Month: May 2005

Now we all know that the London Underground network is mostly held together with sticky tape and bits of string, and it’s frankly surprising that the thing keeps running at all, but sometimes you do have to wonder. This morning it seemed like nobody had the slightest clue what was going on–getting a Northern Line train from Camden is always a bit of a gamble at the best of times, given that the train you want could come in first on one of two platforms on opposite sides of the station. There’s an indicator board at the bottom of the escalator, of course, but more often that not, helpfully, it’s wrong. Usually you can rely on what it says on the front of the train, but that obviously requires you to be on the platform, and isn’t much help when you realise that you actually should have been on the other one.

This morning, no one had the slightest idea what was going on. The train said “Bank”, the board said “Bank”, and even the driver said “Bank”, but the train, it turned out, was going to Charing Cross (“Sorry about that ladies and gentlemen. The driver’s always the last to find out…”) and I had to relinquish my seat and return to the platform where the announcer assured us that the next train would be a bank train. Except that the train thought it was going to Charing Cross, and, then, so did the announcer. Until he changed his mind and decided that it would only go to Euston. Er, terminate here. Er, Euston, actually, after all. Perhaps he just enjoyed the feeling of power at watching scores of slightly disgruntled commuters moving en masse to get on or off the train, as each decision was announced.

Last night, Sal and I headed over to Hammersmith to see Oasis run through a selection of their hits, alongside a few too many of the shabby songs off their new album. There was something slightly unpleasant about the atmosphere inside the venue when we arrived: I don’t know, perhaps it was just the high levels of drunkenness and testosterone in the air, perhaps it was just that your average Oasis fan isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, perhaps it was just the contrast between the inside of the Apollo and the atmosphere near green park, where Sal and I had spent the previous hour or so having a nice dinner followed by ice creams in the park. Or perhaps it was the fact that inside the gents shortly after we arrived there was a bloke who’d decided not to bother queueing with the rest of us who was casually relieving himself in one of the sinks as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Well, for him, perhaps it was.

I actually really enjoyed the gig, with the exception of the distinct lull in the middle when they chose to play the three worst songs on the new album (Meaning of Soul, Mucky Fingers, and A Bell Will Ring) back to back (it was obvious that most of those in attendance had never heard them before, but even the people who, like me, had somehow managed to have already heard the album for some reason seemed rather bored by it). But then they went back to playing the hits, so it was all ok (and, by the time they got to the Wonderwall/Don’t Look Back In Anger/My Generation encore, almost forgotten). Yeah, so I know it’s not big or clever to like Oasis, but I always did and I guess I still do. One particular highlight of the gig was listening to the girl behind me singing along–somehow the lines she was singing from Bring It On Down (“You’re the outcast. You’re the underclass….”) didn’t have quite the same force when you substituted her awfully posh and squeaky voice for Liam’s surly extended vowels.

Ah well, at least she was trying…

So it looks like the old ID card chestnut is back in the fire again. This time the big justification is “identity theft”, but, as with terrorism, immigration, and organised crime before, the home office fail to explain how the new card will actually solve the problem.

In fact, won’t ID cards actually make it easier for someone to perpetuate identity theft? Once the system is introduced, instead of having to go to the trouble of obtaining all sorts of personal information in order to fake someone’s identity, your identity thieving needs will be fulfilled by one simple card, which, once forged, will enable you to do all sorts of things like open bank accounts, obtain credit cards, and so on.

Interesting to note, also, that they aren’t even bothering to pretend any more that the cards will in some way be voluntary–Blunketts was always banging on about “Entitlement Cards”, but somehow they’ve now become “a secure compulsory national identity cards scheme”. No surprises there, I suppose.

(El Reg has some very interesting points to make about this here).

To the UCL Bloomsbury theatre, on Friday night, for some rather entertaining comedy, compered by the unexpectedly funny Simon Amstell (he off of Popworld), and featuring various funny people (including the excellent Rob Rouse, and the actor Kevin Eldon).

To the UCL Bloomsbury theatre, on Saturday night, to retrieve Sal’s purse, which she appears to have left on the bar the previous night. Unfortunately, she didn’t realise she’d even lost it until we reached Vauxhall station, on our way to drinks in Clapham, on Saturday afternoon, and I therefore had to dash back to check the flat in Camden, before we established that, yes, it was indeed still at the venue, and, yes, it did indeed still contain all her credit cards, her driving license, various other bits of non essential plastic and thirty five quid. Fringe benefit of attending a charidee gig, I suppose.

I had hoped to catch some of the FA Cup Final on Saturday, but in the end, despite originally leaving the house at 3, just as it kicked off, the three trips across central London that I ended up making meant that I didn’t arrive at the pub we were heading for in Clapham until some twenty minutes after the end of the game (this despite extra time and penalties). Oh well, doesn’t sound like I missed much anyway.

…for events taking place at the end of next month, I expect the Glastonbury tickets will be on their way out soon. Frankly, I’m not at all surprised about this. When I got my glasto ticket, I immediately applied for one of these pointless pieces of plastic, and said card arrived some weeks ago. As far as my experience goes, I can’t see any possible way that anyone could get around the system–can you?

– Complete online form on Citizen Card website, providing details of a solicitor to act as a referee.
– Receive email welcoming me to the Citizen Card scheme, asking me to EMAIL a photo of myself for the card and a scan of my signature.
– Receive card three weeks later.
– Referee is not called at any point (and even if he had been, he wouldn’t have seen the photo or signature anyway).

As I said, flawless.

“There’s no way fraudsters will get through the system” – official festival website.

“No Cameras or Recorders”, it says in large black print on the tickets for next month’s U2 gig that I collected from the post depot this morning.*

Well that scuppers my plans to join in with my own wind instrument-based solo to “With Or Without You”. I’m not sure I want to go anymore, frankly.

* Oh, so our friendly neighbourhood postman can manage to attempt to deliver items requiring a signature at 7:30 am on a Saturday morning, banging on the door and waking me up a bit but not enough for me to get up and actually answer the door, but he can’t manage to do the same on a week day when it might actually be useful…

Well, I suppose this had to happen eventually, and you can’t really blame him for wanting to further his career (and presumably taking the big cheque he was offered), but it does present something of a quandary for my morning listening: the XFM breakfast show is always terrible whenever they have someone else in the chair, but do I follow O’Connell to Virgin, where he’ll no doubt have to play lots of terrible chart music, or do I stay put for a more indie, but perhaps ultimately less entertaining, morning listening experience?

Ok, so it seems there is a minor flaw in my theory that if I don’t pay attention to Everton they do better, as our late return from Turkey prevented me from finding out about the shambles taking place over at Highbury until I arrived back at work. Still, surely the exception that proves the rule: they did manage to complete their unlikely qualification for the Champions League while I was away, after all.

Turkey, by the way, was lovely. A bit like Croatia, but with bartering. Sal went there backpacking for two weeks with a couple of friends, but as I lacked the holiday allowance or desire to join her for most of this, I travelled out for the end of their trip to join them for a few days at an all-inclusive resort at the bottom of the country.

Somewhat stupidly, I had chosen to fly into an airport some 250km away, but rather less stupidly I decided to pre-arrange a surprisingly reasonably priced transfer off some company I found on the Interwebs. And so it was that, given that no one else is stupid enough to fly in to an airport so far away from their destination, I travelled the three hours from the airport to the resort in my own private 15 seater minibus. I feel uncomfortable enough catching taxis at the best of times, but this was just ridiculous.

Barely 5 minutes out of the airport, we slowed to a crawl in the backed-up traffic. It didn’t take long to see the reason for the delay, as we spotted a police car, a group of onlookers, a cameraman, two bashed up cars, and a chap with a bucket of sand repairing the road. I looked around for the seatbelts in my minibus. There weren’t any.

Somehow we made it safely, despite the cavalier attitude the Turkish take to road markings and their decidedly vague attitude to the concept of “lanes”. The driver managed not to hit any of the many people just wandering around at the side of the road, and he even somehow managed to remain on the windy mountain road just outside Oludeniz despite the fact that he was clearly watching the para gliders over the bay to the right, even as he turned the wheel to the left.

Perhaps it’s just as well that I wasn’t really there long enough to see the real Turkey, and at any rate we spent most of our time in our closeted all-inclusive world. (But, hey, they let you pour your own beer: why would we leave?)

We did escape a couple of times, though, if only so Sal could exercise her bartering technique at the market stalls that permeate tourist Turkey. She certainly drives a harder bargain than me; I just fold at the earliest opportunity. Somehow, though, that didn’t matter, because I didn’t really see a great deal that I wanted to buy: somehow the stalls all seem to sell the same products and be staffed by chaps who’ve been taught the same routines–“alright mate”, they would say, in a faux Landarn accent, “what part of London you from? Sarf Landan?” Still, at least that was better than the chap we met in the Grand Bazzar in Istanbul who decided that a winning sales strategy for promoting the fake aftershave and dodgy T-Shirts on his stall would be to refer to me as “skinny man”. For some reason, we chose not to purchase anything from him. Can’t think why.

I’ve just spent a couple of hours of my bank holiday Monday sorting out a few of the things on the site that I’ve been meaning to do for ages.

You probably won’t notice most of the changes (mostly it was backend/RSS stuff), but should notice that the archive is, finally, a proper one with dates and everything (scroll down, on the right).

I have, undoubtedly, broken something. Please let me know if you find out what it is…

I really should take my own advice: when I don’t pay attention to Everton, they win. When I watch/care, they lose. Before this Saturday I’d seen them play twice in London (losing 3-0 to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, and losing 2-0 to Fulham at Loftus Road), so the omens for Fulham vs Everton at Craven Cottage on Saturday afternoon weren’t good. Still, given that we’re currently sitting happily in fourth place, and Fulham weren’t even certain of staying in the Premiership next season before the game, I expected at least to see us put up some kind of fight. I should have known better, though, and so it was that I spent a couple of hours sitting directly behind one of the goals listening to shouts of “Champions League? You’re having a larf!” from several thousand people sitting behind me ringing in my ears.

Still, this gave me a chance to reflect at length on the moronic thought processes of the average football fan. (Of course, it makes perfect sense that a bloke sitting in the stand at one end of the pitch is better placed to call an offside decision than the bloke running up and down on the line a few feet away from the incident…)

Many of the comments from the home supporters concentrated on Everton’s propensity for playing the long ball game: a valid point, admittedly, but surely you’re stretching that point slightly if you sarcastically shout “Go on, hoof it up the field” at our goalkeeper as he’s about to take a goal kick: what did you expect Nigel Martyn to do, Mr Generic Fulham Supporter: dribble it up to the other end of the pitch and score a goal?

Of course I’m sure that there’s no element of jealously involved in the fact that a team with similarly meagre resources has somehow managed to end the season so much higher up the table than a certain west London team flirting with relegation: a comment like “Everton’s football is, as I expected it to be, absolutely atrocious…” is just a simple unbiased value judgement.

Obviously.