Month: January 2006

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?