True stories

It was only after the movie Forest Gump, and the famous saying “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get” that chocolate manufacturers starting putting menu sheets in the boxes, having been alerted to this oversight.

The term Stand-up Comedy has only existed since 1971 when experimental comic JB Wollington (know to his fans as The Wolly) first performed standing up at a gig in Bristol. He was booed off stage within three minutes but the idea caught on. Before then all comedy gigs took place with the audience standing and the comedian sitting down which made Sit-Down Comedy hugely intimidating.

Where was I?

Talking about planes. That's what I was doing. Sounds made up but it's true. Just about how great it would be to own a private jet so you could fly to London from Cornwall, rather than taking the train. Why we were actually talking about this though is beyond me now.

Then a call from across the common room and on to an entire afternoon of confusion, bewilderment. And this was for people in Cornwall so far removed from the epicentre. Yet the same reaction for people in Times Square, Beijing, Kiev, no doubt.

There were so many ridiculous things that happened that afternoon. We had to go to geography and on arriving I informed the teacher of what was taking place. He was disinterested and refused to put the television on. I urged him this was massive news, we should watch, so he relented and put it on silent. Half-way through learning about central business districts we noticed that the Pentagon had been hit too. Still nothing registered on the geography teacher.

The next day, as confusion still reigned, our English teacher scrapped his lesson plan to look at the Iraq war, and poetry inspired by it, to give us some context of maybe why the day before had happened. His understand was stark contrast to that of Mr Geography.

Strange days.

Walking past the future

Having now been moved in to my new house for, ohhh, four days, I’ve been thinking about how often I must have walked past it before, without knowing it would become my new home. Probably not a great number of times, maybe 10 at most, and, of course, on those occasions I was utterly oblivious - it was just another house. But now it’s my home.

Where else am I walking past on a daily basis that could become part of my life? Or who else? Maybe nothing and no-one, maybe something massive. It’s intriguing to think of all these people and places you walk past that, barring some tragic accident, could well become part of your life in the future – or could cause the tragic accident. But right now we’re all just walking around oblivious to the potential future(s) in store – although for some today will be that day. The job interview, the date, the car crash.

War: what is it good for?

Two things yesterday:

1) DSEi: This show is known to some as the Death Show and is not popular with those of certain moral view points. Entry was Kafkaesque, involving several queues to be placed in queues, much anger at how slow the entire process was, and even a bag search before you could go in, to the Excel Centre. Felt utterly bizarre. Once inside I saw many tanks, guns, rocket launchers, an Apache helicopter, and various Asian generals wandering around in full military regalia.

On one side of an aisle you've got weapon manufacturers or suppliers with posters and literature proclaiming their weapons can 'pierce the strongest body armour on the market!' and on the other you have body armour manufacturers and suppliers saying 'can stop the strongest weaponry on the market!' And all beneath the brightly lit, air-conditioned, Subway sandwich franchised Excel Centre. Last time I was there was to collect my marathon entry number. Very different indeed.

2) Frontline Club: Access Denied. A talk about reporting from war zones and the implications for journalists. With Richard Sambrook from the BBC, Adrian Wells from Sky News, Jean Seaton and chaired by Tom Fenton.

It was a very interesting chat, and the floor contributed a great deal too, with those in attendance ranging from Al Jazeera reporters, to the London press official for the Dalai Lama. They discussed the use of Twitter, the difficulties of getting certain stories on the news agenda when they cease to have a news currency, and the challenges of trying to get in to areas you're banned from. Wells told us that Sky News tried to access North Korea by asking to cover the North Korean karate championships (and then do some other things on the side) but were politely refused entry. Darn.

It seemed though, due to the most recurring point, that war coverage, or conflicting reporting, is impossible to cover in a way that will ever please everyone, or cover all the necessary angles. Nothing is ever two-sided and war is surely one of the hardest things to pin down as to the causes, the rights and wrongs, the outcomes and so on - almost all wars are debated hotly by historians to this day, despite years of time passing, collation of huge numbers of documents, and even access to the leaders' writings. What chance do news reporters have, often embedded with military staff who take them where they want them to go, have of getting a 'true' story out? Have they ever been able to?

Twitter and the like may give the populations a chance to present views from inside but, again, it just adds more voices that conflict, disagree, present different ideas, to a picture that is already completely confusing and impossible to view in full, objectively. It seems hard to believe war reporting will ever move to a time when 'black holes' of information don't exist, especially when authoritarian regimes like Iran, North Korea and so on, are so staunch in their position on allowing foreign news teams in.

A few people introduced themselves, when speaking from the floor, as 'news consumers'. So you watch TV?

Moving home is so sad

I moved this weekend. Not far, just a few streets really. Something about moving makes me strangely sad though. In fact it’s not the moving, it’s the unpacking. I think it’s because while unpacking you come across so many reminders of things, and most of these seem to be tinged with pathos.

The main thing seems to be finding things that have been bought for you – DVDs, shirts, books etc – that you rarely use, or have never used. Shirts that I’ve worn once, or DVDs I got for Christmas remain untouched, and somehow this just makes me feel bad, as if I’m just accumulating things that I don’t really need, that other people have bought for me with their own hard-earned money.

Not only that but there are so many other items; tickets, photos etc, that you come across as you move and unpack that remind you of times gone by, even if they were happy, and it just makes me melancholic to think of them. Something to do with the passing of time perhaps?

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me.

Good form

I was thinking this weekend that the saying / phrase, ‘X was on good form last night’ is one of my favouite expressions. To say that someone was being themselves to the best of their ability is such a great form of speech, a reminder of why you're friends with some. Themselves³ if you will.

Incidentally my parents met Gavin Esler this weekend, who I met about a year ago, after interviewing his girlfriend Anna Phoebe. According to mother he remembered me and said I was a good journalist. Praise indeed. When I met him at one of her concerts, I also told him that Newsnight has the most rocking news theme of any on the tele. Which it does. Only Question Time comes close with that frantically fast piano-led piece.

Pound in the machine

Talking of tuck shops and vending machines yesterday reminded me of one of my favourite school time events: the trapped pound in the vending machine. Let me explain.

To stop pupils leaving class rooms mid-lesson to go and buy food from the vending machines they were set on timers so they only worked during the allotted break times of 11:05 – 11:25 and 12:50 – 2:10 (the machines, not the pupils, obviously).

However, the 20 minute gap in mid-morning break often meant a queue and a crush at each vending machine (there were only two!) and if you arrived there at 11:24 you took a huge risk that sometimes you’d enter the money, only for the machine to then ‘lock itself’ with your shiny, hard-begged for pound trapped inside. Additionally, the machine would proudly display that it had £1.00 inside for all to see. This unfortunate child would have to return to lessons, knowing the entire school was learning, through a series of Chinese whispers, lesson to lesson, that there was a pound trapped in the machine, ready to be spent by the first pupil to arrive at the machine at 12:50 when the machine decreed snacks could be bought once again.


However, lessons before lunch ended at 1:15. The 12:50 unlocking time was because sixth form pupils on free period could take lunch from that time. Still following? Good. This meant at 12:48 all across campus, cheeky little sods were sticking their grubby mits in the air, asking teacher to be excused for various reasons, and hurtling like mad towards the vending machine - usually along side the one, true, heir to the pound in the machine, who would never again be so foolish as to attempt to buy Nik Naks at 40p at 11:24.

Good times.

Crisps

Crisps are funny aren't they? Little pieces of potato flavoured with all manner of combinations - cheese and onion, salt and vinegar, Thai chicken, Worcester sauce, and so on. Why are they so popular? What is it about crisp that makes them so necessary for snacking or lunch boxes?

Frazzles: A classic from primary school. You knew it would be a good day if mum had put frazzles in your Action Man lunchbox. Tasted great (in that fake food way) and left you with a tangy zing on the lips, and incredibly greasy fingers. Wonderful.

Quavers: Named after a form of musical notation, quavers are great fun to eat if you 'follow' the shape around as you eat. Try it, you'll see what I mean. How do they make quavers anyway? To create those shapes I mean? Anyone know?

French Fries: Never sure about these. Very confusing. Crisps, which are made from potatos, being shaped to look like chips, which are made from potatos, but called French Fries, the American name for chips. American's call crisps "potato chips". So in America French Fries would be thought of as potato chip chip crisps. Right?

Monster Munch: Utterly vile yet they have the word monster in so forever popular.

McCoys: I've written about the stupid adverts before, but as a crisp they can't be beat. Plus they have become the pub choice of crisp which is as it should be. Big, tasty, manly - sit perfectly next to a pint of lager. And come in a bag which doesn't try and con you about the amount of crisps within by adding extra height, like some do, which is always empty space. Think of the money Walker et al could save if they produced bags that fitted the crisp - and it would be good for the environment too.

Hula Hoops: As above, they use small bags so you know how many you get. Great fun for putting on your fingers and pretending they're rings. Soggy HHs are the worst though.

Skips: Fizzy little critters these. Never understood the name. They don't skip, they look more like limpet shells than a skip, and eating them doesn't cause an uncontrollable urge to skip everywhere. I'd have called them Fizzles - then you could mix them with Frazzles and have Frizzle Frazzles.

Pringles: A crisp with ideas above its station: shaped in the form of a hyperbolic paraboloid these strangely moreish things are most often seen at special occasions such as Christmas, birthdays, family get togethers and wakes because, while being reasonably priced, they have an air of pseudo-sophistication you can't get with crisps. I mean, you can't just put some cheese and onion crisps in a bowl at Christmas can you?

Nik Naks: At my secondary school we went from having a tuck shop (how quaint) to soulless, faceless vending machines. This did mean the sudden arrival of these new and mysterious crisps called “Nik Naks”. The teachers, clearly not knowing what they were either, priced them at 20p (I guess it was the teachers anyway). As such, they were a popular choice before even tasted. But, the fact was, they were delicious! Especially the Nice ‘n’ Spicy flavour - covered in some sort of 'dust' and nobbly all over. Trouble was, the teachers soon got wise to the popularity and put the price up every term by 5p. Must have been the economic teachers. On it rose, 25p, 30p then a jump to 40p. We were outraged. But by now I was on the verge of leaving the school and my pocket money was probably up to about £2 a week so I didn’t really care as much as I let on in front of everyone else.

Gone Fishin'

Regular readers (hello mum!) will remember my recent Whale posts,
one about Leviathan, or The Whale, one about Moby-Dick.

Someone I know runs a little fanzine in London called Tally Ho! and asked if I'd put my thoughts into a more coherent piece for the magazine. So I did. Click on the image to the right to read.

Office Politics

BBC2 showing the entire first series of The Office was an enjoyable treat and, as a convert to the American version (which is five seasons strong and still going at 100+ shows) it was a good reminder of just how different the two shows really are despite sharing a title and the same plot lines (in essence).

It would be fair to assume the American version would be an inferior remake but the two are very different and seeing the British one again was a reminder of why. While the American one is incredibly funny and full of pathos, like the British show, it is a fair warmer, more likeable place and the office itself seems like a nice place to work, despite some eccentricities. The Slough branch of Wernham Hogg looks like a soul destroying, grey, dreary place to work. Scranton in Pennsylvania has a sense of small town charm to it; their office looks warm, in temperature and in colour, while the corporate head quarters in New York, full of good looking, if idiotic, people. Even the bars in Scranton are fine, nice even. Chasers in Slough looks utterly grim.

Photo diary

I thought pictures would sum up the sort of things I got up to over the bank holiday weekend. Enjoy!

Hello! Goodbye!

On the trail of some wellington boots (not for me) I found myself entering a Hawkshead - a shop that sells some of the worst clothing on the high-street. As I walked in they were playing Hello Goodbye by The Beatles (not one of their best numbers it has to be said; Lennon begged McCartney not to release it as he thought it was so bad). But, in a jovial spirit, I found myself unconsciously nodding along, tapping my feet, perhaps clapping a little, singing at the top of my voice and bouncing around in amongst the short-sleeved checked shirts and white slacks (50% off).

The women behind the counter spotted my engagement with the music and said, in a flat tone of voice, 'Like The Beatles do we?' 'Yes indeed' I replied, with a hint of sarcasm, as if asking someone if they like The Beatles was akin to asking someone if they thought breathing was fun. A few seconds passed, there was a strange lull, as if she was expecting something more, so I added (with another veneer of sarcasm), 'They seem rather popular don't they?'

The women nodded: 'We had a chap about your age working here recently who made this CD for the shop. He liked The Beatles too. I can't stand them though,' she said, bringing the conversation to an abrupt end. Hello Goodbye indeed.

Homeward Bound

Today I return to the fair shire of Cornwall for a few days of walking and boating and celebrating of parent’s birthdays. Should be nice. It does mean a four-and-a-half hour train journey after work but that’s usually a nice chance to do some reading and listen to some new albums. Also there’s a lovely bit of coastline the train hugs from Exeter down to Plymouth which time wise I should be passing towards sunset, so hopefully some stunning views on offer.

Enjoy the rest of the working week.

Book worm

I read Ghostwritten by David Mitchell last week. It's the fourth book of his I've read, after (in order) Cloud Atlas, Number 9 Dream and Black Swan Green. I enjoyed it a lot, probably my second favourite after Black Swan Green - which I would highly recommend.

I'm now reading American Pastoral by Phillip Roth. Did you know he was Jewish? I had no idea. Twice I've been reading so intently that the tube has jolted off with me not clinging to the bars for grim death so I've been sent careering down the carriage, my hands flailing wildly for something to grab on to, before righting myself and then acting as nonchalantly as possible as if nothing has happened. But I know they are sniggering; but they are reading the Metro so I don't care.

I'll have a review of Leviathan I did for a London fanzine called Tally Ho! out on the streets of East London soon, and they've promised me a PDF so I can put it up here too. Hooray.