chances with the general sale. I also noticed that Stargreen had tickets for sale as well, but their fees were up to a whopping seventeen quid. I wonder what they pay the envelope stuffers in these places…?

AND while I’m on the subject, NME / Hard-Fi marketing peeps, please don’t give me this nonsense about them selling out Brixton in just 15 minutes, and suddenly adding extra dates due to unprecedented demand: it took them at least 24 hours of “presale” plus a good 60 – 90 minutes this morning to sell all the tickets for their first two dates [EDIT: And oh look: one of those Brixton dates they “sold out” in 15 minutes now has tickets available again online, over 24 hours after the tickets went onsale, yet still the NME inists that the band sold out their initial dates in 15 minutes (where did this figure come from, exactly?) and that they were “forced” to add more dates…], and, hey, well, that was a stroke of luck that you just happened to have some gaps in the tour schedule and were able to add in those extra dates to the tour like that. Just as well the Manchester Apollo and the Brixton Academy just happened to be available for another night, isn’t it?

…and while I’m on the subject, another thing that annoys me about the abuses of the English language foisted on us by the popular press is the continued prevalence of journalese. I don’t know about you, but it always makes the tabloids in particular seem extra shouty and hysterical.

This morning’s The Sun, for example, which someone’s left in our office kitchen, continues their shocking, undoubtedly front page-worthy, story from last year about the fact that someone in the fashion industry may have taken drugs, by suggesting on the front page that the “drugs case [against Kate Moss is] in tatters after Cop Quiz”. So what’s a “cop quiz”, then? Is that like a pub quiz? Do all the police sit around tables trying to think of answers to questions about pointless legal action involving celebrities? Do they have to drop the case brought by the team with the least points?

The broadsheets are just as bad, too: also on Moss, today’s Indie tells me, helpfully, that all this started when “video footage of her allegedly using cocaine emerged last year”. So tell me, how exactly can the video show her allegedly using cocaine? Surely it either shows her using it or not–isn’t the allegation of cocaine use yours, Mr Indie (or the News of the World’s, for that matter)? Just because “allegedly” has become a catch-all disclaimer from the printing of legally dubious statements, it doesn’t mean you can confer the ability to make these assertions onto inanimate objects, just to attempt to avoid being sued for libel…

See, now, the problem with writing and, more specifically, editing things for a living, is that I find it very hard to stop doing this outside the office.

Newspapers and magazines, with their tight deadlines and frequently cavalier usage of the English language, are a case in point.

For example, last week’s edition of TNT, the traveller’s magazine, included this gem, in a bizarre news article about a woman who has been terrorising the Melbourne tram network by breaking into the driver’s cab and broadcasting X-rated announcements over the PA. According to the article:

‘It was very graphic about how she was going to have sex with a driver for about three minutes,’ said Angela, a passenger on the Frankston-bound train.

Hmm. So is there by any chance a better way you could have phrased that quote, or was she actually rather dismissive about the driver’s, ahem, staying power…?

I’ll be moving offices in a couple of months. We’re only going up the road, and it’s mostly a good thing because we’ll be much closer to the station, so that’s a few precious minutes shaved off my commute, but there are still a few things I’ll miss about the current location. One such thing is my monthly trip down to see Dennis, the barber just around the corner.

At the moment our office is a good ten minutes along Tooley Street away from London Bridge, at about the point where the high-rise office buildings housing the overspill from the city, and the plush waterfront apartments of Shad Thames, give way to the grim council housing of Bermondsey. Entering the local barbershop (the wonderfully titled “Just Men”), which sits uneasily between these two areas, always feels a bit like stepping back in time, into a moderately intimidating world of gruff South East Londoners (this a place where I actually once heard someone unironically using the phrase “apples and pears”). It’s a messy, traditional barbers with a fading poster celebrating Millwall’s 2001 Division Two championship on the wall, run by an affable chap of Southern European origin with a penchant for referring to those he dislikes (of whom you will soon discover if you spend any length of time in his shop there are many) as “bastards”.

Toni and Guy, this ain’t.

The shop is often filled with random locals who aren’t even waiting for a cut at all, many of whom work as drivers at the cab office next door, who’ll pop in and out while they wait for a fare, continuing the conversations they were having hours ago as they do so (“…he don’t want to know us, now, Den, does he? Now he’s got his black cab license…”), and helping themselves to his kettle to make their cups of coffee. On one memorable occasion, I sat in the chair listening to a delightful chap discussing how he’d narrowly escaped a driving ban on a technicality despite being several times over the limit, during which, in the best The Bill style, he referred to his solicitor as “his brief”.

In fact, the conversation you’ll inevitably have while having your hair cut by Dennis is a bit like the one you might find yourself sucked into with a particularly chatty cab driver, only with a lot more swearing. And I, for one, feel rather cautious about disagreeing with the man, what with him having a pair of scissors just a centimetre or so away from my brain, and all. I usually spend most of my time in the chair nodding nervously (although not too vigorously, obviously, for fear of losing an ear, or something).

The first half of my most recent haircut centred on–and I must have missed this shocking scandal of our times–the rampant level of match fixing in snooker (this provoked by the casual question from the guy before me as to why the snooker wasn’t on the telly). Apparently there’s no point in watching it not because televised snooker isn’t exactly the most enthralling of spectator sports, but because “the bastards are always throwing their games”.

After discussing the cheating levels in several major sports, we sometimes ended up on the subject of Celebrity Big Brother. And Den certainly does not approve of Mr Barrymore, I can tell you, (although he had nothing but praise for fellow local Jade Goodie, who he’s met several times, apparently, and who he considers to have done very well for herself).

But sadly, that might well have been one of my last trips, and my haircuts, and lunchtimes, will be all the duller for it.

I love anti-piracy adverts. From those old black and white cartoons that the Federation Against Copyright Theft used to run in computer magazines in the early 80s, usually featuring a couple of kids foolishly buying some dodgy copied cassette tapes of games from a bloke at the market, through to those Simon Bates ads, the implication that if you ever so much as think about copying a cd, it means the terrorists win, and that funny little sticker on your new iPod that asks you ever so politely not to steal music, there’s always been something rather quaint and ridiculous about them (especially looking back on them some years later–cf. “home taping is killing music”). I particularly enjoy it when the anti-piracy message is delivered to me as designated “must watch” content at the start of a legitimately acquired DVD. Because there’s nothing that discourages your genuine customers from going anywhere near pirated DVDs than forcing them to sit through 5 minutes of propaganda every time they settle down to watch their favourite disc, now is there?

On Sunday, Sal and I went to the cinema for the first time in absolutely ages, and before the film started we were treated to not one but two examples of this sadly overlooked genre: one was just the now familiar message asking you not to try to video the film from your seat (I honestly have no idea why anyone would ever want to do this in the UK, considering we get our films several months after most of the rest of the world), but the other was one I’ve not seen before–it used clips from King Kong as an example to suggest that it’s far better to watch the latest big budget blockbuster on the big screen, instead of at home on that DVD you bought off the bloke in the pub, with the poor picture quality and the people in front of whoever filmed it getting up to go to the toilet half way through (actually, I’m not sure why the official line has to be that all dodgy DVDs have been obtained through illicit in-cinema copying–I don’t have the patience to bother trying to download films over the Internet, but I was under the impression that most of the content out there has originated from ripped screener tapes–perhaps it suits the anti-piracy advocates to pretend that all this sort of thing is the fault of the less reputable elements of the general public rather than admit that the source for much of the material is in fact people within the film industry themselves, I don’t know).

Anyway, it’s better to watch new films at the cinema, on the big screen, we were told, because “it’s the experience that counts”.

An hour and a half into Ang Lee’s excellent Brokeback Mountain I was thoroughly feeling that authentic cinema experience for myself, as, having paid more for our two seats to see this one film than I pay for an entire month of DVD rentals from Lovefilm, the throbbing pain in my lower back began to spread to my legs and I felt myself shifting uncomfortably in the tiny seat into which I was wedged at the top of the Camden Town Odeon, the rustle of sweet wrappers from all corners of the room only partially drowned out by the chorus of coughing and sniffing from my fellow patrons ringing around the cinema.

The film is, as I said, great, but I think we might stick to DVDs for the foreseeable.

Does this mean I’m officially old?