Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear & shall not understand, & another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware both of that more & of the outsiders' incomprehension.
Modern English Usage, H W Fowler
I like irony. I use irony a lot, especially when blogging. I've used it an awful lot over the last few days, especially on Wednesday when my post was nothing but irony from start to finish. But I do sometimes wonder whether all this irony is a good idea. Because not everybody notices that I'm being ironic.
It's much easier in real life. Most of the conversations I have are with people who can see my face while I'm talking. They can tell from my expression whether I'm being deadly serious or whether I'm lying through my teeth. Most of the conversations I have are with people who share the same cultural experiences as myself. They know when I'm saying something that goes against expected norms. Most of the conversations I have are with people who've met me before. They know not to take everything I say at face value.
But on a blog it's much harder. Readers can't tell whether I'm frowning or smirking merely from looking at words on a page. Readers don't hear that telltale inflection in my voice when I'm being less than serious. Readers from outside the UK may not understand the regional subtext involved in everything that I write. And because most blogs aren't ironic, readers don't initially expect mine to be. Not until they've worked me out, that is, which takes a while.
So I thought it might be a good idea to add an "irony flag" () to some of my posts, to make it easier for my readers to tell when I'm being ironic. This means that, in future, everyone will be able to tell the difference between...
Tony Blair has been an excellent Prime Minister.
and
Tony Blair has been an excellent Prime Minister .
...or between...
That bearded bloke on the tube is almost certainly a radical fundamentalist with a bomb factory in his shed.
and
That bearded bloke on the tube is almost certainly a radical fundamentalist with a bomb factory in his shed .
I'm sure that this novel approach to identifying irony will prevent all future misunderstandings . Even amongst Americans, whose understanding of the concept of irony is already highly developed . Because the last thing I want to do is to appear patronising to my less intelligent readers .
I'm really pleased with my new idea, and I feel smug that I may have unleashed an icon of great importance onto the internet . In fact this is such a great idea that I urge you to digg it, because this will send lots of new readers to my site and make me feel extremely important .
So (especially if you're a bit stupid ) please watch out for the flag of irony on my site. Or even use the icon on your own site, assuming you're intelligent enough to understand the concept of irony in the first place . I shall, of course, be using it frequently in the future .
Sorry, I wasn't going to write about Bank station again today. But I've been prompted to do so by a comment I received yesterday from someone called Audrey.
It's possible that Audrey is a genuine reader, taking me to task for a snobbish high-and-mighty online rant. Or it's conceivable that 'Audrey' works for TfL, and has logged in undercover to give me a piece of her mind. I have no way of knowing which it might be. But I know that Audrey's angry, and that she knows rather a lot about hoardings and high street vouchers. And that she's missed the point of yesterday's post, which was that TfL's information campaign is rubbish, not that TfL staff are generally incompetent.
Twenty minutes later Audrey's comment was followed by one from Craig. Taken at face value, Craig appears to be supporting me rather than Audrey. But something in his tone of voice suggests that he's talking with tongue firmly planted in cheek. So I've added an irony flag at the end of his comment, because I suspect he also thinks I'm an arrogant know-it-all blogging bastard.
That irony flag is fully justified, I think. Thanks "Craig", and thanks "Audrey", for your exasperated comments. But I'm afraid I'm sticking to my central premise, which is that TfL are guilty of a campaign of misinformation regarding the partial closure of Bank/Monument station. I can't be sure whether this misinformation is deliberate, to scare away as many people as possible and keep the passageways emptier than they might have been, or whether it's because their publicity people don't think before they write.
What is clear is that almost everything TfL tell us about using Bank/Monument is too simplistic. On one level it needs to be, because tourists need to understand what's going on and so do folk with English as a second language. Also, it's important for Health & Safety reasons to minimise the possibility of a mega-nasty crush-related incident deep under the Square Mile. But some of us have literacy skills and IQs above 90. We don't need to be spoonfed unhelpful over-generalised statements which state point blank that the whole of Bank is a permanent no-go zone. Statements like...
"Avoid changing trains at Bank" • Central ←→ DLR (yes, probably avoid) • Northern ←→ DLR (should be fine) (unless they're adding some nightmare one-way system on the stairs) • Central ←→ Waterloo & City (no disruption) • Northern ←→ District (no disruption) • Central ←→ Circle (never much fun at the best of times) etc
"Avoid changing trains at Bank" • 8:30am Monday (yes, avoid) • 2:30pm Tuesday (probably not too bad) • 5:30pm Wednesday (might be worth avoiding, in places) • 10:30pm Thursday (almost certainly no hassle at all) • 4:30pm Sunday (almost certainly no hassle at all) etc
"Use alternative stations nearby wherever possible" • on a Central line train at Bond Street, wanting to get to Bank, 8am Friday (no, don't get out at St Paul's, the up escalators at Bank are fine) • standing in the street outside Bank station, wanting to use the Northern line, 12 noon Thursday (no, use Bank station, for heaven's sake) • standing in King William Street, wanting to use the DLR to get to Canary Wharf, 4pm Tuesday (yes, enter via Monument and down to the DLR that way) • at Liverpool Street, trying to get to Waterloo, 10am Saturday (no, take the Central line to Bank, then change to the Waterloo & City) etc
It's OK, you don't have to actually read any of that lot. Just believe me when I say that the Bank situation isn't as cut and dried as TfL would have you believe.
I think the ludicrousness of it all is best summed up by this map, still to be found in every Waterloo & City line carriage. Here's a line with just two stations, and passengers are being advised on a sticker that it's impossible to interchange at one of them. How ridiculous is that?
Sorry, you didn't want to hear me going on and on about all this for a second day. Sorry, the disruption at Bank continues until at least the end of next year, so you're probably going to have to sit through me saying it all again at some point. But, however hard TfL's staff are working to ensure that Bank is upgraded in a safe and timely way, their public information campaign remains a condescending pack of absurd generalisations targeted at gullible sheep.
Sorry Audrey, you probably think I'm even more of a twat now than you did yesterday. And sorry to everybody else, because today I was originally planning to write a sweet post about a tea lady instead. Some other time.
Remember those 12 regional flags I posted here last week? Go on, scroll down to last Monday and remind yourself - it'll be important later. The regional flag idea came from Tony Wilson's campaign for a North West identity, and was picked up by Radio 4's Today programme and BBC Online's Magazine. They invited people to email in their designs, in jpeg format, so I did. And they promised to publish some of them this week, which they have.
At 7:15 yesterday morning the Today programme discussed regional flags again. Or rather John Humphries was lectured by some bloke who believes in England but not in regions. Nothing about flags at all - they don't work well on radio, flags - although John did mention there were some listeners' designs on the programme's website. And there are. Take a look - the page is here. There are three flags displayed on the website, all alternative flags for the North West. Very nice they look too. And then there's one of those special BBC online picture gallery things, in the column down the right-hand side. There are 15 flags in that BBC online picture gallery thing. Guess how many of my 12 flags made it into the 15 flag picture gallery. Go on, guess. Then click on the picture gallery link and take a look.
So, well, cor blimey, what an honour to have one's work showcased by the BBC. It's almost worth the licence fee in itself. I assume that only four people bothered to send in any designs but, well, hey, national recognition at last. OK, so they kicked off with my Cheshire flag, which I thought was one of the weaker ones, but 80% of that gallery is mine, all mine. Can't complain. Well, actually, yes I can. My 12 flags were quite small (96 pixels by 64) but the other people's designs must originally have been rather bigger and more detailed. And the good old BBC have displayed all of our flags in size 300 by 200. Jpegs aren't the sharpest of image formats so they don't expand well, so all my 12 flags look really blurry. But hey, they're BBC blurry. Respect.
I have one particular reason for a broad smile this morning. One of my 12 flags the BBC have posted on their website is this white flag here, labelled 'Flag design for the BBC by dg'. It's meant to be a flag of surrender, symbolic of the board of Governors' capitulation to the Hutton Report. I have a special message to the BBC lackey who lovingly snipped up my 12 flags and inserted them on the Corporation's website. "This was irony. I suspect you missed that". I really think the Today programme should check their sources more carefully. Have they learnt nothing?
After four days in Grid London's non-existent alternate universe, what have we learned?
1) You hate change.
I went on a "Change Management" training course at work once, where I was told the bleeding obvious by a smile in a dress. However, this week I've completely ignored the bleeding obvious and imposed change mysteriously, suddenly and without explanation. One minute there was a normal London-based eclectic blog (in grey), and the next I replaced it with a commercial green and orange nightmare. No wonder so many of you entered the "denial", "protest" and "retribution" stages. Sorry. But don't worry, my defection to the Grid London darkside was only a temporary aberration.
2) You hate green.
What I wrote this week didn't matter at all to some of you, because you couldn't cope with the green. About a quarter of my commenters, on Monday and Tuesday at least, ignored what I'd written and just gibbered about the green. I toneddown the shade slightly on Wednesday, and we heard less about it. But the message is clear - if you want lots of comments (in the short term at least), change your background colour to something upsetting. Message to my RSS audience: Yes, the main blog's been green all this week. You never noticed did you? Actually, in this case that may have been a good thing.
3a) You hate vacuous commercial blogging.
Yeah, me too. That was the point of my Grid London exercise. Meaningless glib posts full of fawning uncritical praise - hate them. Effortless swathes of cut and paste plagiarism - hate them. Blogs littered with references to every press release some PR guru suggests - hate them. And you hate them too, so you begged me to stop. 3b) You hate unfunny attempts at blog satire.
Yeah me too. One day's usually enough to get the point across, so stretching out a parody over a week can get rather tiresome. Oh the agonies of reading a once-enjoyable blog and watching it slip slowly away from you. I bet you cheered when you clicked in today and saw this blog was grey again.
4) Some of you jump to conclusions too quickly.
Several commenters this week jumped to the conclusion that Grid London was real. Er, no. Do please try to develop a healthy scepticism, because unquestioning belief in everything you read on a blog can be extremely bad for your credibility. And some people evidently believed that I had in mind specific blogs and websites upon which my week-long withering assault was based. Let me assure you that this was not the case, and that my focus was very much on a broad soulless genre rather than particular individual exemplars.
5) Some of you are new round here.
And you newbies may have taken my apparent change of direction more seriously than most. I've got into trouble before for not being up-front about my sarcasm. I often play my blog straight, when in fact I'm taking the piss mercilessly. I've debated whether I ought to use an "irony flag" to signal satirical spoofery, but instead I prefer to rely on the intelligence of my readership to spot the difference. You'll get the hang of me eventually. Unless you've already buggered off pledging never to return, that is.
6) If Grid London were real, and paying me per click-through, I'd be rich.
Usually when I post a link on my blog, only a few of you click on it. Maybe about 5% of readers, that sort of proportion, and rarely more than 10%. But my prolonged and shameless promotion of Grid London this week has whacked that percentage up to more like half. I've inspired nearly 2000 target site conversions since Monday, and for that level of interest I'm sure a healthy Paypal balance would have been coming my way. And you lot are a discerning audience for heavens sake, not a bunch of easily-led muppets. Maybe monetised blogging could pay, after all. But, trust me on this, I have no intention of starting down that path.
7) Even lazy content attracts comments.
Wednesday's "end of the world" post was in fact exactly the same text I'd have posted anyway, even if I hadn't been having a scary green week. Admittedly it wasn't quite the cut and paste I claimed, but I bet that reproducing the genuine Daily Mail article would have gathered a similarly large number of comments. No effort on my part whatsoever, but generating the illusion of intelligent conversation. Whereas Tuesday's "trouser-buying" post took ages to write, and yet not one of you commented specifically on my purchasing adventures. Why did I bother?
8) Even detestable content attracts visitors.
"It would be interesting to see how visitor numbers to this blog have declined this week," commented Michael yesterday. And yes, I was expecting exactly that. But no, quite the opposite occurred. Visitor numbers this week are actually up by approximately 15% on last week, and my total number of RSS subscriptions is at a record high. Maybe some people actually appreciated the well-targeted humour. Or maybe they only kept coming back to see if the content could get any worse. Beats me.
9) The only constant on diamond geezer is change.
This is not a blog about London. I know it felt like that last month when I droned on and on about the same short stretch of road for two weeks. And I do talk about the Olympics a lot, and the Underground, and lots of alternative London-y stuff. But there's plenty of other content here too, much of which is not even vaguely geographical. diamond geezer is a blog about whatever takes my fancy, which is not necessarily what takes yours. I write about what I like, not what you want. Get used to it.
10) When you click to read this blog in the morning, you never quite know what you're going to get.
And, after six years, that's still the way I like it.
A disturbing trend is creeping, slowly, across the blogosphere. It's not everywhere yet - indeed, you may well be immune - but more and more bloggers are doing it. Adding an extra line at the bottom of every blogpost. A line that says "Digg This", either in words or in symbols, at the bottom of every single bloody blogpost. I mean, get a grip.
Digg is a website which thrives on user-generated content. Digg's disciples spot stuff they like on the web and, if submitted by enough people, this stuff makes it to Digg's front page and a potential audience of millions. Sounds like a perfect way to get noticed, doesn't it? Write something great and it might just be validated in front of an appreciative global jury. The Digg effect is legendary, and extreme, and all powerful.
But what on earth makes bloggers think that the couple of paragraphs they've just posted to their blog are worthy of Digg's front page? Have you seen what Digg's front page usually contains? Some nerdy sci-fi stuff. A hilarious photograph of a dog in a wig. Some incisive American political commentary. A celebrity interview lifted from the NBC website. News of a really exciting shiny new gadget. A YouTube video of a toddler waving a lightsabre. You know, lowest common denominator geek stuff. Your miserable post about what you did at the weekend has no chance.
But never mind, people still insist on sticking these little icons at the bottom of every post they write. There's no thought as to whether each post is actually Digg-worthy or not, the icons just appear as part of the template. That means 99 wasted appearances for every one post that might just possibly be worth sharing worldwide. And what are the chances of that one brilliant post actually being Dugg? Who actually clicks on these buttons, eh?
I can just about see the point of del.icio.us as an accumulated repository of interesting links. But does anyone really bookmark favourite blogposts to re-read six months later? Does anybody really appreciate a post so much that they recommend it to all of thesesocialbookmarkingsites? Are there really people who Digg everything they read, just so long as it makes them LOL or w00t? And does anyone ever choose to send favourite posts to their friends by email? I think not.
I got Dugg the other week, thanks to an ironic sentence in my "flag of irony" post. A few misguided kindly souls gave this post the thumbs up and it managed to accumulate a grand total of 6 Diggs. And the net result? 3 extra incoming visitors. Pah! I'm sorry but, except in exceptional cases, sticking Digg buttons on blogs is a total and utter waste of time. If you really think you've got something worth flaunting to the rest of the world, by all means stick a big "Digg This" box at the bottom of your post. But the rest of the time, please get a sense of proportion and stop clogging up our screens with unnecessary boastful clutter.
Sat 1: Spotted a doomed pillarbox in Beckenham High Street wrapped in plastic film, ready to be updated to one of those new solar-powered automated boxes. I wonder what they do with the boxes that get replaced. Sun 2: The sheer irony of a narrowboat on the Grand Union Canal, clearly Reform-friendly, flying a 'Stop the Boats' flag.
Mon 3: Celebrity spotting: On Bow Road I passed former Poldark-scyther Aidan Turner, which shouldn't have been surprising because we both live on the same street. Tue 4: Celebrity spotting: Outside Finsbury Park station I passed someone famous I couldn't place ("oh I know that face, who is that?"). Eventually I worked out it was Ru Paul's Drag Race champion Ginger Johnson, but not in full make-up. Wed 5: The top end of Crystal Palace Park is a vast sealed-off mess at present as the Italian Terrace undergoes a full makeover to make it more appealing and accessible. Should be great eventually, but don't visit soon.
Thu 6: On 2nd September I saw an e-unicyclist and said I was going to count how many days it was before I saw another one. I finally saw another today so it took 65 days, that's how rare these beasts are. Perhaps TfL could stop making regular announcements about a form of transport that barely exists, thanks. Fri 7: OK, maybe the lampposts between Crayford and Erith are London's flaggiest. Sat 8: I attended the very first Lady Mayor's Show, the previous 700-odd all having been Lord Mayor's Shows. The parade's always a slightly surreal combination of portly men in gowns waving from trucks, youthful pipe bands from the Home Counties and a miltary invasion of the City by the Armed Forces. The most surreal participants were a steam locomotive called Fenchurch, a huge yellow pea harvester and a full contingent of Pearlies. The money shot was Donald Campbell's Bluebird passing St Paul's Cathedral.
Sun 9: Perhaps the secret to Donald Trump versus the BBC is to apologise, shut up and rely on the fact he's bound to forget about suing you. Mon 10: One of the leaflets you can pick up at my local Tesco is a 64-page booklet detailing what's on at Norwich theatres (Jul 2025-Sep 2026). They are indeed excellent venues and my Dad attends regularly, but I can't imagine anyone from Bow ever deciding to travel 100 miles for a matinee. Tue 11: The most questionably bizarre Remembrance tribute I've seen this year is this knitted poppyman in the centre of Chesham. He's holding a white dove, he's called Percy and this is his fifth year on the bench.
Wed 12: I think that's the greatest number of deer I've ever seen, just over a brick wall in Bushy Park. A safari enjoyed from the top deck of the Superloop! Thu 13: My youngest nephew's not often in London so I took him out to dinner and was delighted to discover that my 15 year-old loyalty card still works. I've now got seven stamps, and another two should mean a free pancake.
Fri 14: Since I last reported on Footpath 47, the waterside strip has been fairly brutally de-vegetated and fenced off as Barking Riverside hurtles towards its residential destiny. Sat 15: While in Whyteleafe I was thrilled to see my favourite advert, now somewhat faded, on a municipal noticeboard. I assume the council bought a job lot because I last saw it posted up near the start of London Loop section 5, but that sadly disappeared about ten years ago. Sun 16: As well as an arrest, I can confirm that my visit to Brixton's Windrush Square also included the obligatory background smell of weed.
Mon 17: The thing about Epping Forest Museum (now open Mondays) is that it's a bit motley and not as good as it could be, but still better than anything else in Waltham Abbey's high street. I would love to have found out more about the wall of 500 year-old wood panelling, "one of the most important treasures in the museum", but all the background information was on an interactive touchscreen and this had broken. Tue 18: I boarded the DLR in the one part of the train a primary school class hadn't occupied, only for a third primary school class to board one stop later. They couldn't all have been going to the Natural History Museum. Wed 19: The place to wash clothes on Bow Road has reopened after a refit, and now manages to describe itself as both a LAUNDERETTE (old sign) and LAUNDRETTE (new sign).
Thu 20: I was despatched to the shops to buy a pack of silver Rizlas and, after much bafflement at the counter, managed to return with the wrong-sized papers. I think that's the first time I've bought anything smoking-related since spending my pocket money on packs of chocolate cigarettes in the 1970s. Fri 21: I needed to confirm my identity to set up a GOV.UK One Login account. I had hoped that four emails and three six-digit codes would be sufficient but no, they then asked me to take a QR code to a designated Post Office. It took the postmistress about 20 attempts to scan my passport on her tablet, after which she had to step out from behind the counter and take my photograph. I have never been more relieved, and surprised, that there was no queue waiting.
Sat 22: I really should start making a list of Pimlico Plumbers numberplates I've spotted. Sun 23: A dozen other things I saw on my Brighton to Newhaven walk: a ridiculous hat shop, an avenue of elms, the end of a racecourse, whatever the chalky equivalent of mud is, an occupied Saxon church, a whopping windmill, a soggy leaflet dispenser, frothy 'snow' blowing up onto the clifftop, an isolated 186-step staircase, an estate of no-longer-mobile mobile homes, National Coastwatch tower with invite to come on up, properly downtrodden high street.
Mon 24: Speaking of libraries, my local is brilliant because you can walk in and pick up two new bestsellers for nothing. I enjoyed Kathy Burke's autobiography, which is bitty but frank, blunt and insightful. I sort-of enjoyed the Map Men's tribute to dodgy cartography, This Way Up, which was very entertainingly written but too many chapters were buried beneath a humorous pastiche and some felt a bit thin underneath. Tue 25: Comedian Richard Herring has now published his Warming up blog every day for 23 years. In today's anniversary post he writes "as far as I know, no one has yet blogged every day for 25 years - there is one person who might have blogged every day for over 23 years, though I keep forgetting his name and haven't checked his website for a while. Hopefully he has died by now and I will be the longest consecutive blogger in the world." In case that was me, I can assure Richard that I took a week off in 2006.
Wed 26:Mike Hall is the designer of 32 gorgeous retro London borough maps, originally inspired by this blog's 'jamjar' series (2004-2012). Now he and Londonist editor Matt Brown have published a chunky hardback called 'The Boroughs of London' (£30, all good bookshops) in which retro London maps feature very heavily, suitably annotated. It's very good. To promote the book Mike foolishly agreed to visit one borough and nip round all ten of its places of interest in a day, and it's partly my fault that the crowdsourced choice was Sutton ("London's least interesting borough?"). He then documented his whistlestop tour in a lengthy thread on Bluesky, and if you expand it all the way down to Hackbridge at dusk then maybe Mike would be more convinced it really was worth the effort. Thu 27: Started the day thinking we might go and see a 7th century church on the Dengie Peninsula but actually ended up meeting Hodge, Southwark Cathedral's resident cat.
Fri 28: I was shocked to see a box of Creme Eggs on sale at my local newsagent, given it's still November. I didn't dare ask how much they cost. They also had a box of new Cadbury's Biscoff chocolate eggs (the same size but filled with crunchy Lotus biscuit pieces & Biscoff spread). Sat 29: I went to the cinema tonight, and I might start going more often because nobody scanned our QR code tickets, we just walked in. I was also appalled that 'popcorn and a drink' now costs 50% more than seeing the film.
Sun 30: Don't worry, I've stopped my Christmas Countdown at the end of November, but rest assured I could have carried on for another 24 days. Answers to the puzzles were as follows...
Tuesday: The missing word was XMAS (ensuring every letter of the alphabet appeared at least once). Wednesday: There were a lot of possible solutions, including 418 + 5907 = 6325 and 935 + 1806 = 2741. Thursday: Victoria, Euston, Barking, Aldgate and Stockwell end in ANGEL (itself a Christmassy station). Friday: 9 first class stamps (£15.30) and 10 second class stamps (£8.70). Saturday: All the consonant-less carols are now in the comments box. Sunday: For the four Advent-Calendar-splitting solutions, click here.
) to some of my posts, to make it easier for my readers to tell when I'm being ironic. This means that, in future, everyone will be able to tell the difference between...
The BBC is flagging
I have one particular reason for a broad smile this morning. One of my 12 flags the BBC have posted on their website is this white flag here, labelled 'Flag design for the BBC by dg'. It's meant to be a flag of surrender, symbolic of the board of Governors' capitulation to the Hutton Report. I have a special message to the BBC lackey who lovingly snipped up my 12 flags and inserted them on the Corporation's website. "This was irony. I suspect you missed that". I really think the Today programme should check their sources more carefully. Have they learnt nothing?
Grid London - Lessons Learned
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