September 28th 2004 - October 3rd 2004
Sunday Cheney
Saturday Hearty
Friday Henmania
Thursday Peace news
Wednesday Baig in a bag
Tuesday Names
Monday Cross6
Sunday 3rd October 2004
Dick Cheney appeared onstage like a morbid family retainer. He knows where the bodies are buried; he pipes once again for the enemies of peace and sings for the greatest supper in the world. Cheney's speaking style relies on one fact followed by six lies: 'President Bush delivered the greatest tax reduction in a generation, and the results are clear to see. Businesses are creating jobs. People are returning to work. Mortgage rates are low, and home ownership in this country is at an all-time high. The Bush tax cuts are working.' One truth, six lies.
- Andrew O'Hagan at the Republican National Convention, as carried in the London Review of Books
Saturday 2nd October 2004
On Sky on Thursday night, apparently, as the credits for some programme or other rolled, the continuity announcer intoned: "Coming up next, a heart scare for the Prime Minister".
Those who live by dumbing-down shall die by dumbing-down, hopefully.
Friday 1st October 2004
A psychopath who claimed to have heard the voices of the tennis star Tim Henman and footballer Ryan Giggs when he murdered a gay trainee rabbi was jailed for life yesterday.
Thursday 30th September 2004
The world sleeps easier: Liechtenstein signs the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.
Wednesday 29th September 2004
Some things you just can't make up: The Sun have installed a new columnist, Anila Baig, a Muslim billed as "Our Woman in a Headscarf".
Surely, I'm dreaming. But no. It's a subject of discussion on the National Front website. So it must be true.
Tuesday 28th September 2004
Naming names
Ashley Crossley
- named like that, was never going to grow up straight
Didier Drogba
- named after a cough sweet?
Bradley Wiggins
- unlikely name for a super-hero, must be his alter ego
Bishop Kwaku Frimpong-Manson
- speaking up for multiculturalism, with a vengeance
Ingeborga Dapkunaite
- a name that will always go above the title, if only because it's too long to fit beneath
Monday 27th September 2004
Having spent an hour or so with the charisma knob turned up to 11, smiling, flirting, drinking, staring at attractive men with a look that could curdle milk, when they call last orders at the Swan you sigh, a little softly, and decide to start heading home. Right?
Wrong, at least in my case.
Two or three pints is usually more than enough to unleash my internal pervert-optimist, the ravening beast within that knows, just knows, that he (and he, and he, and he) really wanted me but was simply too delightfully shy to say so in front of all those other people.
Plus, there are codas to be played out, enigmatic relationships you've been observing whose true nature will only become apparent when the protagonists leave the pub.
Will those two, who've been snogging the face off each other for the last half hour, actually commit to sharing a minicab? (There's a cab office immediately opposite the Swan.) Does the one in the leathers actually own a motorbike, or will he stand and wait for the night bus? (There's a bus-stop outside, too.) Will that one, the one you've had your eye on all evening, finally look you in the eye before casually sauntering into the sauna? (Chariots Health Spa is just a few yards further past the bus stop.)
Madness I know, but it seems such a shame to leave these questions unresolved: the final act of the evening is always played out on the pavement.
And, indeed, the outcome isn't always tragedy. One night several months ago, a good-looking guy came out and sat in his car, right in front of where I was pretending to wait at the bus stop. Looks were exchanged. I wandered off round the corner. He drove round the corner. He wound down his window, leant over, and said, "What direction you headed in, mate?" I replied (to my enduring amazement), "Back to yours, hopefully." And so it proved.
Hence the initial wobble in the map of my homeward progress, showing me turning right, not left, out of the White Swan's doors.
Sooner or later though, as the tide of alcohol wanes, I pull myself together, settle my bag upon my back, and return the way I came, past the now-shuttered bulk of the pub and the last few desperate men stood chatting on the forecourt, and left down Butcher's Row (that really is its name).
The Docklands Light Railway runs directly overhead, but the last tube ran several hours ago. Stunners, of which I've written before, is housed in the 1930s factory turned studio complex on the corner, and it's not entirely impossible that I will be drunk enough to waste the rest of the night in there, catching the first bus home from the stop that stands in front of the substantial brick-built building, possibly an ex-rectory, bedded in on the other side of the road.
A few more yards due south of that, hard by the western approach to the Limehouse Link, there's a little park, perhaps an ex-churchyard to go with the ex-rectory. All things considered, that shrouded patch of green should be really cruisy at this time of night - but it's not, trust me.
So mostly I just cross the road and start heading west, beneath the giant poster site with its constantly changing exhortation, past the strange little landscape feature through whose rosemary bushes I often run my hand, and onto Cable Street...
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