So, what have I missed during the last five days while I was busy blogging endlessly about the tube instead?
• Football. Apparently it's the rugby football world cup or something at the moment, but I have yet to meet anyone who cares. Real football has dominated the news this week instead, which is odd because nobody's actually played any real football matches. Does anyone play football any more, or are they too busy playing a not-so-beautiful game elsewhere?
• Politics: Californians have elected a ham actor with a dodgy past and debatable morals to the post of state Governor, confirming my worst suspicions that voters are very stupid celebrity is the new politics.
• Art: I have a large damp patch spreading across the ceiling and walls in my hallway. It's about ten feet long, and it now looks like a grid of semi-interlocking giant earthworms. I suspect that the Tate Modern would be very interested in this installation were it a little more portable, but I'd rather the bloke in the flat upstairs fixed the installation of his new shower properly instead.
• Radio: London's first commercial radio station, LBC, was thirty years old on Wednesday. I suspect the same old grumpy taxi drivers still ring up the through-the-night phone-in and complain about everything. Jeremy Beadle started out on LBC you know. I wonder if it's too late to sue.
• Music: I went to see an Arab Strap gig this week, just to be different. When a bearded man shambled on stage in an anorak, I thought it was perhaps David Blunkett on lead vocals, but no, it was amiable Scottish frontman Aidan instead. He mumbled his way through an hour of songs I didn't know but sort of liked, backed by guitars and an indie chamber orchestra. I was most impressed by his quick repartee with the more drunken elements of the audience, and by the final four-song acoustic all-requests encore.
• Verse: Thursday was National Poetry Day. Here's a collection of Poems on the Underground. (sorry, I was trying not to mention that again...)
