Come On Up To The House

This is my last entry before my Christmas holidays, which is just ace. I won’t have internet access for ooh, about a week. It’s quite liberating. For someone as internetally-dependent as myself, to wean myself off like this is great. Next step, I’ll chuck my phone in a mug of coffee.

So my duties at work today include:

• tidying my desk
• distributing fairly the contents of a hamper from Thames Leisure (includes foie gras!)
• drinking coffee

Sweet. This will be followed by a trip to Clarke’s for Christmas lunch (I still don’t think it’ll match Maze for poshness, but it looks pretty ace to me). After this, I’m a free man until January, sick.

In other news, the fine fellows from the forthcoming Wood Green Bookshop left a comment inviting me to coffee and badges at the forthcoming bookshop. Sterling idea, I say. It’s an unusual thing indeed to see an independent bookshop opening in Wood Green, of all the places, in these days of mass homogenisation and corporate blah. I very much hope that the Big Green Bookshop will live up to its promise: judging by the musings of its proprietors, it definitely should. I’ll be in there to support when it opens, especially if this coffee materialises. Mmm, coffee…

I wondered if the correspondence address on their website was going to be the shop’s actual location. I thought great! Noel Park is my manor, that’s like next door to Akbar. I could do that in five minutes. I guess it’s unlikely, all things considered, that’s hardly the best place for passing trade. But! It’s still some local fun, so I wholeheartedly approve.

Every so often I have to stop myself and consider whether I’m odd. This morning was one such example; it’s pretty rare that I have to take a train rather than a tube, but the difference is marked. Not so much in the journey itself (although the novelty of buying real, Olde Worlde paper tickets on Saturday was fun for a good 5 minutes), but from the views you get. I love watching trackside buildings; everything’s a little dirty and grimy, and a little run-down, but it adds a certain charm to one’s commute when you can locate yourself by using actual real-world landmarks (not the misleadingly-placed tube map, or the ever-encroaching evil of the satnav). And best of all, for me at least, you can stand on a frosty morning, as the sun strains against the mist as it tries to haul itself up, looking down the tracks. This I can do for the entire length of time it takes to wait for the train.

Honestly, I can. I can phase out the lurid corporate hues of First Capital Connect at Ally Pally station, and instead focus on the criss-crossing overhead cables, the muted sun beyond, the rampant verges, the overlooking houses. Even better was my former local, New Southgate, whose city-bound line faced South-East, so getting a full panorama of the sunrise over Alexandra Palace. It’s in significant contrast to the faded outpost of the locale after which the station is named, a backwater once significant but whose facilities have all now been drawn East to the Art Deco delights of the Piccadilly line at Arnos Grove. But I still like it.

My childhood was quite far from a mung munching hippie tropicale, gastronomically-speaking. In fact, it was substantial distance from anything vaguely approaching the cosmopolitan approach to food that I now am able to enjoy. My exposure to international food was the occasional watery spaghetti bolognese, or better still the sort of legendary mum’s curry, containing everything from boiled eggs to raisins and slices of apple, with the which I’m sure many non-city dwellers of my tender age are familiar.

As such, I’m not really familiar with the world of lentils. Is there a difference between brown and puy? I think so, is my conclusion after having a go (cleverly, on someone who doesn’t like lentils). The spice was right, but the texture, not so much. I’ll be back (sorry in advance to the offended party…).

If I was still writing my old blog, I wouldn’t have thought twice about recommendations for a short break. But since no-one actually reads this one, never mind. I’m off to Belfast in, ooh, less than a week, and I’ve spent the morning working out what to do, where to go, what to eat (most importantly), etc. Of course, I’ve been working far more than I have been slacking. Ahem.

I’ve not a lot of idea what to expect past what the tourist information board tells me. If that’s anything to go by, I should have a great day (that’s all I’ve got there), but they probably have some sort of ulterior motive in telling me that. I.e., salaries. So I’ve got a rough idea but not many real opinions which I guess is nice: I’ll just have to work it out for myself.

I’ve always been an advocate of broadening ones horizons; I moved to London from the countryside for university but could hardly leave these days, such is the breadth of life to be seen here, as opposed to Hampshire’s leafy lanes. Travelling comes into that equation, however, but I’ve always been a little limited in my options. Family holidays were around the UK, and recently my ventures have been capped by time and financial restraints, and other commitments, which means I really haven’t travelled as much as I wish. It’s something to work on for sure, because although London welcomes almost every nationality through its doors, it’s still not the same as visiting elsewhere. Just think what amazing architecture I’m missing out on, the sights and sounds and smells and, as ever, most importantly, the tastes.

It’s hardly rectifying it by visiting Belfast, to be fair, but a couple of days in another part of the world never did me no harm.

I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever move out of London. The vast majority of the time, were you to ask me, I’d say, quite definitively, no. But at other times I’m enraptured by a sight, a thought, a whim: I often wish to travel around Eastern Europe and having visited Prague for the first time in October, for the first time I can imagine myself living abroad. But I have no idea where it would be, and for how long, and if it would match up to the Big Smoke. I’m a little besotted with this city of mine, you see, and I’m no way near tired of it, even by Pepys’ definition.

One things for sure: if you ever catch me contemplating moving to somewhere like Reading, or Northampton, or Swindon, stop me; look me directly in the eye; and say “no”, while bashing me on the nose with a rolled up newspaper.

I asked a friend in passing yesterday about Christmas lights, and struck up a conversational thread that’s been in my mind since. I’m not putting up Christmas lights, I’m probably not getting a tree, or even sprucing up the place with some wildly over-priced holly (although mistletoe’s cheap, which is interesting… the only time I can remember actually being approached with mistletoe was when I was about 14, 15, in the most awkward, self-conscious, shy phase of life. I don’t even recall if I got a peck on the cheek out of it, but I remember the scene well (ah, Ms Colwill’s form room…), and I don’t look fondly on the memory).

So am I a bah-humbug type? Not a bit of it. I just don’t seem to be in the house enough to warrant spending a ton of money that I don’t really have on things I don’t really need. Especially in the run-up to Christmas: over the next couple of weeks (and in a couple of weeks, Christmas’ll be over…) if I’m not shopping I’m stag-do go-karting, if not go-karting I’m at the office lunch, if I’m not there I’m in Northern Ireland… I can’t remember being so busy. I don’t mind, it’s all enjoyable stuff (except maybe the shopping), but I still don’t feel the need to splash out on gaudy lights to feel festive.

That said, there’s some monster displays round my manor. Giant Santas! Portable carolling grotto! Flashing lights that look like the fluorescent tube is struggling to come on! Wonderful time of year.

I returned from the depths of rural England to find myself awaiting delivery of a Beautiful Thing. This Beautiful Thing is the boxed set version of Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’, for me the album highlight of the year. And I like it because clearly it’s had a lot of effort put into it, it’s a little expensive but it’s a high-quality product. It’s bloomin’ lovely, so it is.

I am an appreciator of Nice Things. This is one of them. Not just a standard jewel case for Radiohead. The marketing for OK Computer (gosh, a whole decade ago) said “remember albums?” Well this is another, like that revolutionarily wonderful record, that is an Album; it’s the whole package - first and foremost the best album by any band this year, but much more for the extra dosh. Much was made (a little too much, Kristin Hersh might argue) of Radiohead’s bold move towards pay-what-you-like for the download version of In Rainbows, but many will have been swayed by the promise of 12″ artwork; fully-decorated lyrics within the box/sleeve itself; CD version of the album, and bonus eight-track CD of extras; gorgeous housing for the whole package; and most of all, the two heavy vinyls, playing at 45′, which contain In Rainbows in full. Beautiful Thing indeed.

The only other album I have on 45′ is PiL’s masterfully packaged Metal Box, this one a three-disc set in, quite literally, a metal tin bearing a remarkable resemblance to a film can. Like PiL’s beauty, In Rainbows works cohesively as an album, and is an exciting thing to look at, listen to, hold, you name it. More people should put effort into this sort of thing rather than churning out dullness after dullness, but perhaps that speaks more of my tastes than anything else.

I often think that if I ever went mad and went into business for myself (ideally not the Dragons’ Den route), I’d probably open a shop selling really nice examples of a certain commodity. Pens, for instance, and writing things. I like writing, I like using a nice pen - it adds something to the experience. But where would I go to get a really nice pen and a nice book to write in? Simone’s Writing Shop of course. The niche is most certainly there.

Failing that, a career in radical cartography is almost certainly the way to go. The other alternative would be to do as these gentlemen have done, and open a Really Nice Bookshop, one with coffee on the go all day, and some really nice books. It’d be a cross between Daunt and Black Books, I imagine.