diamond geezer

Tuesday, April 08, 2003

Time on my hands

Douglas Adams pretty much summed up late 1970s timekeeping when, in the prologue to the Hitch Hiker's Guide To the Galaxy, he wrote: "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."

Back in 1978 I thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea. They were new, they were at the cutting edge of technology, they were affordable and, best of all, they told the exact time. None of these old-fashioned second hands going round once a minute that had only a 59-to-1 chance of being in the correct place. What was the point of having a super-expensive analogue watch that was accurate to within half a second every twenty years, if that half a second was probably wrong? No, I wanted to know the real time, checked daily against the daily 8am BBC Radio pips. I wanted to know exactly when double History was going to end. I wanted to make sure I never missed the beginning of Nationwide because I knew if I switched the TV on with exactly 35 seconds to go the tube would always warm up just in time for that familiar jingle. And if I ever had the special treat of staying up until midnight, I wanted to know exactly when midnight arrived.

In 1978, old fashioned analogue watches suddenly seemed very uncool because they had two hands. However, it turned out that digital watches needed two hands as well - one to wear them on and one to press the button to find out what the time was. One type of watch needed winding up, the other wound you up. Red LED digital watches were just no use at all while you were carrying both your briefcase and sports bag around school, neither could you sneak a look at the display at the end of double History without being noticed. I was therefore particularly pleased when liquid crystal watches came along soon afterwards, and bought one as soon as the price came down far enough. Their display was ever-present. At last, accuracy with functionality.

However, the heyday of the digital watch was brief. The Swiss watchmaking industry, rattled by the flood of cheap Far Eastern timepieces onto the world market, soon hit back with the disposable Swatch. The Swiss had cleverly realised that a watch isn't for telling the time at all, but is instead a fashion statement. The majority of the population really don't care whether it's exactly twenty to three or not, they just want a trendy bracelet on their wrist. As for telling the time accurately, merely knowing that the big hand is somewhere inbetween the two widely-spaced coloured blobs on your watch face is usually quite good enough for most people.

It's possible to chart the decline in popularity of the digital watch using the Argos Index. Twenty years ago, about 60% of the watch section in the Argos catalogue would have been filled with hip and happening digitals. Nowadays less than 20% of their watch section is digital, and many of those that remain are ugly, chunky and impractical. Sports watches, apparently, although you'd not get far trying to run with that weight hanging off your wrist.

Me, I still wear my digital watch every day. I don't care if I get funny looks from people who wonder why my watch looks like it cost less than a tenner fifteen years ago (they'd be right, as it happens). I don't want a chunk of fake Rolex on my arm. I still like to know exactly what the time is. I can walk into the cinema or the train station at exactly the right moment without missing anything. I can turn up bang on time for a meeting, without going in early because I'm not quite sure whether the minute hand's gone past a mark on my watch face that isn't there. I can stand in a crowd on New Year's Eve knowing that everyone else is celebrating prematurely because Big Ben's one second early. I like to know my place in four-dimensional space. I may be sad, but at least I'm precisely sad.

Douglas Adams was wrong about digital watches. They are a pretty neat idea. And you can read all about them on h2g2, his excellent legacy of a website about Life, The Universe and Everything. Digital, it's the future apparently.

posted 20:30 :

The 7am puzzle (Fiver): Click here, then try to turn all the white pieces black.
Apparently it's possible in 15 moves. Can you crack it in 15 minutes? Java required

posted 07:00 :

Monday, April 07, 2003

10 things that always happen in restaurants

1) On arrival the waitress asks whether you'd like to sit in smoking or non-smoking. She then ushers you towards a cramped table next to the family from hell which is so close to the fog of the smoking section that she might as well not have bothered asking you in the first place.

2) Everyone sits down and looks at the menu for ages, trying to decide what to have. After five minutes the waitress comes over and asks people what they would like to drink, at which point everyone suddenly turns to the drinks listed on the back page of the menu which they haven't thought to look at yet.

3) Anyone requesting a glass of water is presented with a small bottle recently filled from the tap in the kitchen, which is added to the bill at a cost of at least three pounds. Anyone requesting a glass of tap water is sneered at but receives the same drink in a glass at no cost.

4) The background music is turned up slightly too loud for comfort, and consists either of old Westlife tracks on endless loop or something strange and ethnic that the restaurant doesn't have to fork out royalty payments on.

5) When the main course arrives you look down disappointedly at the paltry selection of food dumped on your plate, wondering how the restaurant can charge so much for a meal that is essentially half lettuce. Later, once you've started eating, the people at the table next to you get their main course. At this point you realise you should have chosen what they had.

6) Five minutes into eating your meal, the waitress comes over to ask whether you're enjoying your food. She has been trained to approach the table only at the exact moment when everyone's mouth is full. Therefore everyone just nods and grunts approvingly in her general direction, rather than complaining about the fact that the sauce is cold, the meat is rare, and the meal is half lettuce.

7) The dessert menu, when it arrives, is a tacky laminated sheet full of overpriced ice creams, tarts and mousses, mass-produced in large quantities off-site and piled high in the restaurant's freezer. As a result nobody chooses to have a dessert and instead spends the next few minutes bemoaning the day restaurants stopped serving up decent filling desserts like apple pie, treacle pudding and spotted dick.

8) Despite having made it very clear to the waitress fifteen minutes ago that nobody wanted either a dessert or a coffee, there still seems to be no sign of the bill ever arriving. It's impossible to catch the waitress's eye because she seems to be spending all her time on the other side of the restaurant or sneaking off to hide in the kitchen. In the end she has to be asked three times before she finally remembers how to carry a small piece of paper from the till to your table.

9) When the bill arrives, everyone who spent above the average amount argues that the bill should be split evenly. Meanwhile everyone who spent below the average amount argues that people should each pay their fair share. In the end, everyone realises that they don't in fact have enough spare change to be able to pay the exact amount anyway, so the waitress ends up with a much larger tip than her poor service deserved.

10) I could only come up with nine of these. I'm sure I can rely on you lot to tell me something that I've missed out.

posted 23:00 :

The 7am link: ho for hoggwarts!!
Harry Potter meets Molesworth, chiz chiz.

posted 07:00 :

Sunday, April 06, 2003

6) a trip to the Boat Race

The Boat Race is one of the most popular events in the British sporting calendar and attracts a massive crowd of around 250,000 to the banks of the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake. This year it was 250,001.

I come from a very Cambridge-supporting family, so it was a bit of a shock to them 20 years ago when I switched allegiance and got a place at Oxford instead. Not in the rowing team, you understand, but the university. Rowers are a very keen band of people, and so during our first week at Oxford all us freshers were gathered together in an upper room and asked if we wanted to join the college rowing team. Those of us from comprehensive schools had probably never really considered rowing as a participatory sport before, so we were a bit bemused. From what we saw before us, rowing appeared to be about long spindly arms, breathlessness and long periods spent in the college bar after every training session. I wasn't taken in, but the girl in the room next to mine signed up, at which point I discovered the real problem with rowing. Her alarm clock would ring, loudly, at half past five every morning so that she could be up and out for the early-morning practice session on the river. Be it mid-November or mid-May, she was freezing and I was wide awake. All that pain and hardship, and still the college rowing team lost every single race for the rest of the year. No Oxford Blues in our college, just Oxford blues.

It beats me why eight grown men (and one not-quite-so-grown man) would ever want to climb into a small boat and row more than four miles round a bendy river when there's a perfectly good train service that can do the trip direct in six minutes flat. However, that doesn't seem to have stopped Oxford and Cambridge from battling it out on the River Thames almost every year since 1829 (current score Oxford 71, Cambridge 77). This afternoon I went along to see what all the fuss was about. I could have stayed in and watched saturation coverage on the television but no, my dice had spoken (see below) so I was off to experience the whole heady event for real.

I reached Putney Bridge with five minutes to spare before the reserve race began. The whole area was full of tourists looking lost, families looking bored and yuppies looking drunk. I made my way down to the river, pushing past the acres of pushchairs, and tried to see if anything was happening. I was glad I'd remembered to wear the right colour blue. The crowds were one-deep, looking out across the river towards the boathouses in case anything was actually happening. The sensible amongst them had brought radios to find out what was going on, thermos flasks to keep them warm and a football to keep the kids occupied. The less sensible had brought cold meat picnics and grandma. There were a lot of twenty-somethings in the crowd, a lot of courting couples, and a high proportion of students using the race as a social opportunity to meet up with their jolly good mates during the Easter break. The BBC were blocking the towpath, making sure that six million TV viewers could watch the event, even if we couldn't. The reserve race kicked off at 4pm to muted cheers, at which point a number of people left and went home thinking they'd just seen the main event.

I wandered upstream, trying to get to Hammersmith Bridge before the proper race arrived half an hour later. I was forced to make a detour inland around Mr Al Fayed's football ground at Craven Cottage, after which the riverside was noticeably less crowded. The spectators here tended to be families, and very middle class in the same way that nobody in East London is. Some people looked like they'd not been anywhere near London since the Countryside Alliance march last year, and weren't planning on coming back until they needed their Barbour jacket re-tailored. The Boat Race also appeared to signal the beginning of the UK barbecue season, even when the temperature was only ten degrees Celsius, and the smell of burnt sausages drifted across from gardens backing onto the river. The residents of an old people's home were having a Boat Race party, beaming broadly beneath blue-ribboned bonnets. The crowds were thickest within fifty feet of the few riverside pubs. The event's sponsors should consider replacing their logo with a plastic lager glass, as this seems to best represent why most spectators turn up.

I stopped in sight of Hammersmith Bridge, which the police had helpfully closed just in case anyone might get a decent view. Trees on the opposite bank were bursting into leaf, although the sun was defiantly not shining. Somewhere in the distance came the welcome sight of two tiny boats edging closer upstream, a helicopter buzzing overhead marking their position. We waited for the action to draw nearer. Eventually the two boats swept past, neck and neck, or maybe the yellow boat was just ahead of the yellow boat, it was hard to tell. The two teams were followed by a flotilla of champagne-fuelled launches, spread out across the river, making the most of their eighteen minute chase. I made the mistake of whipping out my digital camera to record the spectacle, so I ended up concentrating more on the camera than the boats at the crucial moment. And then, as fast as they came, the boats disappeared off under the bridge, round the bend and out of sight. The small crowd turned to look at one other, shrugged and headed back to the nearest pub.

It struck me that, by attending the Boat Race in real life, I had completely failed to experience it. From the riverside it was impossible to tell who was winning and, ultimately, which team was the winner. By the time the race ended I was already descending into Hammersmith station to start my journey home, totally oblivious of the result. I eventually got back to watch the whole thing 'properly' on video from earlier in the afternoon. Only then did I discover how exciting the race apparently was, how close it had been all the way through, and how the whole thing came down to a breathtaking photo finish. The two teams differed by just one foot after four and a quarter miles. Outstanding, record-breaking, even epic, apparently. And I missed it because I was there. Next year I shall stay at home and watch the race on television. Or maybe just check the result in the paper on Monday morning.

And who won? Who cares. If I've learnt one thing about the Boat Race today, it's that 'who won?' is the one fact that really doesn't matter.

posted 19:30 :

The Dice Man

I bought two books yesterday. One was Tilting at Windmills by Andy Miller, the tale of a sports atheist who was always picked last for the football team at school. This book speaks to me, even if I have no intention of going one step further like Andy and attempting to cure myself by aspiring to become UK crazy golf champion. And the second book I bought was The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart, the 1971 classic about a bored psychiatrist who lets the throw of a dice govern every decision in his life. I've decided to follow Luke's modus operandi today in order to decide how to fill my day. I'm going to list six different places in London that I could go out and visit today, then I'm going to roll a dice to see which one of them I have to go to.
Remember, one of the great things about being single is that you can do something totally off the wall like this without anyone turning to you at the breakfast table and asking "You want to do what? You must be completely mad!" Plus you don't get to spend your Sundays somewhere dull like B&Q or IKEA instead.

Here's the list of options:
1) a walk along the Greenwich Meridian
2) a walk along the Thames west from Docklands
3) a randomly chosen museum from this list
4) a randomly chosen art gallery from this list
5) a random dice-controlled journey on the Underground
6) a trip to the Boat Race

So, six possible locations, one dice, which location will it be?
I'll roll the dice now, and come back later to tell you all about my day out.

posted 12:00 :

Saturday, April 05, 2003

/ /0

Looks like it's the perfect date to talk about Thunderbirds.

Very few science fiction series made in the 20th century but set in the 21st century still get shown on TV in the 21st century. Most of them look far too dated. They're full of whirring computers, 70s hairstyles, Habitat furniture, plastic clothing, Sinclair technology, Morris Minors and 70s hairstyles. It's impossible to believe that a programme was ever meant to be set in the future when the technology being used is still the size of a 1995 mobile phone and all the actors have droopy moustaches. Thunderbirds is the exception. By using puppets, Gerry Anderson future-proofed his most famous creation. There was something just unreal enough about the puppets of Scott, Virgil and Alan for us to suspend our disbelief, ignoring the blatantly obvious strings, and just enjoy the adventures.

International Rescue - now there's an organisation we could do with today. Not least because nobody ever died in Thunderbirds, not once in 32 episodes. The team just flew in, wobbled about a bit, revealed some magnificent piece of engineering from a pod in Thunderbird 2 and saved the day. None of this swanning around in the desert for three weeks. The Thunderbirds team were in and out in under an hour and back round the piano without a hair out of place.

It was a great idea for a series. A family with a suspiciously huge amount of money, living on an island miles from anywhere, with a technological arsenal hidden beneath the swimming pool, their very own space station orbiting overhead, dashing off occasionally to rescue small boys from deserted mineshafts. Total secrecy of operations was maintained, despite the fact that the world's radar would surely have picked out the signatures of two huge flying craft lumbering across the sky well before the end of Episode 1. And they saved a fortune in animation costs by showing the same five minute sequence of Thunderbirds 1 and 2 launching every week, which we didn't mind because it was still fantastic every time you saw it.

Any great series also needs characters with great names. The five Tracy brothers were named after the first five US astronauts in space - John Glenn, Gordon Cooper, Alan Sheperd, Virgil Grissom and Scott Carpenter. Had there been seven Thunderbirds, the series would have immortalised the names Walter and Donald as well. The organisation's inventive genius could only have been called Brains, role model for speccy childhood geeks everywhere. And Lady Penelope and Parker, surely one of the great double acts of all time, have names that perfectly suggest rich, suave and pink, and old, reliable and downtrodden. Fab.

The show has timeless appeal. Children watching today probably have parents who remember the series first time round. Tracy Island still sells well, even 10 years after it was the country's most sought-after Christmas toy, and remains Blue Peter's most successful 'make' ever. Original 60s Thunderbird merchandise is still avidly sought after by collectors (not that I'm in any way bitter at the mysterious disappearance of a genuine Thunderbird 5 from our family's toy cupboard at some point during my adolescence, you understand), and the puppets exchange hands for ridiculous amounts of money. There's even a Hollywood feature film in production, featuring Ben Kingsley as evil villain the Hood, and due for release sometime next year. It's a far cry from a few puppeteers filming in Supermarionation somewhere on a trading estate in Slough 40 years ago. Somehow, however, I suspect it'll still be the classic original puppet series our great-grandchildren will be watching in 2065.

posted 13:00 :

Friday, April 04, 2003

Congratulations, you are the 10000th visitor to this website
I'm sorry I couldn't get that message to appear in a little pop-up window, like you're probably used to on other websites. My programming skills aren't quite up to annoying the hell out of everyone who tries loading my page like that. What could be more annoying than waiting an extra minute for a page to load only to realise you've been waiting for a tiny window to open up advertising something you never wanted in the first place? Actually, a number of things are more annoying than that, especially that new breed of pop-up ad that appears over the top of a page itself. There you are trying to look at some search engine results but instead there's some slow-moving spaceship, car or pig flying across the screen instead, blocking the content you're trying to read while you look for the awkwardly placed "close" button. Whoever thought this sort of online spam was a good way to sell a service to the public? An interstitial advert like that surely just makes you think "Blimey, this brand must be run by a bunch of tossers, I'll never buy anything from them ever again." But I digress...
Congratulations, you are the 10000th visitor to this website
Actually if you're reading this you're not, because the ten thousandth visitor checked in about half an hour ago. They arrived here via a link on Naked Blog, probably from somewhere in Ohio, somewhere around midnight Eastern Standard Time. Hello to you if you were that visitor and you ever click back here again for another visit. Sorry there isn't actually a cash prize for you, or a free CD or even a matching mug and mousemat, but hopefully some red scrolling text is enough of a reward in itself.
Congratulations, you are the 10000th visitor to this website.
And, you're probably not exactly the ten thousandth visitor, because diamond geezer had been around for a month before I added the stats tracker to the page. However, given that I was getting a mammoth three visitors a day at the time, ten thousand probably isn't too far out. Things have changed rather over the last six months. It's not even three weeks since I was celebrating my 8000th visitor. Visitors are coming thick and fast at the moment (I'll leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide whether you'd prefer to be categorised as thick or fast). As I keep saying, it's gratifying to know that some of you keep coming back to see what I've written on here. Alas, today I've merely written about the fact that some of you keep coming back to see what I've written on here, which may not be what you were hoping for. But thanks for getting me into five figures.
Congratulations, you are the 10000th visitor to this website.

posted 06:31 :

Thursday, April 03, 2003

Ghost trains

I saw a completely unexpected train this morning.

I'm not talking about the Central Line here, although that did reopen through Central London today after a 68 day break. Emphasis on the break. It was strange to see crowded platforms at Mile End again, unlike the last 10 weeks where the place has been like a brief subterranean halt on a ghost train. That may have been strange, but it wasn't unexpected.

I saw the unexpected train before I got to my station. There used to be three rail stations along Bow Road within a quarter of a mile of each other. Two are still there, one on the District Line and the other on the Docklands Light Railway. The third station has long since closed. There's a rail bridge over Bow Road that used to carry passengers but now just blocks the view. Dirty black steps lead up to a deserted platform, blocked off somewhere behind a car repair yard. Nobody travels from Limehouse to Stratford any more, not in one journey anyway. It's just like the railway bridge in EastEnders - ever present in the local scene but no train is ever seen upon it. Except this morning, when I was amazed to see a passenger train rumbling across, completely out of place, a reminder of the branch lines that used to exist before the savage rail cuts of the 1960s.

It's exactly forty years since Dr Beeching's infamous report lopped the least busy branch lines from the country's rail network. He proposed closing almost a third of the network, around 5000 miles. Over 2000 stations were closed, thousands of passenger carriages were scrapped, and several communities found their rail connections severed. The railway had lost its dominance to the car, a position from which it has never recovered.

Some branch lines have since survived in name only. Denton in South Manchester has one train a week, in one direction only. The 14:56 to Stalybridge never returns, but this useless skeleton service is enough to prevent the rail authority from having to close the line officially. Ten years ago in Croxley Green (where I used to live) the service on the local branch line was suddenly cut to a single train from Watford and back at 6 o'clock on weekday mornings. In 1996 that one daily train was replaced by one daily taxi and the line fell into disrepair. However, by the letter of the law, that taxi means that the overgrown and partly-demolished Croxley branch line (photos here) is officially still open.

Londoners escaped most of Dr Beeching's cuts, with new railway lines opened and more under consideration. We've been lucky. 10 weeks waiting for the Central Line to reopen is nothing compared to 40 years without any train service at all. I shall try to remember that when I collect my thumping great Central Line compensation payment...

posted 22:00 :

Sing when you're Wayne-ing

Yesterday's newspapers: Sven's last chance, crunch time for England, resignation imminent, Sven'd better not play Wayne from the start, it'll all be too much for him, he's only 17, he might burn out too young, it'll be a disaster, agony, gloom, misery.
Today's newspapers: Turkey stuffed, Sven's men supreme, boy genius, superstar in the making, Wayne shone, he coped magnificently with the pressure, course we told you so all along, Sven listened to our readers, joy, happiness.

Newspaper doublethink 1: wasn't that racist violence against the Turkish disgraceful last night, why do the fans do it?
Newspaper doublethink 2: those Middle-Eastern scum, we'll soon have killed the lot of them.

Rooneyfest: here, here, here, here and here.

posted 06:30 :

Wednesday, April 02, 2003

The Front Line

posted 18:18 :

Won't get fooled again?

• 100 April Fool hoaxes, from the fantastic to the feeble. Easily the very best AF site on the internet.
• 2003 - a round-up of this year's rather feeble set of newspaper April Fools.
• 2003 - Sun reader Alf Lipoor and his dog go scuba diving.
• 1977 - The Guardian reports from the mysterious island of San Seriffe.
• 1957 - The legendary Panorama spaghetti harvest.
• A history of April Fools day.
• Fools from 19 98, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002
• This doesn't appear to be a joke at all.
• "The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year." -- Mark Twain

posted 00:05 :

The Retro Fools Pop Quiz: How many top 10 hits can you name with the word 'fool' in the title?
...and no, we didn't win this week - miles off!

posted 00:04 :

Normal service is resumed.

posted 00:00 :

Tuesday, April 01, 2003

flair loop (relive the experience here)

hi shaz!!! hello world!!!!!

i said i was gonna get me a blog thing, so here it is yay!

i dunno what i'm gonna write but shaz says i dont normally have trouble talking so i guess ill be ok. i think i'll talk a lot about ME!!! and shaz of course and prob kev too cos he is well fit. oh god what if he reads this one day id go red!!!

we went shopping yesterday it was well cool i bought tons!!!!! shaz says pink is so my colour. going clubbing next weekend to show it all off well not all of it lol!!! i got me a new bag to put all my stuff in its pink and furry!!! i always take a lot of stuff round with me well you never know when you might need your emergency lippy!! spesh when kev's around. and i bought some shoes with heels to die for. well shaz youll die if you slag them off again. they are well good and your only jealous cos you cant walk in them without falling over. or was that the vodka lol!!!

we went to rumours last weekend. its a cool club all my mates were there. we thought it would take ages to get in but shaz shagged the bouncer in the ladies last week so he let us jump the queue god she'll kill me!!!! the deej played gareth gates twice it was well rank. i drank SO much. well kev said i didnt drink enough but then we know what your after kev!!! i drank one of every type of bacardi breezer and i had TWO cranberries. i even finished the watermelon does anyone like that one? i think you can taste the pips.

shaz and me had a big row last week. she said my ringtone was minging what does she know? i said liberty x was better than that cow jennifer lopez any day and she should be changing her ring instead. anyway i waited til we were in the cafe with all her mates and then i rang her mobile and jennifer lopez started playing and she was SO embarased!!! she was looking in her bag trying to turn the cow off. i laughed lots. she tried ringing me back but i had mine on silent so up yours shaz!!! weve made up now.

kevs done his hair all spiky i like it. hes used half a gallon of gel on it though. i think hes jealous my hair is natural blonde cos he has to dye his or at least the tips anyway. i wonder if he knows i keep looking at him all the time. he looked at me at lunch yesterday and it made me feel all shivery. then he opened his mouth and burped maybe hes not so romantic after all. he's got fit legs though!!!

i like tuesdays cos heat mag comes out. me and shaz always read it first thing to see what the blokes out of hollyoaks have been doing. then we laugh at the pics of celebs looking old cos theyve not read the make up tips on page 58. shaz always cuts out the pics of jack ryder and sticks them in her scrapbook. i think thats sad. i like the tips on house design you get from looking at all the photos of famous people in their homes. there's a pink plastic coffee table i saw in patsy palmers house i want to buy it was class. my mum says i can't have it my bedroom she has no taste. as soon as i get the cash together for a flat that table is SO mine.

i want to get away on holiday this year. shaz went to ibiza last year and came back bisto brown. she also says she had a different bloke every night but i bet that's not true. i think she had the same one every night and he was 32 ugh!!! shes going again this easter to the same place i hope she meets the old pensioner again lol!!! actually kev said hes going to ibiza this year too. kev says its a coincidence hes going the same fortnight as shaz it just turned out like that. amazing thing is they got booked into the same hotel what are the chances of that??!! shaz looked quite pleased anyway. me i'm stuck here instead but i might get to southend for the day if im lucky. i hope s&k send me a postcard. maybe kev will take me out in his corsa when he gets back. well out for a ride anyway lol!!!

thats all for now folks!!! dont forget to come back soon and read more about my great life. youd be a fool to miss it.

posted 00:00 :

Monday, March 31, 2003

The best of March

TV programme of the month: BBC News 24's continuous coverage of the recent international situation has been nothing less than thrilling. With so much happening in the Gulf, the channel's editors have never had to fill time with repeated interviews, uninformed speculation, overbearing graphics or endless footage of trucks driving through the desert. I've been hooked to my TV set over the last ten days, eagerly awaiting the latest developments happening live before my very eyes. I don't mind the fact that they never show any home news any more, because there isn't any, and I don't miss the regular weather forecasts either because the weather in the UK's been so predictable recently. OK, sorry, I'm lying.

Football result of the month: Chelsea 1, Arsenal 3. Still on course for the double, if not for the treble. And thank goodness we won that one, because I was starting to wonder if March would actually have a "Football result of the month".

Film of the month: I've not made even one visit to the cinema this month, which I blame on two things. Firstly a lack of decent films coming out of Hollywood at the moment, and secondly the arrival in my household of one DVD player. Yes, I know I said I'd never buy one, and I haven't, honest. I'm just babysitting it for someone who's no longer living in region 2, OK? The DVD player came complete with a set of 25 films to watch, although I've only felt motivated to watch two of them so far. I don't even own The Matrix for heavens sake. I really am, as I suspected, a DV-ant.

Album of the month: The Picture Show by the Buffseeds. It's not been off my mp3 player for the last four weeks. Twelve guitar gems sung by the voice of an angel. If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe BBC 6Music: "This is an album that immediately hooks you and is a natural for the repeat button on your CD player." Or The Fly magazine: "Kieran's finely-tuned shrill injects a passion into his lyrics that is unmatchable. Compellingly perfect, It's why this album's so peerless. Albums of this calibre are rare enough to warrant a protection order. So buy it, love it and do something with the feeling it gives you." Available now in all good record stores for under a tenner. Beats Coldplay anyway.

Gig of the month: Ah, that would be the Buffseeds again, this time at the Metro Club in Oxford Street. Let's head to BBCi for a review this time: "The rhythm-driven numbers were mixed into a set of real heartbreakers like Strawberry and Sunlight, and within the slower tracks lay the secret to Buffseeds' magic. Their song writing is pure gold. Endlessly melodic, lead singer and guitarist Kieran Scragg holds within his vertically challenged frame a voice of such maturity and subtlety that it's difficult to imagine Buffseeds songs ever being attempted at Karaoke nights. This is a good thing. When you have songs like Sparkle Me in your repertoire - a poignant and full-bodied tune that includes the masterstroke lyric "pass the tear gas, I've forgotten how to cry" - then you could be forgiven for being a little smug. But Buffseeds are anything but. The spherical sound of keyboard player Neil Reed's organ gains him quite a fan club, though some may have mistaken him for a young Daniel Day-Lewis. Easily done. Meanwhile, Joel Scragg seems interested in nothing other than playing his bass, content to let drummer Ella Lewis supply the infectious energy." One day, when they're famous, I'll be able to tell you 'I was there'.

Single of the month: Er, is it just me, or have there been no good singles out this month. Please tell me it's the latter.

Unexpected band website of the month: Remember 2wo Third3, easily the greatest band of 1994? Thought not. The three blokes in the band only had four singles, and only two of those were hits, but they were synthesised excellence. Hear me calling is a masterpiece, and you might agree if only you'd ever heard it. Admittedly the band were managed by fat Svengali Tom Watkins, and they were probably over-hyped, and the name was a bit silly, but they disappeared from the pop firmament far far too quickly. The band had a fourth member, a cartoon character known as Biff, the alter ego of producer Richard Stannard who went on to much greater things. Anyway, I had thought that nobody else out there remembered 2wo Third3 until I discovered another fan in Popjustice, and a proper website. Now it turns out they recorded a lost album that was never released, and I want a copy. I want the world, and I want it right now. 2wo Third3 - gone, but not forgotten.

Revived radio show of the month: Remember Fist of Fun? Good old Radio 7, the latest digital jewel from the BBC, is replaying the original radio series of the Lee and Herring Radio Show and it's nostalgic brilliance. It's great to hear Rich and Stew's classic dialogue again, all best washed down with a flask of weak lemon drink. If you were ever a fan, clicking on the links in this paragraph will keep you busy for hours. The rest of you, you just want the moon on a stick you do.

posted 00:05 :

Sunday, March 30, 2003

Ribbon development

First came yellow ribbons - used by many as a visible act of remembrance for an absent loved-one (since the dawn of time?). Today's jingoistic News of the World jumps on the yellow ribbon bandwagon by launching "a great Yellow Ribbon campaign to mark the nation's pride and support for Our Heroes in the Gulf—and to wish them a safe return home. We want everyone in Britain to pin a Yellow Ribbon to their chest—and we have enough to provide one FREE to EVERY reader. To get yours, complete the coupon." Must be a light news day in the Gulf. That or Rupert Murdoch's after an honorary knighthood.

Later came red ribbons - the global symbol of solidarity with people living with HIV and AIDS. The red ribbon was launched in 1991, into an America already full of yellow ribbons being worn to remember soldiers fighting in the Gulf War. The red ribbon campaign has been a huge success, raising awareness across the world and saving lives along the way. In the same year came pink ribbons - the symbol for breast cancer awareness. So far, so worthy.

And then came ribbon overload. Every campaign, big or small, now wants its own ribbon. Yellow, red and pink may have been taken, but charities and pressure groups still scrabble around madly to hijack whatever colours or combinations of colours remain unclaimed. There's a fascinating list of online ribbon campaigns here, and a very clever "Ribbon-o-matic" here to help you to create a unique ribbon logo for your new campaign. Sadly however, the impact of ribbons on the public consciousness has now been diluted through serious overuse.

Here's a list of some important ribbon campaigns you might otherwise have missed:
Blue: Free Speech Online; Light blue: International No Diet Day; Lime green: I am not a geek; Grey: Remember the Titanic; Black: Support the Amish; Red, white and blue: 9/11, Protect the flag; Avocado: Ban the stupid; White with black spots: Cow appreciation; Every colour: Protest against everything; Invisible: Nonsense on the net; Fluorescent clear: Campaign against ribbons.

posted 19:30 :

Tonight's TV? If only.

posted 13:15 :

Summer Time: I've written about this before, so I won't go into great detail again, but:
• What a pity today's only 23 hours long, the weather's gorgeous.
• As well as losing an hour, I've also lost another half hour changing the time on 17 different clocks. Bet I've missed one too.
• Americans don't put their clocks forward for another week, so for the next seven days Tony and George will be even further apart than normal.

posted 13:00 :

Saturday, March 29, 2003

Humanitarian aid required

It's official. Today, nearly three months after I got back from the US, my supply of Oreos finally ran out. There are no more chocolate cookie sandwiches in my kitchen. Chocolate Hobnobs are all very well, but somehow they're not quite Oreos. Clearly I didn't cram enough blue packets into my hand luggage. Meanwhile I'm also down to my last six packets of cinnamon Tic Tacs. I had previously thought that the world's best ever red sweet ceased production in the 1980s, but apparently in America they're still going strong, which is just how I like them.

It's not all bad news on the American food front though. They've finally decided to launch Vanilla Coke on this side of the Atlantic, which opens up a whole new way to rot English teeth. Vanilla Coke has that special tang of cream soda, a drink I've always loved, although in its new incarnation it's hard to sustain the enjoyment past the first four mouthfuls. Meanwhile I remain grateful that the chocolate of evil, the Hershey's bar, remains virtually unknown over here. This best-selling American chocolate tastes almost as repellent as it smells, and the US army could easily oppress most of Baghdad into submission if they deployed a tankful of bars strategically.

Some other sweet memories I'd like to see relaunched, please.
Amazin' raisin bar, Banjo, Double Agents sweets, Fruitella, Ice Breaker, Milk Tray in a bar, Pacers, Pink Panther bar, Savoury Vinegar crisps, Space Dust, Spangles, Starbar, Texan bar, United biscuit, white chocolate mice.
Please note I'm only posting this list so that smug confectionery connoisseurs can write me some "actually, this is still available..." comments.

posted 17:30 :

The re-Count

If you remember, I spent the whole of February counting certain things that happened to me and reporting back here on how the count was going. The results were either quite interesting or else extremely dull, depending on your point of view. But how well have those ten counts been going since? I've not been deliberately counting any more, so I couldn't tell you how many cups of tea I've drunk or bottles of Becks I've been drunk after, but I can report back on how some of the counts have been adding up recently. I know it's not the end of March yet but, for proper comparison with February, I'd thought I'd better stop after four weeks. Statistically sound, me.

Count 1 (Blog visitors): Nearly three thousand people have logged in to diamond geezer in the last month. That's up from about 75 a day to about 95 a day, which is nice. At this rate the whole population of the London will be logging in by Christmas 2006, in which case I'd better be careful what I write about them. During March I've also found a great additional way of tracking all my visitors (via Bitful). It's a stats service / hit counter with a traffic monitor that plays a sound every time your website gets a hit. Every beep makes me smile (at least until the entire population of London tries logging on, at which point I may turn the sound off). It's inconspicuous (just a 1x1 transparent pixel included on your site). It's beautifully designed. It's free. It's highly recommended. It's here.
Total number of visitors to this webpage in February: 2141
Total number of visitors to this webpage in March: 2704 (up 26%)

Count 3 (Blog content): I thought I'd written more this month. I was right. I've written 26% more, and meanwhile my number of visitors has increased by 26%. I wonder if they are perhaps related.
Total number of kilobytes of diamondgeezer in February: 108
Total number of kilobytes of diamondgeezer in March: 137 (up 26%)

Count 4 (Spam): The spamming of my inbox is getting worse. I've set up Mailwasher to try to bounce some of it back, but still it comes thick and fast. Particularly thick. The Nigerians may have gone away, but I'm being assaulted by someone who seems to think I have an interest in art auctions, a company that transports automobiles across the United States, businesses who want me to ~~work at home~~ send them all my money, and the usual range of prescription drug dealers. Apparently 90% of all spam received in Europe and the US comes from barely 150 spammers, 40 of whom live in one area of Florida. Maybe one day one of them will surprise me and send me some well-targeted spam I'm actually interested in, but no sign of brain activity out there yet.
Total number of spam emails I received in February: 30
Total number of spam emails I received in March: 72 (up 140%)

Count 5 (Nights out): I suspected I'd never be able to live up to my February total, but I've had fun trying. I'm going to blame Hollywood, who've spent March releasing films I don't want to see. I'm going to blame London Underground for its continued shutdown of the Central Line, making travel to the West End a right hassle (I'm getting just a little tired of the walk to/from Embankment station now, thankyou). And I'm going to blame... well, ok, me really.
The number of nights in February I went out and was vaguely sociable: 21
The number of nights in March I went out and was vaguely sociable: 15 (down 29%)

Count 10 (Mystery count): The mystery count has doubled in March. Enough said.

posted 09:01 :

Friday, March 28, 2003

Blog Art

Tick/untick the boxes and see what you can draw.
A flower maybe, or a cat, or a geometric pattern, or a map of Liechtenstein, or Catherine Zeta-Jones, or Baghdad by night, or a soldier driving a tank across a desert.
It's over to you to express yourself. We've got our psychologist on stand-by.

Thank you for all your pictures. I'm sorry we cannot return any to you, but we give a prize for all those we show.

posted 07:05 :

The 7am puzzle: Starting with the pattern above, and without ticking the box in the centre, check the boxes so that there are exactly seven ticks in each row and seven ticks in each column.

posted 07:00 :

Thursday, March 27, 2003

Extra dry

It's been three weeks since it last rained in London. It might, just possibly, rain here on Saturday, but otherwise the drought is set to continue into next week as well. This is bad news to some but, given that I don't have a garden outside busily dying on me, I'm perfectly happy with the current lack of rainfall. No doubt we can all expect a hosepipe ban by the middle of next week, standpipes in the street by the middle of next month, water rationing by the middle of next year and the Sahara Desert encroaching across what used to be the English Channel by the middle of next century.

Britain's longest ever drought was recorded right here in London E3, exactly 110 years ago. 1893 brought an exceptional spring of heat, sunshine and lack of rain, with dry weather settling in during the first few days of March and lasting until early July. Mile End in the east end of London saw no measurable rainfall for more than two months, from 4th March to 15th May 1893. Those 73 consecutive dry days have never been equalled at any other time in any other place across the UK since weather records began. Meanwhile the ten driest towns in the country are also all to be found in south-east England (Thurrock, Sheerness and Felixstowe are the top three, followed by Dagenham, Tilbury, Southend, Colchester, Ipswich, Cambridge and Ely). This is because, as any geography student knows, by the time big grey rainclouds have blown eastwards all the way across the country from the Atlantic, they've normally dumped most of their load on south Wales instead. Perfect.

UK weather quick quiz
Can you match the following UK weather records to the place where they happened?

1) Highest ever UK temperature (3 August 1990, 37.1°C): Chelsea, Chelmsford or Cheltenham?
2) Least ever sunshine (December 1890, no sunshine at all): Westminster, Weston-Super-Mare or Wick?
3) Most rainfall ever recorded in 2½ hours (14 August 1975, 159mm): Hampstead, Halifax or Harris (Western Isles)?
4) Highest ever December temperature (2 December 1948, 18.3°C): Achnashellach (NW Scotland) or Rickmansworth (Herts)?
5) Lowest mean December temperature: Achnashellach (NW Scotland) or Rickmansworth (Herts)?

Answers:

posted 07:00 :

Wednesday, March 26, 2003

Are blogs like newspapers, or are newspapers like blogs? I only ask because, reading my paper on the train this morning, it felt instead like I was at home sat at my computer clicking through blogworld. I should say that I'm not talking about the main part of the newspaper here (that's the part where the real news now starts on page 12), but the quirkier pullout magazine-like type section. Today there was someone writing about what it's like to give up smoking, an article about new mothers' use of internet chatrooms, a 'what kind of hypocrite are you?' quiz, a review of last night's excellent post-Newsnight TV dramas, a piece on the booming birth rate nine months after England's World Cup campaign last summer (see my page yesterday), a tinned menu for emergency bunker cuisine (see my page last Tuesday) and a brief history of tea in Britain and how to brew it. Add to this a selection of articles about "pre-page-12 news" from a variety of original angles, and it all looks very much like the content of any ten typical amalgamated blogs. On Monday the newspaper lifted a whole three pages word-for-word from the online diary of the Baghdad blogger, a series continued today, and then today there's also another whole page listing the rules for an imaginary drinking game. Admittedly the imaginary drinking game is fantastic, but it seems that the press may have crossed a thin here line in reprinting whole chunks of web content in order to fill newspapers. (If you're reading this in tomorrow morning's edition, I do hope the editor's paid me at current journalistic rates). But I still wonder how long it will be before newspapers really do look like blogs. Or is that until blogs look like newspapers?

posted 21:00 :

The war game

• The two-player game of chess originated around the Persian Gulf in the 6th century AD.
• Chess was invented as a substitute for war, or as a bloodless training ground for war.
• The word chess means "The Game of Kings", from the Persian word shah meaning king.
• The world's earliest written references to chess are to be found in Persian literature.
• The first pieces were pawn, chariot (rook), cavalry (knight), elephant (bishop), and king.
• Persians introduced a new piece, the counsellor, who later changed sex to become a queen.
• The game was originally played using dice, intended to signify communication with the gods.
• The ancient game of chess was complex and often slow, taking a very long time to complete.
• Chess spread westwards in the 7th century AD when the Arab empire overran Persia.

• A chess board is always placed with a white square in the bottom right-hand corner. Remember - "White is Right".
• The aim of the game of chess is to trap and capture the opponent's king.
• An advance guard of pawns advances up the board, with the rest of the army following on behind.
• One piece captures another by moving onto its position following the rules of engagement.
• It is not possible to capture or destroy one's own pieces, even by mistake.
• Any player with an advantage in material is much more likely to win the game, as superior force is usually victorious.
• When the king is threatened by an opponent's piece, this is known as check.
• Checkmate occurs when one side forces the king into a situation from which he cannot escape.
• Stalemate occurs when the player whose turn it is to move is has no legal moves.
• So long as the king survives, the game will continue.

posted 00:30 :

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Please do not have sex today

I should qualify that statement, and say that it only applies to fertile heterosexual couples engaging in penetrative intercourse without the use of contraception. If you should fall into that category, I'd like to assure you that my warning is based on sound scientific fact. Please read the following information very carefully. It could save a life.

Please do not have sex today

Spring is in the air, and young couples' thoughts are turning more and more to love, romance and shagging. A bit of warmth and sunshine can have strange effects on the human libido, making it all too easy to get carried away by carnal thoughts. Just one unplanned kiss can lead to full-on sexual arousal and, before you know where you are, you've ended up in the bedroom engaged in intimate physical contact. So I'm told. Should you find yourself in this situation today, stop immediately.

If you engage in penetrative intercourse today without the use of contraception, one of you risks getting pregnant. If you get pregnant today, you'll probably give birth to a baby in nine months time. If you give birth to a baby in nine months time... well, just look at the calendar. Work it out for yourself. Think before you shag.

No child deserves to be born on Christmas Day. Nobody wants their birthday to be overshadowed by the biggest national celebration of the year. Nothing is more guaranteed to give a child major personality problems later in life than to share their birthday with the baby Jesus. Is five minutes of horizontal ecstacy today worth the lifetime of personal trauma to follow? Don't do it.

Jesus is very appropriate as a role model for the child with a Christmas birthday because He only got given a total of three birthday presents too. No doubt each of the wise men told him "I've brought you one big combined present, honest", even though they were secretly relieved at not having to bring two. Any child with a Christmas birthday has to survive 364 days gift-free, with merely the promise of something meagre and average at the end of the present-drought. Meanwhile for the rest of the year they get to watch siblings and friends receiving double the presents, double the attention, and thereby double the love. A Christmas birthday also means a birthday party amalgamated with the festive celebrations. There may be a large birthday cake but, by the time everyone's stuffed themselves with turkey and pudding, nobody can ever face eating even a small slice of it. This is enough to scar any impressionable child for life, and all because you failed to consider the consequences of having sex today. It's inconceivable.

Children born on Christmas Day are always at serious risk of being given an embarrassingly festive name. Are children born in August ever called Carol, or Holly, or Robin? I think not. And just think of all the people you know called Noel. Yes, him for example. All Noels are highly likely to exhibit some signs of personal trauma caused by resentment towards inconsiderate parents. Yes, precisely that sort of trauma. You don't want to risk your child suing you for emotional scarring in later life do you? Abstain today.

If you have a Christmas baby, you're also responsible for bringing another Capricorn into the world. Stubborn, inflexible and goal oriented, they often jump to conclusions and miss the big picture. Is this what you want in your family? Cross your legs for a few weeks and have a nice well-adjusted Aquarian instead. Hold it in.

So, there you have it. Unprotected sex today will mean an unhappy and maladjusted life for your son or daughter in the future. Please remember this important advice should spring fever strike today and you find yourself rampaging towards the bedroom whilst ripping one another's clothes off. You may feel like getting stuck in and reaching orgasm, but for one sperm and one egg there'll be a lifetime of psychologists' bills to pay. Please do not have sex today.

This has been a public service announcement. Thank you for listening.

posted 00:00 :

Monday, March 24, 2003

Heads or tails?

I can be very indecisive sometimes. At least, I think I can be.

When I'm forced to make a decision, I'll often use some random means to help me make up my mind. For example, ~~when my flat needs cleaning~~ when I decide my flat needs cleaning, I have been known to number all the rooms from 1 to 6 and then roll a dice to see which room I get to clean first. (For some reason it's always the bathroom, by the way). However, any major decision I have to make can be usually reduced to a mere yes/no answer, in which case the toss of a coin can be the perfect way to decide on the outcome.

As we all know from (very) elementary probability, a coin will always land either heads up or tails up, with a 50/50 chance of each. Of course, like all the best mathematical models, that's not entirely true. If you toss an American penny there's a slightly higher probability of getting tails rather than heads. That's because the heads picture weighs slightly more, so it ends up on the bottom more often. There's also a tiny chance that any coin will land on its edge, a probability that can be greatly increased by standing in the middle of a muddy field. Meanwhile coin tossing is in fact a predictable process following predefined physical laws of motion and isn't really random at all. A well-designed mechanical gadget could flip a properly-positioned coin so that it always landed showing the same face. Honest. If you're worried by all this uncertainty and you want to practise flipping coins to see how not-quite-but-nearly-fair they really are, try this simulation here. But let's ignore all that - 50/50 it is.

So, when there's a burning question that needs to be answered, a coin is perfect. Simply assign one option to 'heads' and the other option to 'tails', commit yourself to the decision of the coin, and flip away. Should you not have access to a real coin^*, below is a way to flip a simulated coin online instead. You can choose to flip a coin from the country of your choice so that, for example, major economic referendum issues could be decided by the tossing of a Euro, whereas Middle Eastern countries could be invaded on the flip of a quarter. Your own personal burning question is probably less world-shattering, but type in your two options below and see what the coin toss tells you.

^*Please note: "If you were born recently in the United States, you may never have seen one of these strange artefacts known as a "coin". Coins were a popular form of currency before the advent of credit cards, and are preserved here in digital form, should they disappear from the real world in the next 20 or so years."

From bitter experience I can guarantee that, every single time you decide to base your decision-making on one flip of a coin, it always comes up with the option you didn't want to choose. You hadn't consciously realised this beforehand but, once the coin has spoken, it's suddenly crystal clear that this was the option not to proceed with. If the coin has chosen heads you always end up deciding to go with the tails option instead, and vice versa. You can delude yourself that it was the coin made the decision, not you, but in fact you've ended up doing what you secretly wanted to do all along.

I discovered the coin-flipper about two hours ago, and I asked the oracle whether or not I should go out for the evening.
If it's Heads: go out to the cinema
If it's Tails: stay in
It came up heads, but instead I've spent the evening researching coin-tossing online and writing this. Which, of course, is what I secretly wanted to do all along. Well, there's nothing on at the cinema at the moment, is there? Maybe tomorrow.

Tell me what the coin decides for you...

posted 21:45 :

Oxymorons: act naturally, airline food, lost property, small crowd, exact estimate, sweet sorrow, plastic glasses, pretty ugly, rap music, working holiday, global village, business ethics, government organisation, Microsoft Works, religious tolerance, American history, peacekeeping force, military intelligence, friendly fire, good grief.

posted 07:00 :

If you're here looking for the bit about cinema audiences... hi, welcome, and it's here.

posted 00:05 :

Sunday, March 23, 2003

That was then...

Vision On: Probably the most innovative children's programmes of its time, Vision On ran in the UK from 1964 to 1977. Often quite surreal, with quirky animation, it was also unique in that it was designed for hearing and non-hearing children alike. The series was essentially art-based but would often go off on extreme tangents. Click away on the links below and transport yourself back to Thursday teatimes past.

• The show was hosted by the inimitable Tony Hart (interview here), later to achieve immortality with Take Hart and Morph. Alongside Tony was former actress Pat Keysell, who had been working with the deaf for a number of years, teaching drama and mime.
• And now here's The Gallery. Thank you for all your pictures. I'm sorry we cannot return any to you, but we give a prize for all those we show.
• Wilf Lunn designed the weird and wacky inventions, then later also appeared in Jigsaw (1979-1984) (ahhh, Jigsaw...)
• Another Vision On character was the Prof, often to be found climbing ladders into thin air or sitting in a deckchair while the tide came in over him. Actor David Cleveland is now busy running the East Anglian Film Archive, and also hosts an excellent website with classic Vision On music playing in the background.
• Strange that a programme for the deaf should have had such fantastic and memorable music. If you need to hunt any of that music down, the theme to the Gallery was Left Bank 2 by the Noveltones (listen here), while the cuckoo clock animation music was Gurney Slade by Max Harris.

Krazy comic: Easily the best comic in the history of the world (well, 1976-78 anyway). Chock-full of witty asides, tiny printed jokes and illustrations tucked between the panels, and every week the back cover was 'disguised' in some ridiculous way, the first issue like a maths exercise book, the second like a naff place mat, etc. Top characters included Handy Andy (we're talking shadow puppets here, not DIY), Birdman and Chicken (the boy blunder). Ray Presto (the magician) and, of course, the Krazy Gang. Every issue also featured a pull-out 'Badtime Bedtime Book', where the excellent Leo Baxendale would illustrate some twisted updated fairy tale. I bought every issue of Krazy comic until its demise, but alas I only kept four of them. They may none of them be the first edition of Superman, but they're priceless to me.

The bubble burst: After your five minutes of fame is over, expect to end up here. Catch up on Aled Jones, Betty Boo, Rick Astley, Gordon the Gopher, the Rentaghost crew, the Littlest Hobo and Fred Housego, amongst others.

Relive TV opening credits: Wow.

...but this is now

Just in case you think I live in the past too much, here's three excellent blog-type sites that keep me in touch with today:
• the custard: listings, news and gossip about all the TV programmes people really watch.
• lowculture: don't be ashamed, we all prefer low culture to high culture. Even Karl Marx said so.
• popjustice: no ageing rock dinosaurs here, just plain unadulterated modern pop.

posted 12:00 :

Saturday, March 22, 2003

Tw* th*rd*

It's come to my attention that less people read my blog on a Saturday than on any other day of the week. In fact, only two thirds as many people visit here on a Saturday compared to my normal weekday traffic. I'm sure many of you read blogs while you're at work, or even write them at work, so I should expect to get less hits at the weekend. Also I suspect a lot of you actually have a life at weekends, out shopping somewhere or doing some thrilling DIY or something, so you have no time to log on and read. So, as a result I've decided to put a bit less effort into my Saturday posting. If you can't be bothered to drop by, then I'll only do two thirds as much as usual today. It's your own fault...

Slow train ******: Why are *** the trains ** South London ** incredibly slow? ** North London *** trains seem ** go faster. ** my experience *** South London **** crawl slowly ******* stations, wait *** hours in *** stations, and ******** go nowhere **** fast. Maybe **'* Connex who *** to blame ***, whatever the ******, it's like ***** back in *** 19th century. * almost expect ** see men **** red flags ******* in front ** the trains. ** always seems ** take ages ** escape back ** modern civilisation ** North London **** you're travelling ** only a ********* ten miles ** hour. It ***** beats driving ******.

Rolling news *******: I watched **** four hours ** digital channel *** News 24 **** last night *** this morning. **** showed endless ***** coverage of *** situation in ****, repeating the **** images, reports *** interviews over *** over again. **'* very hard ** imagine **** there are **** viewing figures *** rolling news **** this, but ***** the BBC ***** pumping out ***** of speculation, **********, fireworks displays *** tank convoys. ** be honest, * am bored ****-less by *** this saturation ** coverage, replacing ** favourite programmes **** news reports. *** crisis in **** is important, ****** don't get ** wrong. However, ** for the ****** TV coverage, ***** I really ***'* give a ****.

*****: * ***'* ** ******** ** ***** **** ***.

posted 18:00 :

Friday, March 21, 2003

The 7am link (Friday): It's official. It's the end.

posted 07:00 :

Spring Equinox (00:59 GMT)

One complete wall of my office is covered by a breathtaking work of art. I can stare at this masterpiece for hours, seeing something new and awe-inspiring in the picture every day. It's a classic composition, built up with depth in layers over many years. Colours blend subtly as the eye wanders across the panorama, juxtaposing natural beauty with artificial sculpture. The artist has combined classical formations, gothic structures and contemporary influences in a fantastically complex gallery of contrasting styles. My daily work of art is a glass-framed landscape entitled "View over London from the 7th floor".

I never fail to be impressed by the view from my office window. In my last job I had the less-than-stunning view of the side of a Courts furniture warehouse. Today I can see Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, Battersea Power Station, the London Eye (full on, so it looks like a perfect circle) and the brick minaret of Westminster Cathedral. Rather more impressive, I think you'll agree. Swivel a little further round and there's St Paul's, and the new Gherkin, with Canary Wharf beyond. In the far distance I can see the Crystal Palace TV mast and the rolling suburban foothills of south-east London. Aeroplanes fly over this patchwork of history, on some days huge jets lumbering into Heathrow, on other days tiny planes twisting towards City Airport. Tourists would pay a fortune for a room with this view, and I have the privilege of staring at it every day.

My desk is positioned just above treetop level, overlooking Green Park. In a few weeks time I shall be looking out over an ocean of green, with the flagpole of Buckingham Palace sticking up like a tiny periscope trying to peer above the new-born leaves. Until then, bare branches with budding blossoms allow me to see through right down to the Royal park below. Beds of bobbing yellow daffodils bring colour to the landscape, and smiles to the faces of passers-by. Now office workers and tourists can be seen across the park enjoying some long-forgotten sunshine and almost-warmth. Ball games, deckchairs and blokes-in-shorts are starting to make a reticent comeback. Spring is finally here, and the best six months of the year have finally begun.

When the next spring equinox comes round I expect I'll have been moved to a different office, on a different floor, with a different view of London, probably of a brick wall or a basement knowing my luck. Some might call it modern art, but I'll be pining for my classic landscape. In the meantime I'll continue to watch the seasons spread across the canvas of the capital with awe and wonder. And I promise to get some work done inbetween, honest.

posted 00:59 :

Thursday, March 20, 2003

You have mail

The postman brought me a letter at 11:30 on Tuesday morning. I was impressed, because the postman normally doesn't bring me my letters until the afternoon. When I lived in an obscure village in Suffolk I used to receive my post by 7:30 every morning, in time to open it before I went to work and to act on the contents if required. Now that I live in the middle of the biggest city in Northern Europe, my post doesn't arrive until lunchtime, if I'm lucky.

The postman brought me a letter at 11:30 on Tuesday morning. Unfortunately I was out. I got home on Tuesday evening to find the dreaded card in my letterbox, the card that says "We're holding an item of mail for you". What this really translates as is "We're holding an item of your property hostage in our concrete fortress over a mile away, merely becase it was slightly too big for your letterbox and because you were thoughtless enough to be out of the house when we finally wandered round and tried to deliver it. We might be open for a few hours or so over the next week should you want waste valuable minutes of your own time travelling out of your way to try to pick the package up, otherwise we'll send it back to its owner and then it'll probably get lost in our system forever."

I walked round to my local sorting office tonight to pick up the mystery package. It took me fifteen minutes to walk there from my local tube station because some Victorian had decided to build the main railway line to East Anglia directly across my intended path. Thankfully I arrived minutes before the office was due to shut down for the evening. I was pleased I'd remembered to bring some identification with me, unlike the lady in front of me who got sent home for being potentially not who she said she was. And I left clutching a brown cardboard package from Amazon, containing two very late but very welcome birthday presents.

Amazon had packaged my two gifts inside a particularly large cardboard shield. This meant that they arrived in pristine condition (and, if you know me, you'll know that I like my books in absolutely pristine condition, and to stay that way even after I've read them). Unfortunately it also meant that they no longer fitted through my letter box. I have a reasonable sized letterbox, and a good depth inside that could take even an above-average-length package. Unfortunately the aperture was just a couple of centimetres too narrow. Had Amazon used slightly less rainforest to surround my two small cuboids, I could have enjoyed my birthday presents 48 hours earlier.

One day the Post Office will find a solution to the 'delivering oversized and/or special mail while the householder is out' problem. Until then the true potential for web shopping will not be realised, because all the things you buy via the net have to be delivered to your home and few of them will fit through your letter box. Everything else either has to be collected or a delivery time arranged for when you are at home to sign for the goods. I hope that one day the Post Office gets round to installing a smart lockable box on all our doorsteps, because then I can order whatever I like, within reason, and be sure it'll be at home even if I'm not. One day.

I arrived home from the sorting office this evening and took a look inside my mail box. I found one council tax bill, one pizza delivery leaflet... and a card from the sorting office saying they were holding another item of mail for me. Sigh. One day.

posted 22:22 :

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