Until last week I wouldn't have dreamed of having porridge for breakfast. I mean, porridge? It's not had a good press, has it? Goldilocks had trouble finding porridge at the right temperature. Oliver Twist could never get enough gruel to fill his echoing stomach. And those ReadyBrek kids from the 1970s used to glowred like they'd spent the night inside a nuclear reactor. Porridge certainly isn't the breakfast of choice for the modern generation. It's been outstripped by muesli, and croissants, and extra-sugar pre-diabetic chocoflakes with marshmallow floaty bits. Even a full fat fry-up has a higher media profile than porridge. But I'm not allowed a full fat fry-up any more, so porridge it is.
When adjusting one's diet to lower cholesterol, porridge is apparently the way to go. Its oaty structure acts like a "cholesterol hoover" in your veins, so I'm told, in much the same way that gobbling oily fish unclogs your tubes and makes you healthier. So, it's either herrings for breakfast or it's porridge. I've plumped for the latter. Except, oh dear, porridge isn't exactly tasty is it?
I bought a trial box of porridge oats on my first tentative post-diet supermarket excursion last week. What a depressing occasion that was. I was forced to bypass some of my favourite aisles (sorry no pies, sorry no biscuits, sorry no cake, sorry) in favour of new and unexpected haunts. Welcome to the low-fat healthy eating area. It was all so unfamiliar, and almost nauseatingly wholesome. Erm, right, so this is the porridge section is it? Oh dear, not a mouth watering prospect.
The following morning I poured out my first bowl of porridge for my inaugural breakfast experience. As I ripped open the packet I accidentally managed to cover half the kitchen with a thin layer of finely milled dust. Damn, wasn't expecting that. A few minutes with a cloth later and I was busy reading the packet, having suddenly realised that I had no idea what one actually does with porridge. Ah, OK, boiling milk. But whipping out a saucepan smacked rather too much of washing up. Was there an alternative option? Yup, good, microwave. I mixed in some appropriately skimmed milk and waited for the ping.
And what do you know, the resulting stodge tasted absolutely foul. Like some sort of papier maché or wallpaper paste (not that I know what either of those taste like, you understand, I'm just guessing). Ugh. I rushed back to the kitchen to throw in a handful of dried fruit - rather a large handful just to be on the safe side - and then shovelled the gloopy gruel down my gullet as fast as humanly possible. Never again.
On Day 2 I read the instructions on the packet again and realised that the ratio of oats to milk was probably crucial. So I risked another attempt, spooning the correct measure of wood shavings into my bowl and then stirring in a precise number of millilitres of cow juice. And that tasted a bit better. Still not in any way delicious or even appetising, but potentially bearable every single morning for the next 40 years. Sigh.
On Day 3 I got overconfident. I thought I knew what I was doing, guessed at the proportions and managed to mix myself another thick mound of steaming glue. The perfect porridge combination isn't yet second nature. Or maybe I should be using water instead of milk, I dunno. I'll get the hang of it eventually. And now this morning, as I post today's blog over breakfast, I'm staring not quite excitedly at yet another pool of oaty stodge. I'm sure it'd be lovely with a big dollop of chocolate sauce swirled into the middle. Sigh, chocolate. I remember chocolate.
Diet update: 1 week in Chocolate: nil; Chips: nil; Crisps: nil Cheese: two thin slices of tasteless low-fat plastic Weight lost: damn, nil Porridge: too much already
Blimey, that was quick. Just eight months ago an undamaged collection of factories and warehouses stood on the Olympic stadium site. And now they don't. The entire area has been cleared, erased, flattened and lowered to create an arena-sized bowl, and the transformation is amazing. I should know, I've been back to watch the changes month by month, and my last visit made me gasp. OK, I'm easily impressed, but it's already possible to visualise precisely where the 2012 centrepiece will take shape. And still the scuttly diggers swarm up and down what used to be Marshgate Lane, repeatedly rearranging the earth until Lea Valley reality is appropriately realigned. It won't be long now.
One of the best jobs in London is surely that of the Blue Badge Guide. These 500-or-so highly trained professionals spend their days taking tourists visitors around the capital, pointing out sights of interest and recounting fascinating historical tales. Sometimes they stand at the front of coaches and tell Japanese holidaymakers that it's not far to Windsor Castle, honest. Sometimes they walk round Westminster holding an umbrella in the air and wishing that their schoolkid charges would pay attention to their amusing anecdotes. Sometimes they stand beside busy road junctions yelling out hilarious stories that absolutely nobody can hear. They get paid less than £200 a day for their troubles, they work unsociable hours, and even if the weather's rubbish they still have to go out anyway. No really, it's a great job.
Once a year London's Blue Badge Guides organise a special day of free walks. Anybody can turn up and wander around town under their expert tutelage for a couple of hours, and hopefully learn lots of fascinating stuff in the process. 2008's special day was yesterday, as part of British Tourism Week, and I went along to sample a couple of the walks on offer. In the morning I joined Margaret at London Bridge station for a two hour stroll through the City via the medium of "nursery rhymes". She was rather pleasantly surprised when as many as 85 punters turned up, and then attempted to lead her tortuous crocodile (including two walking sticks and one pushchair) down steps, along riverbanks and through narrow alleyways. Our apologies to the miseryguts rambler who tried forcing his way through our rather wide group in a subway beneath Southwark Bridge while we were singing Oranges and Lemons.
And then in the afternoon a completely different walk, this time around the back streets of the East End. The title of the tour was 'Great British Villains', on which Ian our guide promised to take us to the notorious haunts of the Kraybrothers. This time just over 50 people turned up - still more than enough to be a handful. We started outside the Blind Beggar pubon the Whitechapel Road - where else? But Ian knew his Krays (as I suspect he knows pretty much everything else) and whisked us off to far less familiar spots. Up a grim sideroad beneath a stark brick railway viaduct he pointed out the pub where the Krays had been drinking immediately before (and immediately after) Ronnie shot George Cornell in the Beggar. This rather bleak-looking ex-boozer had been called The Lion, but was more widely known locally as "Widows" or "Madge's" after the 60s landlady who ran it. It's since been converted to rather seedy-looking flats, of course. And it's not somewhere I'd have noticed otherwise, nor wanted to linger given the staring eyes of the mechanics in the car-fiddling yard nextdoor.
Elsewhere Ian showed us the church where Reggie got married in style (now more flats) and the church where all the family funerals were held (now a dog-walking ground for evil-looking Staffies). Yet another local pub, the Carpenters Arms, was owned by the nefarious twosome and used as the springboard for some right dodgy activities. If you were invited in here during the Sunday afternoon unlicensed intermission, you were almost certainly up to no good. On we walked, surely now a larger group than when we set out, past an unseen bullethole and the Kray's former boxing club.
And finally to the house at 178 Vallance Road where Ronnie and Reggie grew up, except that alas it no longer exists. A row of six smart 80s-built homes has replaced the previous terrace, so we can only imagine the cosy two-up two-down where the twins cosseted their mother and stashed their weapons. Ooh look, there's a special plaque outside number 178 unveiled by no less a personage than the Prince of Wales! It's nothing Kray-related though, just a housing cooperative coincidence. And then, after an appreciative flourish, Ian took his leave and wandered off.
It's not easy to become one of London'sBlue Badge guides (in much the same way that it's bloody difficult to become a London cabbie). You first need to pass a "pre-entry" test consisting of two hours of quick questions about Europe, London, art, architecture, geography, history and the like. If successful you then have to pass an interview - presumably to check that you have an outgoing personality - and then stump up nearly £4000 to study on a two year induction course. There are lectures every Tuesday and Thursday evening for six months, twice, plus a series of must-attend tours and visits most Saturdays. You weren't planning on having a social life, were you? The final exam is in six parts, including written papers and practical assessments, with extra tests if you want to qualify in more than one language. But the stringent admission policy must work because every single one of the Blue Badge guides I've heard, from the Palace of Westminster to the backstreets of Whitechapel, has been wonderfully informative and personable. Get your application in next January and maybe you could be stepping out onto the London streets at Easter 2011 with an appreciative audience of visitors hanging on your every word.
Yes, really, today.
March 15th.
Top of the morning to you, and get celebrating.
I bet you thought St Patrick's Day was March 17th. I mean, it's always March 17th isn't it? Any excuse for a celebration of all things Emerald. A chance to pin a shamrock to your breast, whip out your shillelagh and totter down to the pub for a pint of Guinness. But no, St Patrick's Day isn't on March 17th this year. Not officially.
Then maybe you thought St Patrick's Day might be March 16th. That's the day Ken Livingstone's picked for London's annual St Patrick's Day parade. Any excuse to march down Whitehall dressed as a leprechaun. A chance to spend the whole day drinking too much while staggering round the West End wearing one of those ridiculous tall green hats and urinating into doorways. But no, St Patrick's Day isn't ever on March 16th. Not officially. It's just that Ken likes to shift any ethnic celebration to the nearest Sunday because Sundays are quieter, and it's easier to tidy up Trafalgar Square afterwards.
This year St Patrick's Day is today, March 15th. So says the Catholic church in Ireland, and they ought to know. There's a problem with March 17th this year, and it's all down to the ridiculously early Easter we're having. This year March 17th falls at the start of Holy Week, and Vatican rules decree that the Monday of Holy Week is a far more important day (liturgically speaking) than a mere provincial saints day. Most Irish Catholics celebrate St Patrick's Day by going to Mass, and it just wouldn't be right to be cheering on the Apostle of Ireland when they should be remembering the passion of our Lord. So, sorry Pat, but your special day has been displaced.
This year St Patrick's Day ought to be on Tuesday April 1st. Displaced religious festivals are supposed to shift to the next available free day in the calendar, and in 2008 that's in a fortnight's time once all the hubbub of Easter is over. But that's a very time to wait, and Irish cardinals weren't willing to hang around that long. Imagine the confusion if scheduled civic events were held back until April, and thousands of tourists turned up in Dublin two weeks prematurely. So they asked the Vatican for special dispensation to shift the official religious celebration of Paddy's Day earlier rather than later, and the Pope said yes.
So St Patrick's Day 2008 is today, on Saturday March 15th. It's an extremely rare rescheduling, and the first time anything like this has happened for nearly 70 years. Back in 1940 Easter was also ridiculously early, on March 24th in this case, which meant that St Patrick's Day clashed with Palm Sunday and had to be shifted. And this temporal relocation won't happen again until 2160, which is the next time that Easter falls on March 23rd. I'll tell you a lot more about Early Easters next week. In the meantime slap on your shamrock, doff your floppy hat and get down the pub. With a bit of luck we non-Catholic souls can all celebrate St Patrick for three days in a row this year. Make the most of it (hic)
I SPY LONDON the definitive DG guide to London's sights-worth-seeing Part 22:The Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture
Location: Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet EN4 8HT [map] Open: 10am - 5pm (2pm - 5pm Sundays) (closed Mondays) Admission: free 5-word summary: the history of the home Website:www.moda.mdx.ac.uk Time to set aside: an hour and a bit
The far northern suburbs between Barnet and Enfield are an unlikely spot for a museum. Just down the road from Cockfosters station, off the Cat Hill roundabout, amidst undulating avenues of spacious semis. No really, that university campus behind the duckpond hides an unlikely secret repository. Honest, it's not just students allowed through the entrance, this place is wide open to the infrequent public. Go on, step inside and try to follow the signs up the service road. See that curved glass roof on the front of what looks like a humanities block. That's the entrance into a tiny treasure trove of 20th century domestic design. a proper little community resource. Yes, who'd have thought?
Don't turn left, that's the toilets. Head right, through the swing doors and across the shop (you can come back to this later), then make your way into the ground floor gallery. Look, lots of lovely old things! Old things which, if you're a certain age, will bring back evocative memories of rooms your older relatives used to live in. This is the Exploring Interiors permanent exhibition, blessed by period samples of classic home decoration. In one cabinet are Edwardian drapes and pre-war wallpaper, in another are catalogues depicting frilly lampshades and patterned linoleum. This is a temple to fixtures and fittings and fabrics and furniture - a last resting place for electric two-bar heaters and Coronation TV sets. The gallery's not huge, but it successfully conjures up a picture of how homes really used to be. Isn't that my grandmother's china service?
Various visitors have left their thoughts hanging up on fluorescent post-its:
"In the 1950s it was my job in the winter to light the fire in the dining room so I could do my homework. The room took ages to warm up! The bath was so cold in winter it gave you goose bumps to touch it." [Reg] "I like the pictures and the kichen because there very old and I like learning about history" [from Shabela]
If you've planned ahead the staff will allow you inside the Study Room to delve deeper into the museum's collection. Or you could search it from home via the special online search engine. I mean, who could resist exploring The Crown Wallpaper collection, consisting of 5000 wallpaper samples and pattern books from the 50s and 60s? Beats a room full of tedious Celtic rock fragments any day.
Upstairs there's one more gallery, fitted out to house special temporary exhibitions. And between now and November that exhibition is a bit of a winner. The Shell Guides: Surrealism, Modernism, Tourism is an eight-cabinet celebration of an extraordinary series of very ordinary travel books. The Shell Guides were founded in 1935 by Sir John Betjeman, then writing for the Architectural Review. He foresaw the need for newly-mobile middle class England to get behind the wheel of their newly purchased motor cars and to start exploring the country's cultural hinterland. The series kicked off with his adopted homeland, Cornwall, then spent the next 50 years slowly rambling around the UK from county to county. Each guide presented an off-beat collection of discourse and photography, concentrating on buildings, myth and landscape rather than historical fact. Within this framework a variety of guest editors were given free rein to interpret the guidebook brief as they saw fit, producing an eclectic set of volumes linked only by the sponsor's name.
"The Guides managed to appear conventional and mainstream while in fact preserving a subversive and challenging view of Britain. Only the words 'guidebook' and 'Shell' enabled the editors to hide this fact from the public"
For an exhibition which is essentially a room full of printed pages and book covers, it's really very interesting. There are tantalising glimpses of gazetteers and footnotes, as well as black and white illustrations and associated ephemera. Take a seat on the comfy sofa at the far end of the gallery and you can enjoy a series of related videos, including a 60s girl about town filling up her tank with pre-trip petrol, and Sir John's dainty observations on the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Even the jaunty signature music manages to perfectly evoke the timeless optimism of these unique travelling companions. And by the time you reach the cabinet where all 36 guides are proudly displayed, you'll want to smash the glass and take the lot home. Keep watching eBay, they're bound to appear eventually. by tube: Cockfostersby bus: 298, 299, 307
It was just a routine blood test, so I was told. A smiling nurse rammed a needle into my arm, then packed off three vials of the red stuff to the local hospital for analysis. Lots and lots and lots of tests, from thyroid to glucose via potassium, were all whisked through the lab in record quick time. The next communication stage, however, took rather longer. Eventually I received my second class letter (four days to travel quarter of a mile, but that's E3 mail for you) inviting me along to the surgery to "discuss the results". Hmmm. And so I wandered along to meet my doctor on Monday, wondering what might not be quite so routine after all.
And everything was fine, absolutely fine, bar one small cluster of results which had tripped the computer's automatic trigger. Cholesterol - HI. Damn. My 5.5mmol/l may have been precisely the same as that of the average British male, but medical science considers anything above 5.0 to be too high. Damn. And especially for me, in conjunction with recent occasional outpatients visits, 5.5 is definitely above acceptable tolerance levels. Damn. "But look," I said, "at least one of my cholesterol tests came out really low." Alas, that was my 'good cholesterol' (which turns out be a real concept, and not a devious marketing strategy thought up by fish salesmen). So, all in all, not great.
My doctor looked at me with that kindly expression which means "I've just had to tell you something that'll change your life, and tonight I'm going home to burger and chips". And then he reached over to the top drawer of his filing cabinet and pulled out a photocopied sheet with a grid of foodstuffs on it. I recognised it immediately. My mum was given something remarkably similar 30 years ago. I remember she brought it home, stuck it up in the kitchen and then never quite ate the same food as the rest of the family forever afterwards. I then wished I hadn't remembered that.
I was disappointed to notice that the sheet I'd been given was sponsored by Flora margarine. "Ah, yes, sorry", said my doctor, "do try to ignore that." It turned out that he'd been good and photocopied the sheet so that the grid didn't have a giant advert for tubs of polyunsaturates on the reverse. But it still struck me as pretty poor that this crucial turning point in my life was being exploited by greedy Unilever marketeers. Can the NHS not afford its own unbiased information booklet on a condition which must affect millions of patients in this country? Seemingly not. Well yah booh sucks to you Mr Flora and your poxy margarine, because I never spread anything yellow and fatty on my bread anyway.
My doctor and I had a long and intelligent conversation about the causes and implications of my diagnosis, which was reassuring. We specifically discussed chocolate (not surprisingly, not recommended). I agreed that I'd have a go at adjusting (nay, transforming) my diet in an attempt to get my cholesterol down to well-below average levels. And he asked me to come back and have another blood test in a couple of months to see whether my restraint has had any effect. If not, mine might be another life thrown to the mercy of the 'miracle' statintablets. We shall see. In the meantime, I appear to have 18 leftover Creme Eggs sitting in my kitchen, all suddenly past their eat-by date. Anybody want to swap them for eight weeks' supply of oily fish?
I love Creme Eggs. I love their rarity, bestowed upon the world for a short season of calorific abundance. I love their bright shiny wrappers, gleaming purple and yellow and red. I love their big round chocolatiness, all firm and tempting to the touch. And I love their sweet interior, with swirling creamy fondant and gooey sugar yolk.
I love Creme Eggs. When New Year comes round I always nip down to the supermarket and buy myself a couple of dozen. One of the two multipacks gets ripped open straight away. I peel off a single wrapper, dive in and savour the new season taste. Then I wait a while, usually about a week, before daring to enjoy another. I always treat my stash with due luxurious reverence. The first box usually lasts me until Easter, and then I have 12 more eggs to ration through the long summer months. They're never quite the same after their sell-by-date, not even straight out of the fridge, but they still taste great eaten "rare" in out-of-season November.
I love Creme Eggs. I love the syrupy stickiness as I peel off the foil. Can I unfurl the chocolatey contents without ripping the wrapper, or will I be thwarted as the coating tears into tiny fragile fragments? If the paper's still in one piece then I try to fold it back around the base of the egg to give me something to hold onto, then bite softly into the brown fudgy top. Just the top half off the egg to start with, never everything all in one go. I relish the sickly taste of the carbohydrates on my tongue, then swoosh the liquefying contents around the inside of my mouth before gulping them down my welcoming throat. I always intend to eat my egg slowly but I have minimal restraint, and the second half usually follows pretty soon afterwards. Gobble, swallow, gone.
I love Creme Eggs. I love the sense of wicked satisfaction after I've devoured one. I love scrunching up the wrapper into a tiny ball of foil and seeing how small I can squash it before throwing it deftly into a bin. I love the sweet smell that lingers on my fingers for up to an hour afterwards - a perfumed reminder of guilty pleasures past. And yes, I know these chocolate confections are nothing more than an unholy cocktail of vegetable fats, sugar, emulsifiers, unskimmed milk, cocoa solids, glucose syrup and artificial flavourings, but I love Creme Eggs all the same.
My doctor told me yesterday that I probably shouldn't ever eat another one.
I've had better Mondays.
Bus 43: London Bridge - Friern Barnet Location: London north Length of journey: 9 miles, 70 minutes
Last year I rode the 42 to Dulwich. So this year, for my birthday, I thought I'd ride the 43 to Barnet. I wondered if, perhaps, its lengthy journey to the north London suburbs would provide a metaphor for life. And, you know what, maybe it does.
Life kicks off with a long wait: The 43 must have the scariest bus queue in London. Fifty metres of pavement adjacent to bus stop C have been marked out for a narrow doublebacked queue, with painted lanes arrowed up and down and back up again, as if this were some over-popular Disneyland attraction. Every weekday morning hundreds of Kentish commuters pour out of London Bridge station and wait here patiently, politely, for their cross-river transport to the City. But at the weekend getting aboard was rather easier. There were only four of us waiting, and we ignored the arrows on the ground altogether.
Life can get lonely: The City of London is an unnervingly quiet place on a Saturday afternoon. The financiers stay at home, the shops are firmly closed, and crews of workmen take the opportunity to lug giant cranes up medieval lanes to shift the skyline while nobody's looking. And so we sped through EC2 while absolutely nobody whatsoever boarded our bus, not until we passed Moorgate's rampant griffin and entered downtown Islington. And even then not one soul dared to climb the stairs to join me on the top deck. The girl with the guitar; the pair of mums with bag-filled pushchair; the lady jabbering in a foreign language consisting entirely of vowels; the screaming kid emitting "I'm being kidnapped" yelps - they all crammed in downstairs and left me sitting in peace above their heads. I expected my solitude to end in Upper Street, packed with trendy trinket shoppers, but almost everybody lined up at its chain of bus stops turned out to be waiting for other services to take them somewhere rather nicer instead.
Life begins at Highbury: Well, Highbury Corner at least. The long trek up the Holloway Road, past the off licences and chicken cottages, was where the 43's journey finally got busier. I listened in on the witterings of my fellow passengers. "If I wasn't going to the estate agent I'd definitely be going to your house to see the mannequins." I never did get to the bottom of that mystery. "I'm not five Daddy, I'm five and a half. How old are you, are you 43?" Honest, the flaxen-haired angel sat behind me really asked that, and Daddy really was. "Goodbye darling, hugs and kisses, and love to Jemima." Hmm, leafy Tufnell Park ahead.
Life is an uphill struggle: Virtually the whole of the 43's journey from the Thames to the suburbs was slowly, relentlessly, uphill. Onward we crawled, up the A1, through ringroad-scarred Archway, beneath Suicide Bridge, and ascending the organic slopes of Highgate. No burger'n'kebab joints were evident here - the residents appeared to dine out in cantinas and brunch daily on Eggs Benedict. The bus then queued behind a traffic jam of Ocado vans before turning right, past Peter Sellers' cottage and woodland daffodils, to the giddy heights of Muswell Hill. Here in this highbrow middle-class enclave, looking down across an ocean of lesser rooftops, our journey peaked. Very tasteful, very much like a Home Counties market town. Along the Broadway I spotted several proper independent shops, and the odd boutique, and even a pub discreetly tucked inside a huge Victorian church. Blue-rinsed ladies lined up to board the bus with their trolley of M&S comestibles to ride the few stops home.
Life gets you down: And finally back down into the valley, past the first bog standard suburban streets of the entire journey. On and on, across the streaming North Circular and out into unexplored ColneyHatch. The penultimate passenger alighted at the old Friern Barnet Town Hall, now converted into luxury apartmentettes. And only I stayed on until the occasionally-open library, where this bus terminates. At this lonely outpost the driver had only a man with a clipboard for company, and a tiny lockable portakabin for officially sanctioned bladder-emptying. It was a very different spot to go-ahead London Bridge, three score minutes and ten ago.
Life ends up in hospital: But blimey, what was that enormous building just up the road? I mean, like, truly enormous (in terms of length rather than height, that is). Look, a 500m-long residential block with central dome and various perpendicular wings, looking every inch a college or important administrative bastion. Except no, this grand Italianate building was once the largest mental hospital in London. Forget Bedlam, this was the pinnacle of Victorian lunatic provision, tucked away on the leafy outskirts of town where everybody could forget about it. ColneyHatchAsylum boasted the longest corridor in Britain, perfect for wheeling patients down, and up to 3500 inmates were crammed and strait-jacketed inside. As its infamy spread, so Londoners started using the words "Colney Hatch" as a term of abuse, and pretty soon the local station had to change its name to "New Southgate" to avoid any unwanted stigma. It's not a mental hospital any more, of course, it's been reborn as the rather exclusive Princess Park Manor development. There's only one vehicular entrance, guarded by fearsome security guards who check off every visitor against an approved list. The rest of the perimeter is securely fenced, no longer to lock the inmates inside but to keep undesirable elements out. Now jogging bankers exercise on the landscaped lawns, and a gated elite live out their days in rooms which were once anything but desirable. But I'm not convinced many of them ever commute aboard the 43 to the City - they'd have to be insane to sit on a bus for that long.
Silver discs(March 1983)
A one-off clickable look back at the top singles of 25 years ago
The Top 10 singles the day before I turned 18 (8th March 1983) 1) (↑1) Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart: Topping the charts in the week I turned adult was this classic histrionic epic from a raspy-throated Welsh singer. Bonnie's career had been up and down almost as much as her voice, but this Meatloaf-esque song sealed her fame. The video appeared to show her cavorting round a windswept boys' boarding school, but I could never quite be sure because I only ever saw the video once. Pre-YouTube, that is. Total Eclipse is still performed wherever a karaoke machine is installed, and was the first ever song by a Welsh artist to top the American singles chart. "Every now and then I get a little bit terrified but then I see the look in your eyes, every now and then I fall apart" 2) (↓1) Michael Jackson - Billie Jean: Before this single was released, MJ was just another talented jumped-up former child star with a frizzy grin. And then here he was singing about disputed parentage, and moonwalking round a pavement of flashing lights, and looking sleek and just a little bit feral, and the nation suddenly loved him. Bilie Jean elevated young Michael to invigorated superstardom, and a series of hit singles off the mega-selling Thriller album sealed his fate. Nutter, obviously, but a damned talented nutter. "Billie Jean is not my lover, she's just a girl who claims that I am the one, but the kid is not my son" 3) (↑2) Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams (are made of this): Blimey, it was a good week wasn't it? Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, no longer Tourists, launched their Top 3 career with this instantly arresting song. Its driving beat was utterly unlike anything else around at the time, and Annie's visual image didn't hurt either - all flame-haired red crop and piercing stare. The Queen and King of musical self-reinvention remain the UK's most successful ever female/male duo. "Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree? I travel the world and the seven seas, everybody's looking for something" 4) (↑8) Forrest - Rock The Boat: Formerly a Billboard #1 by the Hues Corporation, this was a typical mid-80s synthy cover version performed by Dutch singer Forrest Thomas. Sinitta appeared in the video, which I think tells you all you need to know. "Ever since our voyage of love began, your touch has thrilled me like the rush of the wind" 5) (↓1) Toto - Africa: Sometimes American rock bands get it spot on. Twinkly keyboards and understated maracas lay beneath this singalong African anthem, still a staple of cosy MOR radio to this day. And yes, they really did get away with rhyming "company" with "Serengeti". "She's coming in 12:30 flight, the moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation" 6) (↓3) Kajagoogoo - Too Shy: How Eighties is this? A bunch of make-upped blokes with scary haircuts and a pretentious name, and a lead singer with an even scarier haircut living life as an anagram. I guess that's what living in Leighton Buzzard did to you. Too shy shy - still catchier than a barbed wire fence. "Something's wrong, you're not naive, you must must be strong" 7) (↑14) Bananarama - Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye) : Another top cover version, sung in one-part harmony, from the three girls nextdoor. You could easily imagine bumping into Siobhan, Keren and Sara on the pavement outside Top Shop, or waitressing at a Golden Egg restaurant, or appearing on Blockbusters with Bob Holness and a gonk. And hurrah for that. "He'll never love you the way that I love you, cos if he did, oh no, he wouldn't make you cry" 8) (→) Madness - Tomorrow's Just Another Day: Just another Madness record, from just past their peak, and just a little more downbeat than usual. "I need a moment to reflect on the friendships I have wrecked" 9) (→) Thompson Twins - Love On Your Side: At long last, after years of trying, the British public finally caught up with Tom, Joe and Alannah. With their former tribal rhythms replaced by a more commercial mainstream sound, two years of of well-deserved fame followed. I went to see them perform at the Oxford Apollo, at my very first gig, as an impressionable 18 year old. Hmm, they looked a lot smaller in public than on the telly, but maybe that's because I was jiggling away at the back of the balcony. And blimey, they could actually sing and play at the same time. Revelation. "I hear you laughing in some other room and it makes me feel locked out" 10) (↓4) Musical Youth - Never Gonna Give You Up: Cheery reggae beats from Birmingham's underage finest. Not really in the same league as Pass The Dutchie, but who could possibly argue with a band whose lead singer was called Dennis? "You take sugar and I have none, you take your coffee black and I have mine white"
20 other hits from 25 years ago: Communication (Spandau Ballet), Tunnel of Love (Funboy Three), She Means Nothing To Me (Phil Everly & Cliff Richard), Get The Balance Right (Depeche Mode), Change (Tears For Fears), Hey Little Girl (Icehouse), High Life (Modern Romance), Up Where We Belong (Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes), Genetic Engineering (OMD), Waves (Blancmange), Rip It Up (Orange Juice), Wham Rap (Wham), Shiny Shiny (Haysi Fantayzee), Sign Of The Times (Belle Stars), Drop The Pilot (Joan Armatrading), Oh Diane (Fleetwood Mac), Down Under (Men At Work), Christian (China Crisis), Fields of Fire (Big Country), Last Night A DJ Saved My Life (Indeep) ...which hit's your favourite?
He writes oblique intricate prose about London. He's an award-winning author with a shelf ofbooks to his name. He lives in Hackney, sort of Hoxton-ish. He's Iain Sinclair. And last night he was giving a talk, for free, at the Museum in Docklands. They do this sort of thing in arty venues across East London on the First Thursday of every month, you know. And Iain's talk was also a special event on the first day of the East Festival, which is casting its cultural shadow across the next five days in this part of the world. So I went along to feast on words.
Around 100 people turned up to hear Iain's take on East London. We were treated to an hour of chat, both from Mr S and from Sara Wajid of Untold London (a diversely-historical London website). She introduced him as a chronicler of the disappeared for whom "location is his muse". I liked that line. And I liked Iain. He spoke as he writes, in meandering anecdotes, not sticking to any linear narrative but most entertaining all the same.
Iain's had many jobs in his time, from a cellar worker at the family-run Truman Brewery to a behind the scenes dogsbody at the Raymond Revue Bar. His favourite job, however, involved several years spent mowing the grass in various Hawksmoorchurchyards. A good run around on the lawnmower, the chance to eye up the local community, and long lunch breaks sat reminiscing with old boys who remembered the way the East End used to be. Where once was a grand riverside landscape dotted with dominant steeples, now the invasive "Not London" towers of Docklands overshadow all.
Although Iain's well known as a psychogeographer, it's not a term he feels particularly comfortable with. Psychogeography is just another niche concept hijacked by the mainstream, made popular by repetition and dilution, so he told us. But he's definitely a fan of going places to discover things, as exhibited by his circumnavigation of the M25 for London Orbital. "A quest is the excuse for a journey". I liked that line too, because it's a concept I'm frequently guilty of myself.
Iain told us several stories, including that of bricked-off Rodinsky's Room at 19 Princelet Street, and how the displaced inhabitant ended his life in an asylum. Iain recalled interlinked tales from his latest anthology London: City of Disappearances (which he signed for grateful punters downstairs afterwards). And he read us an extract from his nearly-published book based around his home borough - Hackney: A Rose-Red Empire. The day the London Fields Lido reopened, so we heard, its swishing electronic doors were mobbed by canine invaders. No Sinclair story is ever ordinary.
By the end of the hour, and a brief Q&A session, we knew precisely what Iain thought of Olympic developments in the Lea Valley. A black hole erasing undocumented marginal lands, no less, now brutally hidden behind an unsettling blue wall. And we could probably have listened to him for another hour, had the Museum not been quite so keen to cajole us out of the theatre and down towards the exit. I avoided the book signing and headed back out to the artificial quaysides of business-blasted West India Dock. From the wine bars came the merry braying of bankers, gulping bubbly where labourers once ate their cheese and pickle sandwiches. He makes you look at things differently, does Iain. But I think I'm still more comfortable listening to him than reading him.
A message to the staff at the Museum in Docklands. If your evening talk is due to start at 7:30, don't announce the time as 7pm on your website. Lovely though it was to listen to the London Gay Men's Chorus singing three part harmony in the foyer while strolling around the labyrinth of nigh-empty galleries, I'd really rather have spent the extra half-hour at home.
There are two kinds of people in this world - those who take offence and those who don't.
Some people, it seems, can be offended by almost everything. "Why are you looking at me like that?" "You realise your last comment was inherently racist, don't you?" "How dare the Government spend my taxes on that!" These people go around finding fault in everything, and then assuming it was all deliberately aimed at them. "Why don't you look where you're going?" "I have never been so insulted..." "Turn that bloody music off!"
Sometimes taking offence is about justice. Offended people often feel personally wronged by the slightest incident, and then insist on expressing their opinions and delivering a damning verdict. "You know you're not allowed to put your feet on the seat, don't you?" "How dare you travel by plane, you're killing the planet." "It's barbaric, and it deserves the death penalty!" A lot of tabloid journalists (and tedious bloggers) function at this level, without ever putting forward a positive idea of their own. They devote their output to wagging an accusatory finger and pandering to petty prejudices. "Britney's night of shame!" "Sign our anti-paedo petition now!" "Hanging's too good for them!"
Sometimes taking offence is about self-righteousness. Offended people often imagine they lead nigh-perfect lives, and then abuse anybody else who doesn't measure up to their high standards. "Don't be so bloody patronising!" "I can't believe anyone disagrees with my views on Iraq." "Tell the chef I'm never eating here again!" A lot of politicians (and political commentators) function at this level, especially when in opposition. They spend their lives taking offence on ideological grounds and picking holes in others' activities, without ever stopping to reflect on their own inadequacies. "How can anybody believe that?" "But we've caught you doing something that's against parliamentary rules!" "Resign, resign!"
I'm not somebody who takes offence. If a passer-by steps on my toe in the street, I don't assume they did it deliberately. If a colleague takes the mickey out of me at work, I don't punch them in the mouth. If somebody ignores me at a party, I don't go off and sulk in the corner. If I'm speaking with incompetent call centre staff over the phone, I don't yell back at them. If somebody writes what I believe to be an ideologically unsound blogpost, I don't waste my time ranting at length in their comments box. If somebody drops a chocolate wrapper on my doorstep, I don't stab them to death. I believe in tolerance and giving people the benefit of the doubt. And my life is much happier as a result.
I'm not alone. There are a lot of us around, those who don't take offence, but alas there are still far too many who do. If only these offended folk could learn to view the world a little more objectively, and to interact with others more calmly and rationally. Where appropriate, of course. It's always right to stand up to bullying and crime and nuisance and verbal abuse where they exist, but there's no need to imagine the worst in everything and to get stressed and angry about it. Stop jumping to conclusions. Get yourself a sense of humour. Learn to disagree without seething. And smile. Life may be full of annoying insensitive people, but life's too short.
Thanks for voting yesterday in my readership survey - nearly 600 of you were kind enough to take part! Now I know how my readership has changed over the last fouryears, and also how very similar it is too. According to the 2008 survey results, the typical diamond geezer reader is a straight-but-coupled 30-something male blog-reader from the London area (just like the results suggested two years ago). If anyone out there reckons they could be Mr Average, please stake your claim in the comments box. And here are those results in a little more detail.
Male or female?
male (407)
72%
female (162)
28%
Hmmm, that's more than two male readers to every female, a proportion which has remained exactly the same over the last two years. Maybe cyberworld is still full of blokes, or maybe I'm still not posting enough kittens.
Age
<20 (21)
4%
20s (138)
24%
30s (188)
33%
40s (109)
19%
50s (83)
14%
60+ (38)
7%
Just over half of my readers are aged between 20 and 40, with rather more 30- than 20-somethings. Since 2004 the profile of my readership has aged slightly, with a definite increase in 50-somethings stopping by. But the yoof market still appear to be off elsewhere, babbling on Bebo or faffing around on Facebook (or just txting with da homies kno wotya mean innit like).
Where do you live? (pick one)
London (281)
49%
England (149)
26%
UK (26)
4%
Europe (31)
5%
World (91)
16%
I reckon that about half of the posts on this blog are about London, which may explain why about half of my readers are Londoners. That's a stonkingly high proportion, and one that's been rising steadily over the years (up from one-third in 2004). Don't worry, there's still a lot of non-London stuff on my blog too, which is probably why my nationwide and worldwide readers still stick around. But I bet that if I still lived in Ipswich, most of you wouldn't bother coming back.
A bit more about you
straight, single (185)
32%
straight, coupled (317)
56%
gay, single (37)
6%
gay, coupled (31)
5%
These are nigh exactly the same proportions as two years ago. Do these oh-so consistent results allow us to extrapolate, Kinsey-style, that just under 90% of the world's population is straight? And should I take heart from the fact that nearly 40% of you are still single?
Do you have your own blog?
yes (225)
39%
no (347)
61%
Hmmm, this vote's changed considerably over the years. Back in 2004 more than half of you were bloggers, and now that figure is less than 40%. Is this because fewer people are blogging, or is it because those people who used to blog have given up? Or is it merely because blogging is no longer a secret niche activity overlooked by the mainstream? Whatever, there are still 225 bloggers reading this blog - so my deepest apologies if I don't have time to read all of yours.
How often do you read diamond geezer?
daily (358)
62%
often (166)
29%
occasionally (46)
8%
first visit (8)
1%
I blame RSS. Nearly two-thirds of you now claim to come back every day, whereas it used to be only a half. That's comforting, because I do try very hard to post something every day for you to read. Meanwhile the proportion of readers visiting only occasionally has plummeted - it's all or nothing these days. And a special hello to the eight of you who were making your very first visit yesterday (assuming you ever come back again, that is).
When was your first visit to diamond geezer?
2002/03 (64)
11%
2004/05 (145)
25%
2006 (136)
24%
2007 (160)
28%
2008 (72)
12%
And finally, a tribute to the longevity of blog readers. About one in ten of you claim to have been reading since the early days, with more and more of you joining in as the years have passed. But I'm surprised to see that less than half of you were around the last time I ran this survey. There's a lot of monthly archives for you lot to catch up on, you know. Thanks to you all for sticking around, however long it's been. And I wonder how different things will look by the first week of 2010...
In London's wet city,
Blimey, that was quick. Just eight months ago an undamaged collection of factories and warehouses stood on the Olympic stadium site. And now they don't. The entire area has been cleared, erased, flattened and lowered to create an arena-sized bowl, and the transformation is amazing. I should know, I've been back to watch the changes month by month, and my last visit made me gasp. OK, I'm easily impressed, but it's already possible to visualise precisely where the 2012 centrepiece will take shape. And still the scuttly diggers swarm up and down what used to be Marshgate Lane, repeatedly rearranging the earth until Lea Valley reality is appropriately realigned. It won't be long now.
One of the best jobs in London is surely that of the Blue Badge Guide. These 500-or-so highly trained professionals spend their days taking
And then in the afternoon a completely different walk, this time around the back streets of the East End. The title of the tour was 'Great British Villains', on which Ian our guide promised to take us to the notorious haunts of the Kray brothers. This time just over 50 people turned up - still more than enough to be a handful. We started outside the Blind Beggar pub on the Whitechapel Road - where else? But Ian knew his Krays (as I suspect he knows pretty much everything else) and whisked us off to far less familiar spots. Up a grim sideroad beneath a stark brick railway viaduct he pointed out the pub where the Krays had been drinking immediately before (and immediately after) Ronnie shot George Cornell in the Beggar. This rather bleak-looking ex-boozer had been called The Lion, but was more widely known locally as "Widows" or "Madge's" after the 60s landlady who ran it. It's since been converted to rather seedy-looking flats, of course. And it's not somewhere I'd have noticed otherwise, nor wanted to linger given the staring eyes of the mechanics in the car-fiddling yard nextdoor.
And finally to the house at 178 Vallance Road where Ronnie and Reggie grew up, except that alas it no longer exists. A row of six smart 80s-built homes has replaced the previous terrace, so we can only imagine the cosy two-up two-down where the twins cosseted their mother and stashed their weapons. Ooh look, there's a special plaque outside number 178 unveiled by no less a personage than the Prince of Wales! It's nothing Kray-related though, just a housing cooperative coincidence. And then, after an appreciative flourish, Ian took his leave and wandered off.
A very happy St Patrick's Day to all my readers.
I SPY LONDON
The far northern suburbs between Barnet and Enfield are an unlikely spot for a museum. Just down the road from Cockfosters station, off the Cat Hill roundabout, amidst undulating avenues of spacious semis. No really, that university campus behind the duckpond hides an unlikely secret repository. Honest, it's not just students allowed through the entrance, this place is wide open to the infrequent public. Go on, step inside and try to follow the signs up the service road. See that curved glass roof on the front of what looks like a humanities block. That's the entrance into a tiny treasure trove of 20th century domestic design. a proper little community resource. Yes, who'd have thought?
Various visitors have left their thoughts hanging up on fluorescent post-its:
"In the 1950s it was my job in the winter to light the fire in the dining room so I could do my homework. The room took ages to warm up! The bath was so cold in winter it gave you goose bumps to touch it." [Reg]If you've planned ahead the staff will allow you inside the Study Room to delve deeper into the museum's collection. Or you could search it from home via the special online search engine. I mean, who could resist exploring The Crown Wallpaper collection, consisting of 5000 wallpaper samples and pattern books from the 50s and 60s? Beats a room full of tedious Celtic rock fragments any day.Upstairs there's one more gallery, fitted out to house special temporary exhibitions. And between now and November that exhibition is a bit of a winner. The Shell Guides: Surrealism, Modernism, Tourism is an eight-cabinet celebration of an extraordinary series of very ordinary travel books. The Shell Guides were founded in 1935 by Sir John Betjeman, then writing for the Architectural Review. He foresaw the need for newly-mobile middle class England to get behind the wheel of their newly purchased motor cars and to start exploring the country's cultural hinterland. The series kicked off with his adopted homeland, Cornwall, then spent the next 50 years slowly rambling around the UK from county to county. Each guide presented an off-beat collection of discourse and photography, concentrating on buildings, myth and landscape rather than historical fact. Within this framework a variety of guest editors were given free rein to interpret the guidebook brief as they saw fit, producing an eclectic set of volumes linked only by the sponsor's name.
"The Guides managed to appear conventional and mainstream while in fact preserving a subversive and challenging view of Britain. Only the words 'guidebook' and 'Shell' enabled the editors to hide this fact from the public"For an exhibition which is essentially a room full of printed pages and book covers, it's really very interesting. There are tantalising glimpses of gazetteers and footnotes, as well as black and white illustrations and associated ephemera. Take a seat on the comfy sofa at the far end of the gallery and you can enjoy a series of related videos, including a 60s girl about town filling up her tank with pre-trip petrol, and Sir John's dainty observations on the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Even the jaunty signature music manages to perfectly evoke the timeless optimism of these unique travelling companions. And by the time you reach the cabinet where all 36 guides are proudly displayed, you'll want to smash the glass and take the lot home. Keep watching eBay, they're bound to appear eventually.I love Creme Eggs. I love their rarity, bestowed upon the world for a short season of calorific abundance. I love their bright shiny wrappers, gleaming purple and yellow and red. I love their big round chocolatiness, all firm and tempting to the touch. And I love their sweet interior, with swirling creamy fondant and gooey sugar yolk.
I love Creme Eggs. I love the syrupy stickiness as I peel off the foil. Can I unfurl the chocolatey contents without ripping the wrapper, or will I be thwarted as the coating tears into tiny fragile fragments? If the paper's still in one piece then I try to fold it back around the base of the egg to give me something to hold onto, then bite softly into the brown fudgy top. Just the top half off the egg to start with, never everything all in one go. I relish the sickly taste of the carbohydrates on my tongue, then swoosh the liquefying contents around the inside of my mouth before gulping them down my welcoming throat. I always intend to eat my egg slowly but I have minimal restraint, and the second half usually follows pretty soon afterwards. Gobble, swallow, gone.
Bus 43: London Bridge - Friern Barnet
Life kicks off with a long wait: The 43 must have the scariest bus queue in London. Fifty metres of pavement adjacent to bus stop C have been marked out for a narrow doublebacked queue, with painted lanes arrowed up and down and back up again, as if this were some over-popular Disneyland attraction. Every weekday morning hundreds of Kentish commuters pour out of London Bridge station and wait here patiently, politely, for their cross-river transport to the City. But at the weekend getting aboard was rather easier. There were only four of us waiting, and we ignored the arrows on the ground altogether.
Life is an uphill struggle: Virtually the whole of the 43's journey from the Thames to the suburbs was slowly, relentlessly, uphill. Onward we crawled, up the A1, through ringroad-scarred Archway, beneath Suicide Bridge, and ascending the organic slopes of Highgate. No burger'n'kebab joints were evident here - the residents appeared to dine out in cantinas and brunch daily on Eggs Benedict. The bus then queued behind a traffic jam of Ocado vans before turning right, past Peter Sellers' cottage and woodland daffodils, to the giddy heights of Muswell Hill. Here in this highbrow middle-class enclave, looking down across an ocean of lesser rooftops, our journey peaked. Very tasteful, very much like a Home Counties market town. Along the Broadway I spotted several proper independent shops, and the odd boutique, and even a pub discreetly tucked inside a huge Victorian church. Blue-rinsed ladies lined up to board the bus with their trolley of M&S comestibles to ride the few stops home.
Birthday musings
Silver discs (March 1983)
1) (↑1) Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart: Topping the charts in the week I turned adult was this classic histrionic epic from a raspy-throated Welsh singer. Bonnie's career had been up and down almost as much as her voice, but this Meatloaf-esque song sealed her fame. The video appeared to show her cavorting round a windswept boys' boarding school, but I could never quite be sure because I only ever saw the video once. Pre-YouTube, that is. Total Eclipse is still performed wherever a karaoke machine is installed, and was the first ever song by a Welsh artist to top the American singles chart.
I SPY LONDON
I love 
