May 2nd - May 8th 2005
Sunday U Eff O
Saturday Hamburg
Friday Ballot I got
Thursday Hello Sunshine
Wednesday Noise annoys
Tuesday Pedants'R'We
Monday Cross8
Sunday 8th May 2005
Creative dyslexia: Aliens try to rescue Blair
Saturday 7th May 2005
Hamburg, Spring 1994
Friday 6th May 2005
So how was it for you? Were you up for Stephen Twigg?
There was some danger that I'd be editing last night, but that passed over, so I confess that most of the election happened without me. (I particularly regret not seeing the look on Kilroy-Silk's shiny face when he realised he'd only narrowly missed losing his deposit.)
Sadly, I missed my new MP, the volcanic George Galloway and his Paxman moment. (Paxman - an unsuitable etymology if ever I heard one.)
But I was privileged to see Paxo interacting with fatty Soames, an exchange that went something like this:
F: ...result we Conservatives can be proud of.
P: Proud? Mrs Thatcher doesn't think so. Earlier the evening she said the results were very disappointing.
F: Well, Mrs Thatcher is in Venice at the moment, so I don't know how up to date she is with...
P: She's not in Venice! She's in London! She's on a boat on the Thames!
F: Well. There you are, from one ancient city to another. But anyway...
But anyway, what now for the Tories?
If they have any sense, they'll take this opportunity to fundamentally revise their political philosophy, building on their basic anti-statist leanings to create a wholly new Libertarian platform (new to Britain at least) which makes its first point d'appui the need to get government off the back of the people.
Decriminalise drugs, demolish the NHS, abolish immigration controls, introduce flat tax, and encourage the people to sort things out for themselves via a network of internet-based opinion fora.
Even better, let them elect Alan Duncan as their leader, opening the way to our first gay Prime Minister.
As a proto-anarchist (aka ageing hippy), I'd have to seriously consider voting for something as radical as that - if only to introduce some overdue excitement into British politics.
Thursday 5th May 2005
It surely won't surprise you to learn that Will & Grace is not the only hunter-gathering I've been diligently pursuing via the usual unusual channels.
My favourite screen-credit to date?
Titan exclusive: Billy Wild as Inmate Sunshine
Wednesday 4th May 2005
To: EnvHealth.EnvProtection@towerhamlets.gov.uk
hello,
I'm a leaseholder on the Wapping Estate, at NN Xxxx House, and the levels of noise nuisance lately are rapidly turning me (prematurely!) into a Grumpy Old Man.
Most specifically, the flat above me laid down wooden flooring a year or so ago - and then installed a baby, which proceeded to drop things at regular and resounding intervals.
There was also a xylophone...
They now appear to be moving out, and I'm sitting here contemplating how to raise the matter with whoever the incoming tenants turn out to be.
In the meantime: I gather that some landlords specifically forbid the installation of wooden flooring. I don't suppose Tower Hamlets is one such landlord?
Thank you.
Tuesday 3rd May 2005
Pedants 'R' We
Oliver seemed pleased beyond measure to discover himself cited here the other week. Or, if not pleased, at least intrigued - given that he had not the faintest recollection of the conversation I claimed we had had.
(I love it when that happens: two people carefully dissecting a conversation pursued under the influence of sufficient intoxicants to warp the entire fabric of space-time.)
So he will not, I'm sure, object to my further quoting his recent email which reads, in part:
shouldn't there be a subjunctive in the Independent review of Michael Fitzgerald: '..suggests a power, if he was crossed, to turn his culprit into a pillar of salt..'
... or rather, 'if he were crossed'?
(And I may as well admit, while we're here, that I find it thrilling to get mail signed, after expurgation, as:
Love,
a devoted reader.
xx
--
Dr Oliver Simons
Lecturer in French
Merton College, Oxford OX1 4JD)
("..were he to be crossed"? Or just "when crossed", come to think of it.)
Monday 2nd May 2005
Several months ago we left our drunken pilgrim proceeding westerly at a wayward pace down Cable Street - a road that at this time of night is, nearly always, empty.
There was, I admit however, one night when, through the haze of my own intoxication, I could just perceive another figure stumbling along some fifty yards or so in front of me.
Young? Probably.
Cute? Possibly.
Drunk? Definitely.
So when I caught up with him at the corner of Brodlove Lane [sic], suspended on the railings like a discarded jacket on a doorknob, you'd expect me to stop and chat. But, then again, you're not from round here. (And nor was he, as it turned out.)
Proceeding past him with a nuanced smile (whose carefully-gradated undertones of friendliness, suspicion and lust may, I grant you, have been slightly difficult to spot under the street lighting conditions currently prevailing in E1), I walked jauntily on, favourably recalibrating my initial marks for Y, C & D as I dropped down into Elf Row [sic, again]: 60s low-rise public housing to my right, and the dour Victorian bulk of the Peacock Buildings on my left.
The nostalgia-meter usually ticks friskily upward at this stage in my journey home: despite appearances, the gloomy tarmac courtyard of the Dwellings holds fond memories.
To the left, in East Block, up a few landings and along a narrow corridor, there's the flat where I spent many a stoned hour in the company of a lanky gangle of a man that I was once in love with.
These flats are not just small, they're tiny (built for Elves?), so we had no choice but to huddle in close physical proximity - a condition, I fear, that gladded my heart considerably more than it did his.
To the right, on the far side of the courtyard, is West Block where..landings..corridor..many a stoned hour in the company of my ex. Our relationship, never robust at the best of times, was stuttering to a close at the time - though we didn't know it. And these flats are not just small....etc.
Having crossed the courtyard on a diagonal (remembering the Ripperine night when I almost fell over a Metropolitan Police 'Murder: Information wanted' sign, and the week after that when I almost skidded on the remains of memorial flowers left to rot in polythene on the inauspicious ground), I totter down three or four steps out of the estate and onto Glamis Place - a ludicrously grand name for what's little more than an alley, bounded by new-build yuppie brick on the left and the shaggy, cat-haunted community play-space on the right.
Straight ahead lies Glamis Road, the amply lit adjunct of the noisy nearby Highway, all traffic lights and speed cameras, telegrams and anger.By now my mood has usually gone all abstract and I'm often having some of my most brilliant ideas ever, the kind of concepts you always ought to write down because there's no way on God's green earth that you'll remember them when you wake up next morning.
But soft: what is that I spy - draped across the pedestrian barrier like discarded underwear on the back of someone's chair..?
......previous week
