Come On Up To The House

In keeping with the recent post-lite few weeks, this is only very brief. I genuinely don’t have the time to blog, a malaise of very few actual bloggers, one imagines. But it’s true: my days are full of work, I don’t have time to take lunch, I work a bit late, I’m tired when I get in, I have other things to do and bang, no blog. But it doesn’t mean things don’t go on still…

• I’ve just started reading the pleasingly dense The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. My headphones being broken, a repeat of my first encounter with this Churman seems unlikely, but again it seems an interesting and thought-provoking read and I look forward to it. This on completing the tour de force that is Cryptonomicon, from which I’m still reeling.
• Work still stressful, including specifically not being blamed for an unspecified error - we’ll see how that pans out, but I’m still eminently happy with not having gone for the job before.
• I got an Olde Wood Green book! Thanks!
• Most importantly, I’m contemplating big deals all to do with the news, the local area and so on. You’ll have heard of Thursday last’s spate of stabbings in London. These are becoming as old hat as news of bombs in Baghdad, or man down in Helmand. But in a rare turn, I knew the man who was stabbed in Tottenham. Not well at all, but I knew him by name, he knew me, we would have talked in the street - in Aldi even. So I’m extremely saddened by Gennar Jaronis’ death, seemingly in a fight in the squat he called home. I’m saddened that he had to live in such conditions, and that in the time i knew him I saw him turn from optimistic, hard-working man, to alcoholic. i want to do something, for the likes of Gennar, his friends, those like him, and also those who the news marginalises as statistics - the assumed perpetrators of these crimes, the yoot of today. What can I do? I have ideas, and I have to see what I can do, but there must be something. Anything would be good. Further news as events warrant.

I’ve been at the Tottenham Carnival all afternoon - as always tons of fun. There was a significant proportion of Young Conservatives over where I spent most of my day (no that wasn’t the food secion, you at the back), which was weird - I can’t imagine these people living in North London’s hood, but maybe I’m wrong. I don’t imagine that Conservatives have much of a foothold in N17: the Guardian backs me up, and, satisfyingly, the whole of Haringey is either LibDem or Labour-councilled; Tottenham’s 100% Labour. But bless ‘em for trying, the wellie-booted neckbeards

Aside from this, many delicious chicken/rice/peas/plantain/dumpling/coconut were had, and one less than delicious ginip. It wasn’t bad y’know, but I wasn’t a fan. At risk of being one of those annoying community-minded types, it was fun! I enjoyed particularly nationality-spotting. Being on a children’s stall, I saw mostly Turkish, West Indian and African children, but there was plenty more there - I’m a little bit proud of living in a place like this, where really, no-one even thinks to bother with racial disharmony. Good old Tottenham.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I don’t understand fashion. Why is it that people have to have different clothes each year? Why does something from last year look funny now? I get affected by it even, although I’ve no idea how - jeans tucked into boots does look a little funny, although it was accepted practice not that long ago.

I mention this because summer has hit London, and out come the party frocks, and they’re all this kind of 50’s styled, flouncy Kate Nash-looking business. Here’s the dilemma: is this fashionable? I’ve seen these around for ages, so is this still hip or are all the people I’m seeing behind the times? I wonder if there’s a specific age when one turns into a dad, even without children. I don’t know. Having assessed my own appearance, I’m a leather jacket and an unseasonal hat away from Indiana Jones, so I’m approximately 70 years behind the times. Nice.

More of what I mean at Annie Mole’s excellent LU Fashion Victims set, from whence came today’s fashion icon.

I got off the tube this morning feeling tenderised like some sort of abused steak. I have absolutely no clue why some mornings the Underground is offensively crowded, and other mornings, there’s nobody around. I imagine it’s some sort of function of:

• the time I get to the station
• the gaps in the service
• the weather
• predicted events in London
• unpredicted hold-ups

I’m also considering the possibility that the level of overcrowding on the tube is directly related, and possibly caused by my eagerness to get to work. Hence, this morning, pounding the avenues in the rain I really would rather be home in bed, not shuffling deathward via the medium of tedium. And there you go, the platform’s not crowded but the tube is comfortably full even at Turnpike Lane - by the time I get to Finsbury Park, my face is squashed onto the plexiglass and someone’s sliding something into the roughly spaniel-sized space between my feet and the carriage.

Even at Holborn, where the traditional sullen, ashen-faced commuters disembark to the unseen chaos of Kingsway, an escalator was out and I found my faced knocked from all angles. I’m tall! I don’t understand.

I’m potentially being over-dramatic here. I read this morning about controlling one’s anger, so I’m controlling it and just scowling at the computer.

So the news tells me they’re closing down Walthamstow dogs, and as I concentrate a bit harder I realise that Dusty7s told me yesterday and Londonist told me today. The move will be supported by some; it’ll also be bewailed by a legion of fans, attracted by the glitzy pink and green of its infamous neon, the waft of camel-coat smell, the aroma of hundreds of people losing ten pences.

I’m no supporter of greyhound racing: the humane aspect of it is bad enough, but I don’t like gambling a bit - it seems a sweeping, oversimplified thing to say that betting preys on the poor, but like chicken shops, in London the argument seems to be backed up by evidence.

“Let it be said that impoverished folk enjoy fried chicken“

I marvel constantly at the preponderance of betting shops, even on my local street I can walk past a betfair, William Hill and Ladbrokes, with betfred et al not far off. I don’t understand how they can sustain their trade, but they do. Apparently, it’s these convenience-gambling stores, along with the world wide interweb that are killing off the likes of Walthamstow Dogs.

So I don’t support the dogtrack itself in any way, but if the building goes, I’ll miss it. It’s an iconic structure, opened in 1933 and still owned by the same family. As I go on mammoth charity shop runs to Epping, I pass this before getting to Chingford and it’s an epic thing to see in this otherwise unspectacular, northern expanse of E17. I very much hope that the facade is saved, the red and white art deco facade and the air of faded glory, but the likelihood is - since the track has been sold to property developers - it’ll either be gobbled up in a swathe of identikit, Barrat-esque homes or a big fat retail park with a Dixons, a Comet, an Allied Carpets and a whole bunch of other shops that can be found up and down the country.

Sad day for architecture, East End nostalgics, film trivia buffs, then, happier day for anti-gambling campaigners and animal rights enthusiasts. Mixed emotions for me.

Diamondgeezer has done a pretty nice job of taking a hatchet to Mayor BoJo’s latest blustering. I make myself laugh with my vaguely tree-related pun. A lot of people have come out with support for this nice-sounding policy, but I have to agree with DG, it looks like a whole lot of spin to me.

The idea is that the Mayor’s office is initiating a tree-planting scheme in 40 parts of London, planting about 10,000 trees with the proceeds of ditching Ken’s admittedly useless The Londoner. But it’s actually only a third of this money that’s going on a scheme which is planting, according to diamondgeezer, one tree per year, for every three thousand residents. So, in Boris’ first term, in my name I’ll be receiving 1/750th of a tree. Not great, really.

In recent months Haringey, the notoriously belligerent and ever-so-slightly barking Haringey council has been regenerating Tottenham High Road. Alongside the usual trick of putting in new, fancier lampposts, there’s also been… ooh, a pile of trees planted. Where they’re actual needed and helpful to the local environment. The Mayor’s scheme is hardly revolutionary then, or even slightly new. It’s all a bit meh, these policies so far. Oyster cards on trains? Isn’t that what Ken has been negotiating for the last eight years, and had just scheduled in? No booze on public transport? Isn’t that a little unnecessary, when the people who cause problems are the ones already drunk? I don’t know.

I don’t want this to turn into a political blog. I really don’t. But between Gordon Brown’s Sad-Sack act, Democratic infighting in the States, and Boris’ all mouth no trousers rip-off policies, it’s all a bit depressing.

Here, go listen to something good instead. I recommend Four Tet’s newest selection of minimalist techno, Ringer. Is good.

Picture from Beaux Bo D’Or

Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum

In a rare outbreak of good taste, a regular contender in Facebook’s Top Five London Books is Harper Lee’s wonderfully evocative To Kill A Mockingbird. And no moment of the book is more evocative than this depiction of the Deep Southern heat.

As I write, London is baking in its fifth successive day of sunshine, cloudless skies and mid 20’s heat. While the debate will rage over whether this is BoJo’s doing, or whether the weather is playing a cruel trick at our expense, it’s unseasonably hot here, and collars are indeed melting. I’ve become accustomed to a certain degree of stickiness in every bit of me, and in everything I touch. Unusually, it has more to do with the heat than with residue of belgian buns.

So I’m in the comparative cool of the office, not relishing leaving for once. I’ve been drinking all day (water, you understand) and I feel ready to face the world but… everything’s so much effort, isn’t it? Work’s too much effort, not working is too much effort. Accursed lethargy.

So is this to do with global warming? I like to run with a sensationalist over-dramatisation every now and then, so I’m going to assume: yes. I have to confess, there are times when global warming seems a little bit distant to my life, and easily pretendable that it’s just not there. But I can’t deny that the summers are hotter these days, the winters are milder, the bananas are growing in Tottenham, soon cactus will be outdoor plants… It’s inevitable, and all our fault. It’s also easy to pass climate change off as a little irrelevant - I live on high ground, I’m not going to suffer - but in actual fact, living in this western, affluent apathy is probably going to ruin the lives of the world’s most vulnerable: those in Bangladesh, Norfolk, etc.

So I have my compost bin, I have the recycling box, I don’t use the ‘extra spin’ button on the washing machine… But surely there’s more I can do? Could I give up my car? Could I offset my carbon emissions (whatever that means)? Do I have to be vegetarian? I hope not. I’m sure I can do something though - if this keeps up I’m going to have to don the Colonel’s white suit and start mopping my brow out of habit.

So Nick Cave was… alright. More on that another time. What is really on my mind is the fact that I don’t really go to gigs very much these days. Why not? Is it the bands that play? Is it that I’m too old to stand up for two hours? Of course not. It’s a family tradition that’s creeping into my own life. It’s other people.

For as long as I can remember my dad has parked as far away from other people as possible, and as a family unit we have shunned the social scene in favour of splendid, bucolic isolation. And that appears to be affecting me in my old age also, just like gardening, and the looming threat of high cholesterol. Rock’n'roll concerts have lost their tang, their flavour for me, based on the horrors and the hideousness of Other People and their lack of respect for the conventions of civility and social etiquette.

The Hammersmith Apollo is a nice theatre. If you went to see a play there, or perhaps a comedy gig, you wouldn’t expect to find people climbing over three rows of seats to get out. Nor would you expect to find drunk, hairy men finishing the comedians’ jokes for them, a little out of time and in a distinctly ineloquent fashion, while bouncing off the people around them. A little social skill would go a long way in a venue such as this, but such is the rock’n'roll show, for some reason: you have every reason to be loud, lairy and annoying to others around, y’know, cos it rocks and it’s fun. Right?

WRONG.

Tonight I’m going to see Nick Cave. I’m looking forward to it: I haven’t been to a gig in ooh, an age, and it’s in Hammersmith Apollo, which is meant to be a nice venue. I’m not half getting old these days though. There’s a large part of me which would be happy to stay home, and I’m wondering if this review, by the always reliable Coxon, of an angry-sounding Cave is representative of the whole tour.

We’ll see.

I’m currently reassessing my options in the light of the cancellation of my Polish classes. Because while I was sad for that, for a while, maybe it’s a sign I should be looking a little larger scale in my endeavours. I was told, by my careers advisor-cum-flatmate, that I should do a second degree, in Geography. Interesting, I thought. So I’m researching my options, and no doubt (as I’m sure you avid readers of this blog will be hanging on my every word) I’ll get back to you.

I blame this wonderful book.

The sun appears to have bamboozled the populace of London town today. The first day back at work and all you can see for miles on end is a sea of pasty legs, pink, shining pates, and sweating people drinking more than they usually would. The potent combination of a rare, fine bank holiday, the warmest days of the year, and general mania in London as it is, gives a mildly crazed atmosphere to the air around.

For we’re now living in Greater Tory-land, fiefdom of Boris, province of Cameronia. For me, it’s a little bit scary - though I rarely dabble in actual politics, my underlying view has always been, and continues to be that the Conservative party is one that promotes self and the freedom that that entails, thereby offering little hope to those who are unable to get out of certain holes without a helping hand. I’m of the opinion that the right thing to do is to help others in every situation, wisely certainly, but still even it means some self-sacrifice. Communism is not the answer, nor is anything else so extreme, but a bit of sharing helps everybody out.

So I could probably never bring myself to vote Conservative. To be honest, I don’t really need any convincing not to vote for someone to whom most people’s best recommendation is that he ‘might surprise you.’ I prefer to pin my hopes on someone who gets things done for sure, not someone who might, but it seems the entirety of out London disagrees with me. I’m proud to say Enfield & Haringey voted for Ken; but although he actually got more votes this time than when he won in 2004, London’s still a Tory annex now, and we wait with baited breath to see if BJ will screw things up royally.

I was interested to read this post by the ever-reliable and good Ben Locker - unusually for his Hackney home, an active Conservative. I tend to be surprised when I meet those whose age is not dissimilar to my own that vote Tory, and am curious to find out more.