Update 1: I've finally made it back to my local sorting office to collect that mystery letter, just 240 hours after my postman first tried to deliver it. How I enjoyed making a second half-hour scenic round trip through the less idyllic parts of Bow. How relieved I was to discover that the sorting office was actually open this time. How thrilling to rip open the envelope to discover a new debit card for the bank account I never ever use a debit card for. How worthless the whole drawn-out escapade has been. And how revolutionary it would be if the Royal Mail could finally work out a way of delivering secure mail that suited us and not them. Until then my willingness to use Amazon, eBay or any other online retail service remains virtually zero.
Update 2: There are still no trolleys outside my local Tesco. Maybe they're all away at some trolley convention somewhere because they're certainly not being pushed round the store. There was one trolley in the trolley park down the side of the store but it was the wrong size and on the wrong side of the road so I couldn't be bothered. Instead I've decided to do all my shopping using a basket from now on, which will save me about £15 a week and no doubt seriously damage Tesco's corporate profits at the same time. Now all I need to do is reduce my weekly shop to 10 items or less and I can get through the queues at the checkouts in less than ten minutes too.
Update 3: No progress on the tea-at-work saga yet. Various additional excuses for our kettlelessness have been bandied about, including 'it would make the kitchen untidy' and 'there are no washing up facilities'. Our office kitchen area is indeed the most useless office kitchen area on the planet. It may boast a tiny fridge, two sinks and a worktop but apparently it isn't a kitchen, it's an office stores area. Open the cupboards where you'd expect to find crockery, glasses and cleaning materials and you'll find post-its, hole punches and padded envelopes instead. Soap and paper towel dispensers have been added as an afterthought, evidently purchased from the Cheap'n'Nasty supplies catalogue. The single mixer tap has been plumbed in nearer to the sink on the left than the sink on the right, with the consequence that the sink on the right is merely ornamental. Try swivelling the mixer tap round to the right and the ensuing stream of water misses the second sink by a good couple of inches, creating large puddles across the worktop. At least the kitchen area remains tidy, but that's only because barely anybody uses it. Meanwhile I make sure I have a nice cup of tea before I go to work in the morning and another when I get home in the evening, because there's no prospect of a nice cup of tea inbetween.
2 + 2 = 5: Some people put two and two together and make five. Present them with some facts and they'll immediately read far too much into them. These people don't just jump to conclusions, they leap right over them and land somewhere in the middle of misjudgement. A few scraps of gossip quickly become half-baked certainty, and allegations can be based on nothing more than unfounded rumour. These people can be very hard to argue with because they know they're right and no amount of persuasion will change their mind. There is no grey in their world, just black and white. 2 + 2 = 10: Five years ago my ex used to put two and two together and make ten. No flight of fancy was too improbable, no wild accusation too unlikely. Never mind the truth, I could always be blamed for something I hadn't actually done (and frequently was). Not that I'd worked out why, because I was in the next category.
2 + 2 = 3: Some people put two and two together and make three. Show them the bleeding obvious and they'll somehow miss the point. They're the last to spot that someone in the office is pregnant, or that those two colleagues who keep arriving at work one minute apart are actually an item. They never get a nagging gut feeling, neither would they recognise a hunch even if it came with a big red flashing light attached. There is no black and white in their world, just grey. 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 2 + 2 = 0: Five years ago I couldn't put two and two together at all. I was in a failing relationship at the time, and all the clues were there but I just couldn't (or wouldn't) see the wider picture. They say love is blind. More blinkered, perhaps.
2 + 2 = 4: Some people put two and two together and make four. They possess something commonly known as 'common sense', and they use it well. Faced by a mass of incoherent evidence they can pull together disparate threads and reach a sensible conclusion. Intuition guides these people through life, and rarely do they put their foot in it. There is no black and white or grey in their world, just colour. Lucky bastards. 2 + 2 = 4.00000000: Five years ago this evening, in a blinding and unprecedented moment of clarity, I made precisely four. The trick was to add the right two twos together so that at last all the clues meant something. I made one inspired phone call, came to one inescapable conclusion, and moved on. I've never looked back since.
2 + 2 = ?: I'm much better at putting two and two together now than I used to be. I still miss a lot of things that everyone else spots, but now I spot some things that some other people miss. For me two plus two now equals about 3.7 (near enough). How about you?
Watching the National Television Awards on Tuesday night (as one does when giving one's brain the night off) I was jolted by a sudden frightening glimpse into the future. David Jason was unable to collect his annual 'Most Loved Actor In The World Ever' Award because he was "out on a night shoot" for a new ITV drama set somewhere in the north of England. It turns out that Mr Jason has been typecast again, this time as "a career criminal trying to convince a first-time-offender to join him in his next big scam". And the name of his new series? Diamond Geezer. I find this to be particularly disturbing news. Sometime next year my blog's brand image will be shattered, possibly even hijacked, by some cosy series featuring ITV's biggest banker. I shall be on the receiving end of hundreds of misdirected Google hits, and my chances of establishing myself as a British media icon will be seriously diminished. I wonder if I'll be able to sue for loss of intellectual property rights (conveniently ignoring the fact that the phrase 'diamond geezer' was hardlyfresh when I appropriated it myself).
But why stop at 'Diamond Geezer'? Surely other blog titles could easily inspire hit television series of their own. Maybe the rest of you would do well to cash in now before someone else in the media steals your online identity. I've worked my way down my blogroll and picked out the ten sites that I think have the greatest TV spinoff potential...
Scaryduck: Farm-based children's cartoon series in which Mad Max Mallard rules the roost with his regime of intimidation, eliminating the local pondlife.
Blue Witch: Ann Widdecombe follows in Michael Palin's footsteps to the North Pole, but then stays there.
Big n Juicy: EastEnders spinoff sees Peggy Mitchell employed on Martin Fowler's fruit & veg stall. Fun and hilarity ensues as actress Babs Windsor thrusts her melons on the people of Walford.
Dummies For Destruction: A new late night version of Mastermind in which John Humphries invites the losing contestant to sit in a special electric chair at the end of the show.
Troubled Diva: Pop Idol with a twist. Simon Cowell slags everyone off as normal but the contestants then lie down on Ant and Dec's "Soul Couch" for immediate therapy.
Casino Avenue: Carol Vorderman invites whole streets to stake their savings on the spin of a roulette wheel, then gives their houses a full makeover using the proceeds.
Random Acts Of Reality: Dermot O'Leary surprises former Big Brother contestants by following their sad post-eviction lives on hidden cameras.
Over Your Head: A condescending version of a Question of Sport in which Sue Barker asks particularly stupid sportsmen particularly easy questions.
Wherever You Are: Judith Chalmers encourages you not to go on holiday but instead to make the most of your local park, library and other municipal facilities.
Hackney Lookout: New cop drama starring David Jason as a career criminal with a heart of gold - a real diamond geezer.
dg's UK Eclipse Guide Next TotalLunar Eclipse: tomorrow morning (starts 2:14am BST, total from 3:23am to 4:45am, ends 5:54am) (so you'll be asleep, won't you?) Next Total Lunar Eclipse after that: Saturday 3rd March 2007 from 10:43pm to 11:58pm (so don't say I didn't warn you) Next PartialSolar Eclipse: Monday 3rd October 2005 (just over half obscured in London at 10am) Next Total Solar Eclipse: Saturday 23rd September 2090 (so you'll be dead, won't you?)
John Peel's Festive 50s(number 1, number 2) 1976 Stairway To Heaven (Led Zeppelin), Layla (Derek & the Dominoes) 1977<seismic shift in British music> 1978 Anarchy in the UK (Sex Pistols), Complete Control (Clash) 1979 Anarchy In The UK (Sex Pistols), Teenage Kicks(Undertones) 1980 Anarchy in the UK (Sex Pistols), Atmosphere (Joy Division) 1981 Atmosphere (Joy Division), Anarchy in the UK (Sex Pistols) 1982 Temptation (New Order), Shipbuilding (Robert Wyatt) 1983 Blue Monday (New Order), This Charming Man (Smiths) 1984 How Soon Is Now (Smiths), Pearly Dewdrops Drop (Cocteau Twins) 1985 Never Understand (Jesus and Mary Chain), Just Like Honey (Jesus and Mary Chain) 1986 There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (Smiths), Kiss (Age of Chance) 1987 Birthday (Sugarcubes), Australians In Europe (The Fall) 1988 Destroy The Heart (House of Love), Nobody's Twisting Your Arm (Wedding Present) 1989 Can't Be Sure (Sundays), Kennedy (Wedding Present) 1990 Bill Is Dead (The Fall), Soon (My Bloody Valentine) 1991 Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana), Dress (PJ Harvey) 1992 Geek Love (Bang Bang Machine), Sheela-Na-Gig (PJ Harvey) 1993 Enough Is Enough (Chumbawamba & Credit To The Nation), Swim (Madder Rose) 1994 I Want You (Inspiral Carpets), Hey Student (The Fall) 1995 Common People (Pulp), Sorted for E's & Wizz (Pulp) 1996 Come Out 2 Nite (Kenickie), First Big Weekend (Arab Strap) 1997 Brimful Of Asha (Cornershop), New Paths To Helicon (Mogwai) 1998 Pull The Wires From The Wall (Delgados), Xmas Steps (Mogwai) 1999 Cognoscenti Vs Intelligentsia (Cuban Boys), The Hymn For The Cigarettes (Hefner) 2000 Twist The Knife (Neko Case & Her Boyfriends), Good Fortune (PJ Harvey) 2001 Chinese Whispers (Melys), Hotel Yorba (White Stripes) 2002 Girls Are The New Boys (Saloon), Quick, Before It Melts (Cinerama) 2003 Don't Touch That Dial (Cinerama), Theme From Sparta FC (The Fall) 2004<irreplaceable loss to British music>
Hypothesis: The tea out of the vending machine at my workplace is proper tea.
Apparatus: One vending machine, one tongue, one sink, one carefully-positioned waste bin.
Control experiment: Press '90' on drinks machine to dispense small plastic cup of hot water. Cup takes 9 seconds to be filled. Water is steaming very slightly. Cup is very warm but can be carried. Finger can be dipped in liquid without scalding. Estimated temperature: not boiling.
Conclusion: Machine vended tea is not made from boiling water.
Experiment: Press '52' on drinks machine to dispense small plastic cup of liquid resembling tea (white, no sugar). Wait expectantly while machine buzzes and whirrs. Cup takes 27 seconds to be filled. Tea is not steaming. Colour of tea most closely resembles "Autumn Fern" on Dulux pH colour chart. Sip liquid. Grimace. Time between sip and emptying remainder of contents down sink: 3 seconds. Throw empty cup in bin.
Results: Time taken to dispense liquids as follows - hot water 9 seconds; black tea no sugar 23 seconds; white tea no sugar 27 seconds. Machine therefore takes 4 seconds to fill cup with milk powder, 14 seconds to 'freshly brew' tea and 9 seconds to fill cup with water.
Additional hypothesis: 14 seconds is long enough to 'freshly brew' tea.
Additional experiment: Dispense cup of not-quite-hot water (90). Add teabag pilfered from meeting room. Stir water vigorously with long thin plastic stirry thing for precisely 14 seconds. Remove teabag. Tea is not brown. Colour of tea most closely resembles "Muddy Puddle" on Dulux pH colour chart. Time between observation and emptying remainder of contents down sink: 1 second. Throw empty cup in bin.
Additional conclusion: Reject additional hypothesis. 14 seconds is not long enough to 'freshly brew' tea.
Conclusion: Reject hypothesis. The tea out of the vending machine at my workplace is crap.
Thank you for all your comments and support yesterday as I struggled to come to terms with workplace tealessness. And for all your suggestions... • Dave and Mat suggested moving to a new organisation where they take tea drinking seriously. Sadly I think I was asked to leave one of those a couple of months ago.
• Jag suggested bringing a thermos of tea to work, while Lyle reckoned that a flask such as this might do the trick. However I fear for the health and safety of other commuters on the Central line were I to try wielding a lethal object of this size through the rush hour crowds.
• Ross and Chz suggested using almost-boiling water from the vending machine to brew fresh tea using a teabag. Which would be fine except that the water from our machine isn't almost-boiling. And, even if it were, there'd still be no fresh milk available. We do have a small fridge where we could store fresh milk but it's shared between more than 100 people and it's already full of plastic tubs of salad. Fridge politics - now there's a whole new area to despair about.
• Gordon very nearly suggested that I should defect to the dark side and drink coffee instead. Heresy, Gordon, heresy.
• Quink suggested filling our teapot with hot water from the machine in the canteen. Unfortunately the canteen is a multi-floor lift journey away, and the carriage of containers full of hot liquids around the building is also banned under 'Health and Safety' rules.
• Katherine and Em² suggested challenging all these supposed 'Health and Safety' rules on the basis that they might not actually exist. Hmmm, maybe I'll come back to you later on that one...
One of the best things about the office where I used to work is that we had a kettle. I'm not sure if we were meant to have a kettle because nobody else in the building had one, but we were just a small team in a space of our own so we got away with it. We put someone in charge of buying teabags and every now and then, when supplies were low, we'd all give her a quid and she'd pop out to the local Sainsburys Local to buy some more. Regularly throughout each day we'd sort of take it in turns to go into the kitchen area, stick the kettle on and make everyone a cuppa. We did it properly, with a big teapot and fresh milk and everything, and almost every cup used to taste great [9½/10]. Just enough to get us through the next two hours until somebody decided to brew up another pot. And then we moved.
We're not allowed a kettle any more. Apparently the use of a kettle would breach Health and Safety regulations, no doubt because boiling water is involved. Goodness knows how I've managed to use a kettle at home to make myself thousands of cups of tea over the years without fatally scalding myself, but it seems that at work I'm not even allowed to try. Fortunately my workplace has made alternative arrangements for the production of tea. Unfortunately, they suck. Here's how.
Tea from the machine A large black vending machine has been positioned in the new kitchen area on our floor at work. There's a giant illuminated picture of a pot of frothy coffee on the front, which alas is not a good sign for us tea connoisseurs. The machine can dispense about six different types of coffee (including a nasty hot chocolate/cappuccino hybrid), as well as some tooth-rotting lemon drink and a thin pasty liquid supposedly called 'hot vegetable soup', but there's only one type of tea. This tea is described as 'freshly brewed', although goodness knows how it can possibly be fresh when it gets pumped out of the nozzle in ten seconds flat. The dispensed drink is very similar to that described by Arthur Dent as "a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea". It's weak, it's thin, it's insipid and it's desperately unsatisfying. So unsatisfying in fact that I've never once risked drinking a cup. This devil's brew may be free but it's worth no more than [1/10].
Tea from the canteen We now have a canteen at work, which is great. It serves fry-ups for breakfast and big meaty meals for lunch, as well as the juice and rabbit food that some of my colleagues seem to prefer. Even better it's heavily subsidised so I'm saving money over buying sandwiches and not having to cook again when I get home. Unfortunately the canteen also attempts to sell tea. They've put a pile of paper cups by the till, along with a collection of teabags and a hot water dispenser which you then combine to form a brown liquid with a light greasy scum on the surface. I am not tempted, especially not at 40p a cup for an inferior version of a drink that I used to get virtually for nothing. It makes me wonder whether the supposed 'Health & Safety' ban on kettles isn't really to protect the fleecing rights of the canteen franchisers. Alas, I refuse point blank to fork out £500 a year for this scum. [3/10]
Tea in a meeting What could brighten a lengthy meeting better than some surly youth arriving with the drinks trolley? Try not to think how much your departmental budget is being charged for a pot of coffee, a flask of tepid water and a plate of biscuits, just smile because it's better than the stuff out of the machines. Only just, though. Most of the teabags they provide are trendy herbal rubbish (a finely grated flower petal in an expensive packet) but there are always also a couple of ordinary teabags on strings. Drop the teabag of your choice into the far-from boiling water, watch as the brown colour fails to budge more than a millimetre from the bag, stir the liquid vigorously in an attempt to improve the brew and sob in despair as the string breaks and you have to squelch the teabag out of the cup unaided. But it is a china cup, and the tea is almost warm, so I have to score this [4/10].
Tea substitute Imagine a cup of tea without the heat, without the milk and without the tea. That's all I drink at work now. It's a crying shame.
Reasons to be cheerless, part 1: During the week somebody sent me a letter by Special Delivery and I have absolutely no idea what it was except that it probably wasn't anything really important because I'm not expecting anything and when they tried delivering it on Wednesday I was at work so they stuck a message through my letterbox telling me that they were going to hold my letter hostage at the local Royal Mail sorting office until I could get round there to collect it which is difficult when the place closes at 3pm every day although it used to shut at 7pm until they adjusted the opening hours earlier this year "to improve customer service" which is rubbish so instead I had to wait until yesterday to go round except I arrived at ten past twelve and it turned out that the sorting office now shuts at noon on Saturdays and there was a postal worker waiting at the bus stop outside and he said I should arrange to get my letter redelivered and I told him that I had this alternative commitment called 'work' so I wouldn't actually be in if anyone came round again and he said that they could always deliver my letter to another address but only one within my local E3 postcode which is just as useless because I don't know anybody round here who's unemployed and doesn't go to work and he said that for a fee of 50p they could send it to my local Post Office instead except that my local Post Office shuts before I get home from work too which is no better so the upshot is that I won't be able to go back and collect my letter until next Saturday and even then it probably won't be worth the effort so I hope that next time I'm sent a Special Delivery letter my criminally negligent postman will do what he did last time and post it illegally without waiting for a signature because it'll save me a half hour detour to the sorting office.
Reasons to be cheerless, part 2: After my abortive Royal Mail trip I went round to buy a week's supply of food at my local supermarket which is the Tesco in Bow that used to be where the Big Brother producers did the housemates' weekly shopping and there's a trolley park out the front on the main road which always used to be full of trolleys but which recently has been getting emptier and emptier until today there were no trolleys left in it at all so I had to use a basket instead which meant I only bought half as much as I was planning to buy which is probably a good thing because I can easily live without half the stuff I normally buy except that by the time I reached the fruit and vegetable section I didn't have enough room left in my basket for anything else so I'll probably get scurvy or something because I doubt there'll ever be any trolleys sitting outside the supermarket ever again goodness knows why Tesco can't shuffle a few trolleys round from the car park on the other side of the store instead maybe they're afraid that local yobs will steal them all but the net result is that people aren't spending as much in their store as they could be the idiots.
Reasons to be cheerless, part 3: I've had a nightmare week at work so I was really looking forward to having a Saturday off except that it rained almost all day and all I did was go to the sorting office and Tesco and nothing else so Sunday had better be more interesting or else I may be forced to blog about something as tedious as the Royal Mail and supermarkets again.
This weekend should have been the final weekend of renovation work at Bow Road station. Back in March when this whole redevelopment debacle began they promised us that our station would be fully reopened again by October 26th. Oh how I looked forward to admiring the gleaming new surfaces and restored Victorian architecture. Oh how I longed for a platform indicator that actually told you when the next train was due, not just where it was going. And oh how I dreamed of being able to use the station again after 10pm, rather than having to walk home late at night from the next station down the line. But no, all my aspirations have been dashed (or at least put on hold) because the brave new Bow Road station is not yet ready. Not by a long way.
It's not yet clear when the work will be finished. I'm indebted to a local correspondent for pointing out that nobody at Bow Road appears to be sure either. He's sent me photographs of four different posters at the station which give four different completion dates (and look, they're all in dg-approved colours!). The tube website until recently offered a different date ("until 26 October") until they updated the site to give yet another ("until the end of February 2005"). Some sort of campaign of public misinformation seems to be underway, raising our hopes just to dash them again when the due date arrives and the work is no nearer to completion. Further official details are now apparent, however:
The first of these extended weekend closures merely resulted in some cable ducting being attached to the stairwells and a line of fluorescent tubes being bolted to the ceiling. The second seems to have been devoted to replacing the lighting in the ticket hall and draping a mass of black cables along the passageways and through a wall. It looks like a colony of giant snakes have taken up residence in the rafters, dangling down and weaving in and out of the ironwork. This is no sensitive Victorian reconstruction, this is infrastructure installation on the cheap. The station actually looks more unattractive than it did before redevelopment began and, because it's now much better illuminated, this just makes the ugly modern intrusions even more obvious.
The rebirth of Bow Road station should be complete in four months time, so they tell us. I remain to be convinced that the end result will justify months of inactivity and inconvenience to long-suffering passengers. Or indeed that this mismanaged fund-squandering fiasco of a project will ever reach a satisfactory conclusion. Watch this space.
Disney quiz: Here are clues to the names of 20 feature-length Disney cartoons (and not too much of the modern rubbish either). How many can you identify? (Answers in the comments box)
dg's UK Eclipse Guide
Bow Road update (half time report?)
It's not yet clear when the work will be finished. I'm indebted to a local correspondent for pointing out that nobody at Bow Road appears to be sure either. He's sent me photographs of four different posters at the station which give four different completion dates (and look, they're all in dg-approved colours!). The tube website until recently offered a different date ("until 26 October") until they updated the site to give yet another ("until the end of February 2005"). Some sort of campaign of public misinformation seems to be underway, raising our hopes just to dash them again when the due date arrives and the work is no nearer to completion. Further official details are now apparent, however:
District line General Manager, Bob Thorogood said "When this work is complete, passengers will be able to enjoy a modernised ticket hall and platforms and the new communications room will help us to make the service more efficient. We are extending the weekend closure to ensure that Metronet Rail SSL are able to complete the work by February 2005."The first of these extended weekend closures merely resulted in some cable ducting being attached to the stairwells and a line of fluorescent tubes being bolted to the ceiling. The second seems to have been devoted to replacing the lighting in the ticket hall and draping a mass of black cables along the passageways and through a wall. It looks like a colony of giant snakes have taken up residence in the rafters, dangling down and weaving in and out of the ironwork. This is no sensitive Victorian reconstruction, this is infrastructure installation on the cheap. The station actually looks more unattractive than it did before redevelopment began and, because it's now much better illuminated, this just makes the ugly modern intrusions even more obvious.Disney quiz: Here are clues to the names of 20 feature-length Disney cartoons (and not too much of the modern rubbish either). How many can you identify? (Answers in the comments box)
