Look East: It's my Dad's 65th birthday tomorrow, so I'm making the pilgrimage up to Norfolk today for a special family meal. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, other than the 100 mile journey there and the 100 mile journey back, but today life is conspiring against me. Best Mate is over from America this weekend (as you'll remember) so we were out on the town rather late last night. My plan had then been to get the 10:30am train out of London up to Norfolk but, oh no, not today. Today there are major engineering works between Ipswich and Norwich so a new timetable is in operation and I have to catch the 9am train instead. Not good. Not good at all. I've had just over three hours sleep, and now I face a mystery tour on one of those ropey coaches the rail companies only drag out on non-special occasions. I'm going to be a zombie all day, no doubt, and in grave danger of slumping into my carvery gravy over lunch. And then, after a super family-type afternoon of birthday celebrationing, it's another nightmare coach and train journey home again. I'm starting to see a couple of advantages to being 65 - cheaper rail travel (which is all this travesty of a journey deserves) and no work to fall asleep at on Monday morning.
Still more than two months to go: • Boots the so-called chemists: decorations up in all stores; usual selection of sticking plasters, toothbrushes and batteries replaced by tins*l-wrapped shelves full of of useless overpriced pampering products; full TV advertising campaign underway featuring sn*w, m*nce pi*s and mistl*toe.
• Huge Hits 2004: compilation album featuring pap pop hits released between October 2002 and October 2003, on sale tomorrow.
I hope the BBC have given whoever came up with the idea for The Big Read a pay rise. It's boosted book sales, as well as boosting the corporation's status as a successful public service broadcaster. Informative, educational and entertaining - Lord Reith would have been proud. Last year it was history, this year it's books - I wonder what highbrow theme we're in for next year. Britain's favourite painting perhaps, or Britain's favourite composer, or Britain's favourite soap opera character? Britain's favourite Top 100 books were announced earlier in the year, and tonight the BBC whittles that list down to just 21. So, today would seem to be a good day for a literary quiz, but more a tiny read than a big read.
Can you identify these books (all from the Big Read Top 100) from their first lines?
1)The primroses were over. 2) She only stopped screaming when she died.
3)Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. 4) A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.
5)It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. 6) Fire swept through the bifurcated city of Ankh-Morpork.
7)Once upon a time there were three children, Joe, Beth and Frannie... 8) It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.
9)All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. 10) Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes.
11)'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,' grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. 12) The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it.
13)A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. 14) It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in posession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
15)The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon. 16) If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
Seven fine pages of bloggy goodness • Puzzleblog - if you like puzzles, try this daily dose of Scrabble and Countdown. Beautifully presented.
• Visual Speller - for checking the spelling on your blog, or any webpage (via Volume 22). Course, it's not yet prefect.
• DJ Martian's page - "A diverse music weblog for the discerning listener". Absolutely everything about real music right now.
• Sashinka - My fortnight in the newsagents is over, so it's time to pass the Web UserBlog Onbaton to another London blogger.
• Kaleidoscope - "An ongoing game project in which six weekly tasks are set, for players to interpret and complete within their own weblogs." Get your blog inspiration here.
• FreakyTrigger - "The UK's 950+ Number One Hits since 1952, reviewed, in order, irregularly, for as long as I can bear to keep doing it." (via Troubled Diva) We're still in 1956 at the moment.
• The Guardian's British BlogAwards 2003 - Last year's competition was what got me interested in blogging in the first place, and top prize went to the ever-readable Scaryduck (who's going to be one of this year's judges). I'll not be entering diamond geezer in the 2003 competition because I won't agree to one of their terms and conditions. But go on, you could have a try...
TeenBig Brother: So, it's just been me watching this then? Eight teenagers have proved that they can be even more shallow, rebellious, bitchy, stupid, flirty, loud-mouthed, emotional, offensive and irrational than their older counterparts. And therefore extremely watchable, in an "oh boy surely they're not going to.. oh god they just have" sort of a way. At last Channel 4 bosses have the duvet-jiggling footage they've been seeking for so long, without the aid of alcohol, and it only took 262 days of filming to achieve. But no condoms? Oh dear. Let's hope we don't end up with a real Big Brother's Little Brother next summer.
My best mate is flying into town this morning, seven months after emigrating to the States to start a new life. He's only over here for (nearly) a week, and the place hasn't been the same without him, but we're planning to make up for lost time later. I know there are a number of things he'll have missed while living in America, like proper teabags, decent music and vaguely sane politicians. It'll be a joy for him to be able to drink non-refrigerated beer again, to drive faster than 55mph and to watch a BBC TV channel that isn't endlessly looping Changing Rooms. The pie and mash shop is definitely on our list of places to visit, as is the chippie, as well as any café that can serve up a perfect greasy breakfast. Best mate has also missed all our flash mobs, and he'll have left before the next one (on October 25th) but he does assure me he's been out mobbing in San Francisco instead.
But what will he notice has changed over here in London during the months he's been away? Trafalgar Square has reopened, as has the Central line, and Canary Wharf continues to grow ever bigger. The capital's roads now clearly show the effects of the decongestion charge, but cyclists are definitely getting more aggressive (or maybe red lights don't apply to them?). The Tate Modern has swapped a big red tube for a big yellow sun, and now there's an anorexic American hanging in a box beside Tower Bridge. The invasion of the wheelie suitcases continues apace (maybe they're breeding), and more citizens are insisting on wearing Burberry (it's getting worse, I tell you), as well as those beanie hats half-covered with graffiti, and brown trainers (since when did brown trainers become fashionable?). And I've stopped going out so often, as you may have noticed by the fact I've been writing more on here since March. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to show best mate what he's been missing, or maybe what I've been missing...
It's BluePeter's 45thbirthday today. I was going to write about it, but I've written quite enough about children's television already this week, so here's one I made earlier.
The zero degree line of longitude slices down through Greenwich, dividing London into western and eastern hemispheres. As I've mentioned before, it's a totally arbitrary line, lying here only because Britain's navy was quite important at the time the decision was made. Altogether there are 180 lines of longitude around the Earth, spaced out approximately every 70 miles around the equator. Up here in southern England those lines are only about 45 miles apart as they head up towards the poles where all lines of longitude eventually meet. However, none of the 179 horizontal lines of latitude pass through London (51½°N 0°), the nearest two missing the capital by about 20 miles to north and south.
Scattered across the face of the planet, therefore, are a few special locations where a line of longitude exactly crosses a line of latitude. There's one such point just north of Alice Spings in the middle of Australia (23°S 134°E), while in the Caribbean another just hits land on the island of St Lucia (14°N 61°W) . A group of scientists have catalogued all 64,442 of these so-called confluences, and have set up a project to try to visit all of them. Well, those of them that are on land (or just offshore) which makes 24,429 altogether. Almost all of these confluences are randomly located in the middle of fields, forests or deserts, and are therefore surprisingly hard to reach on foot. Armed with satellite tracking devices, various people have set off to visit these remote locations, take photographs and write about what they found there. So far 2773 spots have been visited, and all the reports compiled on the Degree Confluence Project website. It makes a fascinating read, or map, if you like that sort of thing.
There are 6 confluences around London, only one of which hasn't been visited yet (and for good reason).
• 52°N 1°W, beside the River Great Ouse in a field just outside Buckingham.
• 52°N 0°, in a field south of Royston in the northeast corner of Hertfordshire.
• 52°N 1°E, in a field close to the A12 near East Bergholt in the Stour valley.
• 51°N 1°W, in a cowshed on a farm west of Petersfield in Hampshire.
• 51°N 0°, beside the River Ouse at the edge of a field to the east of Haywards Heath.
• 51°N 1°E(unvisited), less than a mile off the beach at St Mary's Bay near Dymchurch in Kent.
Wherever you are in the world, apparently there's always at least one confluence point within 50 miles of your location. I wonder if anyone's been there yet?
Returning to Sunday's theme of children's television programmes, I was struck by how innocent they all were in those days. Children sat on the Magic Roundabout without wearing safety harnesses, Mr Benn lived alone on Festive Road with no questions asked, and the lift in Mary, Mungo and Midge's tower block was always free from graffiti. It's a different world now. If these shows were being made today, Postman Pat would only deliver 70% of his letters and nick the rest, Grange Hill would have been closed down by Her Majesty's inspectors due to serious weaknesses, and Captain Pugwash really would have had seafaring mates called, well, you know what.
A number of kids TV shows from the past have been remade recently, including Andy Pandy and the Flowerpot Men, and there must be more to come. I'd therefore like to put forward my pitch for the contract to update Trumptonshire for the discerning modern audience, bringing that ancient county into line with 21st century reality. For added accuracy I propose to stick a bus shelter full of used needles in the middle of Camberwick Green, replace Trumpton town square by a soulless concrete shopping mall and pepper Chigley with burnt-out hatchbacks. Heavens, I might even introduce some non-male non-white characters.
Windy Miller the miller --> Crusty Miller the eco-warrior
Miss Lovelace the hatmaker --> Beryl Loveless the baglady
Lord Belborough's steam train --> Mina Sharma's minicab service
Chippy Minton the carpenter --> Minty Chipman the white van man
Dr Mopp the family doctor --> Dr Mopp the holistic health practitioner
Jonathan Bell the farmer --> Johnny Martin the have-a-go gun-owner
Mickey Murphy the baker --> Mustafa McDonald the dodgy kebab vendor
PC McGarry number 452 --> Gary Percy the steroid-abusing security guard
Mrs Honeyman the chemist's wife --> Ms Honey the drugdealing single mother
Captain Snort of Pippin Fort --> ex-con Ken Stort jailed for interfering with his privates
The Mayor of Trumpton and his town clerk --> The Mayoress of Trumpton and her long-term girlfriend
Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb --> Dibble and Grubb, the slimmed-down fire service
TeenBig Brother: It's only on for a week, and it's already been filmed so you can't influence the evictions, but Channel 4's top reality show is back with a teenage slant. Filmed originally as an educational programme, a brief spurt of under-the-sheets action has timeshifted this series into a publicity-grabbing post-watershed slot. So far the eight housemates have learnt how to unblock a toilet, how to crash an aeroplane and how not to practice racial tolerance. I'm sure the public will be watching purely in order to learn more about vocational qualifications, and not to watch the trainee beauty therapist bitching with the gay hairdresser. Children's telly, it isn't innocent any more is it?
Broccoli watch (1)Look who stalking
No, it's OK, I wasn't being serious about hosting a Broccoli week. I'm not sure how much further I could have gone after a James Bond quiz anyway. Broccoli is of course a nasty green vegetable, one which always seems to be served up in restaurants when you'd rather have something vaguely ordinary and therefore edible instead. I'm with President Bush (Senior) on this one. Should all be destroyed, in my opinion, which you can do here...
Broccoli quiz (1)Cubby Broccoli's greatest hits
Can you name these Broccoli-produced films? 1) 8 cats 2) Digital Au 3) Mata Hari 4) Lunar gardener 5) Saturday's was 6 6) Moscow Valentine 7) Firearms certificate 8) Single reincarnation 9) Two bills, two explosions 10) Born 7:20am, died 6:10pm 11) Never share contact lenses 12) Allotropes of carbon do not erode 13) Facing the firing squad without a blindfold 14) "There's only one parachute and I'm having it" 15) Unpublicised communion at St George's Chapel 16) "Sarah-Jane, do you want to be killed by a Dalek?" 17) Richard Faulds (Sydney Olympics, men's double trap)
Last week's tube extravaganza went so well that I thought another theme week would be a good idea. So, this week is Broccoli Week on diamond geezer, a celebration of all things green and stalky. There'll be recipes, fascinating vegetable facts, horticultural quizzery and everything you ever wanted to know about florets. Expect a rich supply of vitamins and minerals, a fair amount of beta-carotene and all virtually fat free. So, turn up the heat and let's get cooking!
Whenever two or three Britons are gathered together in one place, the conversation will always turn at some point to what everyone remembers watching on TV when they were young. But how much do you remember? Here's the diamond geezer guide to fifty years of children's television in the UK, featuring one classic programme that first aired in each year. It's been a tough list to compile, with some years proving very difficult to fill while others were overflowing with possibilities. I had to include Play School in 1964, for example, but that knocked out the Magic Roundabout and Vision On, and elsewhere there was no space for the Woodentops, Thunderbirds, Pipkins or even Postman Pat. I hope you enjoy looking back through the teatimes of your childhood. Oh, and every programme on the list links to a website brimming with appropriate nostalgia, so happy clicking!
Seen this weekend (75 days to go)
• X**s decorations up in British Home Stores
• M*nce pi*s on sale in Tesco (with a November sell-by date)
• Electric cables strung across Oxford Street
So, what have I missed during the last five days while I was busy blogging endlessly about the tube instead?
• Football. Apparently it's the rugby football world cup or something at the moment, but I have yet to meet anyone who cares. Real football has dominated the news this week instead, which is odd because nobody's actually played any real football matches. Does anyone play football any more, or are they too busy playing a not-so-beautiful game elsewhere?
• Politics: Californians have elected a ham actor with a dodgy past and debatable morals to the post of state Governor, confirming my worst suspicions that voters are very stupid celebrity is the new politics.
• Art: I have a large damp patch spreading across the ceiling and walls in my hallway. It's about ten feet long, and it now looks like a grid of semi-interlocking giant earthworms. I suspect that the Tate Modern would be very interested in this installation were it a little more portable, but I'd rather the bloke in the flat upstairs fixed the installation of his new shower properly instead.
• Radio: London's first commercial radio station, LBC, was thirty years old on Wednesday. I suspect the same old grumpy taxi drivers still ring up the through-the-night phone-in and complain about everything. Jeremy Beadle started out on LBC you know. I wonder if it's too late to sue.
• Music: I went to see an Arab Strap gig this week, just to be different. When a bearded man shambled on stage in an anorak, I thought it was perhaps David Blunkett on lead vocals, but no, it was amiable Scottish frontman Aidan instead. He mumbled his way through an hour of songs I didn't know but sort of liked, backed by guitars and an indie chamber orchestra. I was most impressed by his quick repartee with the more drunken elements of the audience, and by the final four-song acoustic all-requests encore.
• Verse: Thursday was National Poetry Day. Here's a collection of Poems on the Underground. (sorry, I was trying not to mention that again...)
• Boots the so-called chemists: decorations up in all stores; usual selection of sticking plasters, toothbrushes and batteries replaced by tins*l-wrapped shelves full of of useless overpriced pampering products; full TV advertising campaign underway featuring sn*w, m*nce pi*s and mistl*toe.
Teen Big Brother: So, it's just been me watching this then? Eight teenagers have proved that they can be even more shallow, rebellious, bitchy, stupid, flirty, loud-mouthed, emotional, offensive and irrational than their older counterparts. And therefore extremely watchable, in an "oh boy surely they're not going to.. oh god they just have" sort of a way. At last Channel 4 bosses have the duvet-jiggling footage they've been seeking for so long, without the aid of alcohol, and it only took 262 days of filming to achieve. But no condoms? Oh dear. Let's hope we don't end up with a real Big Brother's Little Brother next summer.
No minutes, no seconds
Broccoli watch (1) Look who stalking
Seen this weekend (75 days to go)
