Portraits

Been listening to the new Bob Dylan, Another Self-Portrait at the moment on Spotify. Lovely stuff.

Unknown history

There are just so many stories in the world it's impossible to read them all, but it's always fascinating when you come across an incident you never knew of before, despite it's clear interest and wider impact on society.

The Bristol Bus Boycott, covered in great detail by the BBC today, is one such example, with a nice echo to the wider US race issues taking place at the same time.

Why is Bill Bryson so funny?

I've read several Bill Bryson books - Notes From a Small County, Neither Here Nor There, Shakespeare, Notes from a Big Country...and enjoyed them all immensely. Well, maybe not the last one, that was just a bunch of columns strung together.

Anyway, I'm now reading A Walk in the Woods, which is an enjoyable, funny account of his attempts to hike the 2,000 mile plus Appalachian Trail. I'm about two-thirds through.

The thing that has struck me is just how often I keep laughing, out loud, at what he writes. Yet, when I look back at what made me laugh, I don't really see why I laughed. It was an easy joke, and sign-posted a mile off, but he just delivers them with perfect timing.

I've read many travel books where the writer tries far too hard to make jokes in every paragraph and it becomes utterly tiresome and you just wish they'd focus on the traveling.

Bryson does it the other way, spending most of his time talking about the travel or the job at hand, and then throwing the jokes in at appropriate moments, meaning most of the jokes hit their targets with enjoyable regularity.

Face for radio

I was on BBC Radio 2 last night talking about the phone maker BlackBerry. As usual pre-call nerves disappeared the moment my name was said, leading to a jolly pleasant discussion about the firm and its troubles and what could happen next.

Listen below - nicely bookended by carvan chat and the theme tune to Grange Hill.

Kew Gardens

I've lived within 30 minutes of Kew Gardens for about four years and never once headed to its leafy environs - until now! (Well, yesterday).

What a lovely place. I highly recommend it - lush and verdant and full of lovely little hidden treats such as a Japanese pagoda or a bamboo hut that had been shipped from Japan. Huge greenhouses full of exotic plants (as you'd expect) and lovely rolling grasses and trees that you can wander around without over-zealous staff or officious signs directing you.

All in all, lovely, and worth a day out. And no queues either!

Morning blues

I love endless skies of blue, so blue they seem to shine. This morning was one such example, with East Putney's ancient red-brick facade a brilliant and stark contrast to the backdrop.

In fact it was so good I actually stopped to take a picture, aware people walking past would be casting quick glances my way. They should have joined in.

Empty roads

The London cycle event over the weekend left Putney devoid of traffic for almost the entirety of Sunday. It was an odd sight and experience, to be able to wander down the high street that is so usually packed with buses and cars and instead hear nothing but the regular passing of cyclists wheels  - ssshm, ssshm, ssshm - zipping past. 

It reminded me slightly of the moments you get at crossroads with traffic lights where there are no cars, or you're the only car, stuck at red while the other lights change for nothing, as if allowing ghosts to proceed on their way. 

Adventure stories for adults

The phrase page-turner is a highly subjective one. To some it's the single best description they can hear to be enticed to a book, while for others it implies moronic, endless-cliffhanger rubbish. And of course it can be a bit a of both. I read Child 44 earlier this year, the first 'page-turner' I've read in years, and I highly enjoyed it. Both for that longing to continue reading when each chapter ended with a twist or moment of drama, but also because it was an engrossing story. 

Most page-turners are, though, based around notions of terror and horror. How many awful-sounding novels do you see advertised on the walls of stations saying things like, "A horrific murder, a missing child, no time left... - Read the new thriller from..." and it sounds like utter rubbish. Yet these books, like those by Lee Child for example, sell by the millions and must have something to them. Yet I have no interest in reading about horrible murders or about ex-military types solving crimes where half a page is given to clinical descriptions of guns and cars.

This got me thinking, why are there no 'adventure' stories for adults? As children tales of pirates and treasure and all those sort of things were what you craved (see TinTin) and as adults, we still enjoy this - see the films of Indiana Jones or Back to the Future, but I don't know many books of this kind. Books that employ a shameless page-turning strategy, but cover adventure and escapades, without resorting to the darkest recesses of the human mind to stimulate interest.

Perhaps I'll write something, before anyone else has this idea. However, perhaps there are such books out there - if so please let me know!

A salute to Friday

Ah, Friday. Hallowed day, harbinger of the weekend, bringer forth of good times, and usually-quieter-day-at-work-than-other-days day.

Some Fridays rush up upon you, catching you unawares, some idle by, taking an age to reveal themselves, some seem days away, and some, like this week, just tick by with reassuring regularity.

The ups and downs of escalators

I read an article the other day about the etiquette of standing or walking on escalators - let's not call it 'riding', it's not a roller coaster or a whale is it?. Apparently, in some cities, hardly anyone walks on the escalator while go-getter Michael Bloomberg said he walks up and down escalators at every opportunity.

Well, being financial titans isn't the only thing I and MBB (as his friends call him) have in common, as I too am a committed escalator walker. I love the double rising sensation of your legs being given a boost by the endlessly revolving loop of an escalator's giant silver steps. Twice as fast and half the effort. Of course sometimes I don't (see: hangovers, very early mornings) but this is rare as even in poor states I find a bolt up an escalator does you a world of good. 

It's also great free exercise and whenever escalators are out action on the underground, forcing commuters to trudge down and around spiraling staircases, it must make London a much fitter city. There should be a No Escalator Day. 

Two fun things: 1. In tube stations with two parallel escalators, take a different one each (if with someone else of course, or do it secretly with a random) and stand on steps opposite one another. Then watch to see if one goes faster than the other.  At Angel tube it used to be that one escalator was considerably faster so I'd give people six or seven steps head start and still win

2. When going up, stand (yes yes I know) and look straight up. If you do it right it gives the sensation you're at 90 degrees and the people above should be tumbling through the air towards you. It's worth practicing as it's a brilliant sensation. Waterloo is good for it. 

Of course the most importance thing in all this though is, while there is nothing wrong with standing, if you're going to, please stand on the right. 

The Thylacine blues

As mentioned in an earlier blog (scroll down lazy) I've been thoroughly enjoying The Sea Inside by Philip Hoare and yesterday I read a fascinating chapter in which he documents the plight of the poor old Thylacine.

This was a sort of wolf-dog marsupial that was driven to extinction by settlers in Tasmania over the start of the twentieth century in that classic way people behaved then with absolutely no forward-thinking about what they were doing - such as slaughtering animal populations or wiping out indigenous populations. 

However, you can't keep a good wolf-dog-marsupial down and the Thylacine may well have managed to survive. Hoare recounts many testimonials from eye witnesses who claim to have seen the creatures still in the wild, with many sounds highly creditable. Given the wildness of Tasmania it seems possible a few creatures could have survived against the odds and still be scavenging their way through the undergrowth.

There's some uniquely tragic about the idea humans have wiped out some animals from the face of the earth, without any one at the time really thinking, "Er, chaps, what happens when there's none them".

I hope the Thylacine makes a return in the future, with firm proof, and that it's well protected for the future. 

Resolution

Hey, hey, two blogs in under a week – what is this, some kind of record? (No, obviously not).

However, perhaps I will reconnect with the blog, as I miss updating it and enjoy having it as a location of digital whiteness for brain thoughts and book opinions and whatnot. I've experimented with other platforms – Posterous, Tumblr, Wordpress, and all that – but I do like Blogger – plus I've been using it since 2006 so it has all my posts and stuff on it.

I helped a friend move house yesterday – he still has his CDs – and it was sort of fun. I don't know why I find helping people move house oddly enjoyable. I think, perhaps, it just comes from the sense of easy completion – move this, to there, by this time, done. Easily quantifiable success.

It was a lovely sunset yesterday too, followed by hazy summer rain and glorious rainbows. Got some great pictures, as you can see below.

 

Putney Bridge at sunset

Through the hoop in Fulham

Weary words

Oh weary worldly traveler of the internet. How did you come to these shores? How long has it been?

The internet has too many words on it. Everyday we make it heavier and heavier - it must be sagging - especially around the Facebooks and BBCs of this world, where all the news and photos sit. It'll be fine, though, they'll just keep propping it up. 

I read Revolutionary Road earlier this month as the temperatures soared. It was a strange book, I feel as though I read it as it dates, like fruit turning moldy. Some of the characters were hard to relate to, and the story line seemed laboured. Yet, there was a horrible reality to it too, the easy-to-relate-too failure of relationships and the terrible ways people get entwined and entangled without being able to unknot themselves without severing something of themselves, and the other person, in a way that'd can't be undone, or fixed.

I've now started reading The Sea Inside by Philip Hoare. Regular readers (anyone?) will remember my love of Hoare's Leviathan (stop sniggering at the back) from 2009 (was it that long ago?) and this book has a similar style, with the love of wildlife, sea, sky and, of course, whales, all thrown together in a lyrical, poetic pot of simmering beauty. I'm only a third through but already I love it. You could hate it if you dont' care for over-the-top rhapsodising but for myself, it's a joyous read.

I went to Lords for the cricket just over a week ago. I sat in a corporate box, I drank Pimms, I ate cucumber sandwiches, the English team batted wonderfully, a century was made, the Queen came for goodness sake - it was the most English day I've ever had. I rewatched the Olympic Opening Ceremony over the weekend. Ah, This Sceptered Isle.

I'm so sorry this blog is updated so irregularly an so erratically. Then again, does it matter, does anyone notice? It appears not. The internet is heavy enough.

Musicality

Hey hey, it's been months since a blog post so what about a nice bit of music to cheer us all up.