notes: May 2006

Early morning runaround

Three-year-olds tend to have lots of energy first thing in the morning.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006
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Exploring Warwick blogs

I've been having an enjoyable poke around among the hundreds of weblogs hosted for students, staff and alumni of The University of Warwick. There's some hilarious stuff there...

There is a woman sitting beside me
And now, in the computer centre, she has sat beside me – she was one seat away but moved nearer – its all very odd. She keeps trying to read over my shoulder too!! Haha, lady! I am typing all about you!!

Alphabetty spaghetti
This blog is actually to do with bands and not spaghetti, just though it was a more catchy title. Sorry to disappoint the contingent of spaghetti lovers.

The chavs on the bus go round and round
Floosh... what was that? look backwards, and a head sagging around knees covered in a cap was throwing up all over the floor, and he did it 6 times…... good chav effort.

The Lakeside Gestapo, part 1
But even after the fairly lights incident (in which they warned me about my christmas lights and i fucked the head cleaner up properly with a fabricated story about british electrical safety standards and the 2002 european union directive on flame retardant materials and she backed down very quickly) and the forced entry to clean on a fortnightly basis I could put up with things, but there are going to be killings if they make me get up every bloody Tuesday at 9 for no reason at all.

Trust me, you don't want pasta
That’s FUC* CRAZY!!! That means for every little skittle that you are eating, you are taking in 90% carbs!?!!? Screw pasta, the best source of carbohydrates is skittles, and I feel the need to tell everyone about it. This means you only have to buy 2 packets of skittles (55g a packet) and you'll get your fare share of carbs for the day, plus no washing up or waiting for food to cook…AWESOME!!!

Writing for the sake of it
Sheep. Sheep are really, really cool– I mean awesome. My friend told me last night that Weber’s theory of law is based upon sheep. I disagree however and think it is more likely based on turtles, as turtles are going to take over the world in a few years time (one told me the other week).

Chill at times of stress
For me, the dusk sky blend perfectly with the silhouette of the Sea Harrier. I find it calming and inspiring at the same time, a symbol of the depth of human achievement and also the strength of the forces that protect us. Inspirational and calming.

I'm genuinely full of admiration for the scale and ambition of this project. I hope it continues to thrive.

Labels: tech

Tuesday, May 23, 2006
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Current interests

I'm very keen to broaden my professional horizons, and challenge myself to write about new things.

I still enjoy writing about computers and the internet, but other subjects appeal to me; writing about something is often a good way to learn about it. I'm keen to expand my education.

With that in mind, here are some of the themes I'd like to explore in future writing:

England the obscure: I've long been fascinated by the wonderful detail hidden within Britain's countryside; the geological and cultural landscapes that define our small towns and villages. There's so much to explore and discover within this country; I'd love to discover and write about some of it.

Practical environmentalism: It's easy to buy unleaded petrol and take your tins to the recycling bins at the supermarket, but the urgency to be green is growing ever stronger as our environment becomes more fragile. What practical steps can ordinary people take to be greener than before? Given the dreadful state and high cost of public transport in the UK, what are the best options for getting around? How realistic is it to develop local food production schemes, and what are the challenges involved?

Space of mind: How do people make mental maps of their surroundings and experiences? If asked to draw those maps, what kind of thing are they likely to produce? Can the results be useful for others?

Parenting: I have opinions about everything from CBeebies to frisbees, and I'd like to share them with other parents.

New architecture in the UK: Years ago, as a junior reporter in Cambridge, I took it upon myself to write about new architecture in the city. Visiting new buildings, some of them very traditional and others incredibly adventurous (the Judge Institute of Management was one of my favourites) was a joy, an experience I'd like to rediscover.

Labels: work

Thursday, May 18, 2006
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Typewriter memories

Olivetti Typewriter
Originally uploaded by plindberg.

I learned how to be a journalist using a typewriter I bought for £10 in a market in Essex.

Not in the 1970s, but in the 1990s, when I fully expected my journalism training course to be showing me the trade using the computers it was practised with. But both the college and the students were broke; there were no computers to learn journalism with, and we were told to go and buy our own typewriters.

So I picked one up as cheaply as I could (my finances were about as bad as they ever got - I entertained only fantasies about buying a computer of my own) and literally bashed out articles using the brute force in my fingertips.

The first time I used a computer to do any journalism was when I started doing day shifts (for about £40 a day, if I remember rightly) on the Cambridge Evening News. At the time the newspaper had a very old mainframe system in use, known to me as Press 11 but it might well have a more common commercial name.

The computers were dumb terminals that only ran a very specialised text editing and transfer system. Every element of data was a story - to send an electronic memo to another member of staff (the closest thing we had to email), you had to create a new story and send it directly to that person's 'basket', the term we used to refer to someone's electronic list of stories-in-progress.

The reporters used this simple text mail system to send one another jokes and wisecracks about the more senior editors. Official memos were circulated by someone on newsdesk and copied to everyone's basket - a primitive sort of mailing list.

The subeditors used Press 11 too, but several of them had two computers on their desks, the second being a Mac intended for use in the layout process. The Press 11 terminals were solely dedicated to the writing and editing of text, the Macs were essential for putting that text into a newspaper format.

Sometimes, on a night or weekend shift when I had little to do, I'd slink over to the subs desk and have a play with the Macs. One of them had an internet connection and I'd sometimes try to connect and have a play. But of course connecting itself took an age, and the dial-up was hardly very zippy even by the standards of the day. I never managed to play much before guilt, or perhaps a ringing telephone or the sound of someone approaching the newsroom door made me switch it off.

Labels: writing

Monday, May 15, 2006
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Notes on "Vote for ... who?" by Jonathan Maitland

It's not often that I throw a book down in disgust - in fact, I can't remember the last time it happened - but this is one of those books.

I picked it up in our local library in the hope that it might indeed be what was promised in the blurb on the back cover; an informal romp through modern British politics. But it's not that. It's the adolescent ramblings of a middle-aged man trying to sound like he's "one of the boys".

Honestly, I tried really hard to get into this book but Maitland's constant - and I really mean to use that word - efforts to sound like a bloke's bloke just drove me crazy. He goes to great lengths to make sure that every page has a handful of gags, even though most of them are simply not funny.

I can see what he was trying to do; he wants to make politics more interesting to more people. And in itself, that's an admirable thing to attempt. But the manner in which he does it just makes me gag, I couldn't get though most of his paragraphs without a grimace or a shudder; not because of some horrific fact I'd learned, but because the writing style and the language simply jarred.

Maitland wants to be mates with every bloke in every pub in the land. He tries so hard to sound like everyman, making bad jokes and awful non-funny asides as he goes along. There might even be a handful of people in most pubs who might appreciate what he's trying to do, might even find it funny; but I suspect that everyone else will find this as unreadable as I did.

Labels: books

Monday, May 15, 2006
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Playground banter

Right at the end, Barney notices my digital recorder.

Labels: audio

Thursday, May 11, 2006
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Grant McLennan, RIP

Grant McLennan
Originally uploaded by Dey.

I discovered the Go-Betweens' music somewhat later than I'd have liked, but their wonderful songs have been something I've treasured ever since. The final moments of "Bye Bye Pride" are among the most beautiful ever recorded in pop, so I was delighted that BBC 6music picked that as one of the songs to play in tribute to Grant McLennan this morning.

Monday, May 08, 2006
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skies over grassmere

skies over grassmere
Originally uploaded by adrians_art.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006
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Prologue

It began, for me, on the platform of London Bridge Tube station. Northbound, approximately twenty past eight in the morning. I can't remember if it was a Monday or not, and I suspect the cliche about Mondays being so awful was just created by employers to make you feel good about the rest of the week. Whatever day it was, the platform was packed. A mass of black-coated backs.

That's something you don't notice about commuting in London until you've been doing it long enough to raise your eyes from your trashy free newspaper and actually look at your hapless fellow commuters. Everyone wears dark colours. Even in summer, when their officewear might even be bright and gay, over the top they wear a dark jacket. In winter, it's even more pronounced. The platform in this case was entirely covered in black and grey coats. I could see hundreds, possibly thousands, of backs turned towards me. As though each of them was a desperately miserable message from its owner, saying: "See. See me, an intelligent, loved person. I am reduced to this. I am reduced to my animal instincts. I am so sad."

I wore a bright yellow hiking jacket.

It was that morning, standing behind the queues of sad commuters waiting for a train - no, waiting for dozens of trains, for that was how many would be needed to empty the platform of people - that I suddenly realised I was the sole speck of colour in the whole place. I almost blushed. Looking right and left, I could see more computers (commuters are, after all, just following a daily routine just as a computer does) rushing down the stairs and escalators into the hallway, as though those hurried steps would get them anywhere any faster, and they too were all in black and grey.

I was a bright spark of sunshine yellow, alone in my underground world of misery and despair, and I was afraid, probably without reason, that I was standing out. That, of course, is the fear of any London commuter. No-one wishes to stand out, to be the object of any kind of attention. Every single one of the millions who come into London every morning, and leave it every evening, wants to do it as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, as if perhaps doing so will make them feel like they are completely both journeys alone. Being noticed means you must acknowledge your own presence on the train to hell, and doing that forces you to acknowledge the presence of the 100 other people on the carriage around you.

It forces you to apologise to the woman whose bust you brushed past as you squeezed aboard, but there was no way around it because you had to duck under the be-newspapered arm of the City worker, pristine in his pin-stripe and obstinately standing in the doorway, arm aloft to hold on to one of the straps dangling from the ceiling. He couldn't move either, because the group of schoolchildren to his side were standing in a tight circle, quietly gossiping and breaking out into occasional cackles of delight. Theirs was the only human noise on the whole carriage, and you were glad of it because at least it disguised the deathly silence of all these people, all these human beings who were determined to stay quiet on a commuter train, because that's what everyone does. These same folk who would cheerfully become human again in a pub or even a McDonalds, could sit together, a hundred of them, and have not a single word to say.

It forces you to acknowledge that you are part of it, and that you hate yourself for being one of them.

That thought bounced around my brain as I waited near the platform. I couldn't get on the platform, because there were queues. London Bridge's Northern Line platforms are either side of a central hall, but instead of opening up the entire structure in the manner of modern station design on the Jubilee Line extension, the designers here had decided to make the place a homage to its past. They wanted the Underground to be more like ground. So they linked the central hallway to the platforms with a series of tiny, thin tunnels. Each one barely wide enough for two people to stand side-by-side.

With the platform completely full, and nowhere for anyone to go until the next train pulled in, queues had formed in these little tunnels. People stood there, silent, staring at the back of the person in front, possibly unaware of the millions of tonnes of soil and concrete curving over their heads above the tunnel roof. Behind them, in the hallway, the queues continued, losing their structural and moral integrity and becoming vague wanderings of newcomers, the pathetic finalists in this race for work. I considered the lucky ones at the front, the ones who must have arrived at London Bridge on overland trains from the south 10 minutes - 20? even 30? - before me. They must have stood at the very edge, their faces within centimetres of the side of the alleged train. One good push from here, at the back, could send them toppling, domino-style, onto the tracks.

In my bright yellow coat I shivered. A train pulled in, announcers told the crowd how to behave, and the queues shortened slightly. The train left, and the brief minute of activity gave way to the same endless, screaming silence there'd been before. Another train arrived soon afterward, and the cycle was repeated. Again, everyone moved forward. I found myself in the mouth of one of the little tunnels, and I gazed upward at its curved tiles. I looked around me, behind me, trying to see through the coat-covered forest with its shrubs of newspapers and paperbacks, its insect life of tsk-tsking personal stereos.

Something in my head clicked, turned, moved from one form to another.

I said, aloud, I think, but there was not enough surprised reaction from any of my fellow travellers for me to be sure: "That's it. I've had enough of this."

I turned, abandoned my place in the queue, walked past the living dead waiting for their trains, up the stairs to the exit.

This is the story of what happened next.

Labels: life, writing

Monday, May 01, 2006
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