Onwards there are numerous gift and furniture shops, restaurants and bars. And a good charity shop.
Thanks to James for directing me to several of these buildings.
Wednesday, October 05, 2016
Notes on Lordship Lane, East Dulwich SE22
I'd walked up and down the once-rural thoroughfare Lordship Lane in East Dulwich, also prosaically known as the A2216, a few times and found it long and uninspiring. Though there is a nice part of it, with cool gift shops, bars and restaurants, as well as a lovely new Dulwich Picture House (£7 a film on a Monday; still not as cheap as the Peckhamplex, but a more pleasant experience), I found myself naturally gravitating towards the other end of the Lane (where the Horniman in Forest Hill is). Here I found some interesting buildings and curios.
At 539 Lordship Lane, the unusual Grade-II listed so-called Concrete House is possibly England's earliest surviving example of, well, a house made of concrete. Dating back to the 19th century, it was derelict for years but has now been converted into flats.
Further down, past the lovely Dulwich library is a blue plaque above a hardware shop signifying the birthplace of children's writer Enid Blyton. Another blue plaque but obviously unofficial and homemade lies at the bottom of a wall on Overhill Road, just off Lordship Lane, where AC DC singer and lyricist Bon Scott died in a parked car of alcohol poisoning and 'death by misadventure', aged 33, in 1980.
A slight detour: two roads along on the right off Lordship Lane, Upland Road turns into Dunstans Road and up a wooded hill is Dawson Heights, a striking-looking housing estate built 1964-72. The 20th Century Society call Dawson Heights 'an important but little-known postwar housing estate in East Dulwich' which has so far been turned down for listing status. Designed by Kate Macintosh, who was only 26 at the time she started designing the building, the tranquil setting of the estate, on top of a hill surrounded by woods, gives it the feeling of a castle made of Lego (though the 20th Century Society's description of it as having 'evocative associations with ancient cities and Italian hill towns' may be pushing things a tad). But there's no denying its undulating soft, yet brutalist, form. (I struggle to write about architecture and music successfully: try these two blog posts, here and here, on the estate if you're interested.)
There used to be lots of prefab houses on Lordship Lane but only one remains now, at number 238. We chatted to the lovely gentleman who owns the house, who is understandably very proud of his flower garden. But the future of the house is far from secure; there are new developments surrounding the house, and it looks like it'll be next on the chopping list.
We popped into The Yard, a converted family home with work studios and a courtyard, just off Lordship Lane as part of Open House weekend recently.
Monday, October 03, 2016
Gender bender
This year in the press there’s been a lot of coverage of the gender pay gap; from the boardroom to the tennis court women still earn a lot less than men. This isn’t the case in my experience at all, where I only seem to know women half my age earning twice as much as me for doing I have no idea what.
Women are obviously the main victims of domestic violence, but there is also a lot more men being abused by women than is thought, which is hardly reported at all, mainly not by the men abused, who are understandably embarrassed or ashamed by being mistreated by their spouses. Remember Rebekaha Brooks being arrested for physically assaulting her then-husband Ross Kemp in 2005? It seemed absurd for a beefy guy like Kemp to be beaten-up by a woman but aside from that it's not always physical, it can be psychological as well.
In the space of one hour travelling on a train I witnessed two conversations between two couples, in both cases the man in the relationship being belittled, undermined and generally embarrassed in public by his girlfriend. I felt sorry for both men.
Up until the 1940s, boys wore pink and girls wore blue. Pink was felt to be a more male colour, closer to red, a 'stronger' colour (in England at the time, soldiers apparently wore red uniforms) and blue a feminine colour. Aside from a brief period in the 1970s when unisex clothing was all the rage, it was retailers and manufacturers who decided that blue would be for boys and pink for girls. There's nothing psychological about the difference; just something we're taught.
Metrosexuals are just homosexuals in disguise. Men look at men more than women; women look at women more than men. We noticed one can still buy a 'Bender in a Bun' in the Wimpy Bar. We found it hilarious.
Previously on Barnflakes:
Rebekah Brooks resigns over her name
Women are obviously the main victims of domestic violence, but there is also a lot more men being abused by women than is thought, which is hardly reported at all, mainly not by the men abused, who are understandably embarrassed or ashamed by being mistreated by their spouses. Remember Rebekaha Brooks being arrested for physically assaulting her then-husband Ross Kemp in 2005? It seemed absurd for a beefy guy like Kemp to be beaten-up by a woman but aside from that it's not always physical, it can be psychological as well.
In the space of one hour travelling on a train I witnessed two conversations between two couples, in both cases the man in the relationship being belittled, undermined and generally embarrassed in public by his girlfriend. I felt sorry for both men.
Up until the 1940s, boys wore pink and girls wore blue. Pink was felt to be a more male colour, closer to red, a 'stronger' colour (in England at the time, soldiers apparently wore red uniforms) and blue a feminine colour. Aside from a brief period in the 1970s when unisex clothing was all the rage, it was retailers and manufacturers who decided that blue would be for boys and pink for girls. There's nothing psychological about the difference; just something we're taught.
Metrosexuals are just homosexuals in disguise. Men look at men more than women; women look at women more than men. We noticed one can still buy a 'Bender in a Bun' in the Wimpy Bar. We found it hilarious.
Previously on Barnflakes:
Rebekah Brooks resigns over her name
Sunday, October 02, 2016
Silk Cut anagrams
Cuts Kil
Sik Cult
Lik Cuts
Tucks Li
Slut Kic
Luck Sit
Lit Suck
Clit Suk
Previously on Barnflakes:
Surreal Silk Cut cigarette ads
Sik Cult
Lik Cuts
Tucks Li
Slut Kic
Luck Sit
Lit Suck
Clit Suk
Previously on Barnflakes:
Surreal Silk Cut cigarette ads
Friday, September 30, 2016
Notes on New Orleans, Louisiana
It’s the names that do it for me: Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, conjuring up countless songs and movies. Somehow English place names – Coventry, Leeds, Birmingham, Sunderland or Liverpool – just don’t cut it. But, talking on the subject, an American friend had said to me: “What are you talking about, man? Liverpool, what the hell’s that, a pool of livers? That’s crazy, man.”
Anyway, Europe may have the buildings and the history, but the U.S.A. has the place names, the landscapes, the movies, the songs and the people. Its cities are exciting, dangerous, dynamic, always awake and always crazy.
I drifted down to New Orleans originally planning to stay just a week but ending up there for two and a half months, intoxicated by the sultry heat, spicy crawfish, coffee, sleaziness, romance, danger and irony of it all. There’s no need for crack when you can eat six raw oysters, down them with a Bud’ and walk around the French Quarter at 4am feeling like there’s no where else in the world. It’s said New Orleans has a strange pulling power, people come down for Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest and never leave. It’s a city to hang out in, do nothing in, listen to jazz or be a murderer and get away with it.
But The Big Easy isn’t big and it’s not easy.
My heart beat fast for my first two weeks there: I couldn’t relax. It may have been the copious amounts of coffee and chicory consumed (either at Café du Monde, where the waiters are either gay, drug addicts, alcoholics, murderers, child molesters or old Vietnamese colonels – New Orleans East has a Vietnam village), or Kaldi’s, just up the road, where homeless kids on acid hang out along with gays, goths and freaks). It may have been the headlines every day in the Times Picayune of at least five people having been shot the day before.
Or was the smell of coffee mixing with the smell of danger on every dimly lit street corner, mingling with the live music coming from every direction, twenty-four-seven. It didn’t calm me knowing New Orleans had just recently slipped to becoming murder capital number two of the U.S.A., pipped to the post by Gary, Indiana.
If only I had stayed just a week: I would have gone home with the city’s superficial impression as a non-stop party (there was a bar in New Orleans before there was a church). Seemingly always happening on Bourbon Street, that addictive neon vision of hell with its blaring bars, strip joints, pushers and hookers, tourists are adventurous if they leave the street, let alone the touristy French Quarter which is relatively safe, and white.
The French Quarter is stiflingly small, humid, crowded and claustrophobic, consisting of one square mile (the population of New Orleans is only 475,000, a tiny city with no hills, perfect for a bike), the streets arranged in a confusing (at first) grid structure of similar looking buildings: French-style apartments with wooden shutters, iron-laced balconies with hanging plants and plastic Mardi Gras necklaces, tacky tourist art galleries, voodoo and witchcraft shops, restaurants and gallons of bars. It has a heady charm and its buildings are well looked after, but there’s never any breeze and its sidewalks are smelly and dirty. Barely two hundred years old, for the tourists it’s called New Orleans historical district, and that’s all they need. Armed with cameras, camcorders and a plastic cup of $1 beer, tourists record the beautiful history-laden quarter, editing out any blacks, beggars or freaks who might accidentally get in the way. But what they don’t get is that the city is the people, not the buildings.
But if wasn’t for the tourists New Orleans would surely sink back into the swamps from whence it came, and Louisiana is the second poorest state in the US, after Mississippi. Yet ask any local what they hate most about the city and before they mention the crime, the violence, the housing projects or the police corruption they will emphatically say: ‘the tourists’.
I wonder how American cities survive with their mass of contradictions and ironies. I love you, I hate you. The mood of New Orleans can change so quickly, so drastically. The city has the power to change people too, if they stay there for long enough. From virgin to whore, pacifist to murderer, teetotaller to alcoholic, sane to crazy, innocence to experience, or indeed vice versa. But the seediest, most decadent, often uncaring, murderous city in the US is often strangely spiritual and magical. And it has very little to do with voodoo, witches or Anne Rice.
It can be intense, nasty and unfeeling or it can be beautiful, warm, relaxing, friendly and caring, a community spirit rising from the poverty. I watch the sun rise over the Mississippi river with a beautiful black eighteen-year-old girl on the River Walk, we’re surrounded by the homeless sleeping on the grassy bank (you can be homeless and happy here), an accordion player with a blank look in her eyes plays the accordion badly, then an old black dude passes us and says we make a pretty couple and it’s like a dream.
Or we’re at the Joy cinema on Canal Street which only shows ‘black’ films and every other black guy asks me for a quarter and I get the dirtiest looks and they say things to me I can’t understand but I’m sure they’re wondering what this skinny white guy is doing with this beautiful black girl.
But I think I leave New Orleans less sexist and racist than I’ve ever been. I visit some friends who live near the railway track on North Rampart Street, maybe a mile out of the Quarter. Black kids are playing in the street, a water hydrant explodes water to cool them down and they’re laughing and playing without a care in the world. I pass old black dudes smoking on their verandas on a Sunday afternoon and we greet each other as you do in the English countryside. I think to myself this place has always been here, always been the same. Untouched and decaying beautifully. Buildings and signs from the thirties and forties, left alone to rust and decay. In late spring the moss growing along the telegraph wires, plants creeping up the wooden houses, as if it’s in tune with nature.
But New Orleans is either a living dream or a living nightmare. The housing projects are definitely not on any tourist agenda. Coming up Basin Street from Canal Street, on your left is the Iberville housing project, on the outskirts of the French Quarter (a drunken tourist makes a wrong turn and risks death), a little further up the Louis #1 cemetery, a tourist stop off point, but only in packs because Iberville surrounds it and a little plague advises to enter at your own risk. It’s opposite a police station.
Desire is the biggest housing project in New Orleans. It goes on for miles, never ending, modelled after German concentration camps, I’m told. 100% black with only half the ‘units’ occupied, the other half burnt down or boarded up. This is where the killings happen – black on black, in the housing projects. The projects aren’t talked about. The people in them are left alone to kill each other. The streets which intersect Desire are like a bad joke: Piety, Annunciation, Benefit and Charity.
Beside the Florida housing project is a church, a liquor store and a huge billboard, black lettering on white: THOU SHALT NOT KILL, the NOT underlined in case you had read THOU SHALT KILL by mistake. In the space of a block you can go from housing project to mansions, good neighbourhood to bad and it makes no sense.
Behind Café du Monde, late at night, are held monthly dogfights, organised by the cooks who work at the café. The losing dog gets a bullet in the head, delivered by one of the cops, who are there to watch and bet.
New Orleans: I love you and hate you, and I know you love and hate me too.
– 1996; submitted and rejected for a Time Out travel writing competition.
Anyway, Europe may have the buildings and the history, but the U.S.A. has the place names, the landscapes, the movies, the songs and the people. Its cities are exciting, dangerous, dynamic, always awake and always crazy.
I drifted down to New Orleans originally planning to stay just a week but ending up there for two and a half months, intoxicated by the sultry heat, spicy crawfish, coffee, sleaziness, romance, danger and irony of it all. There’s no need for crack when you can eat six raw oysters, down them with a Bud’ and walk around the French Quarter at 4am feeling like there’s no where else in the world. It’s said New Orleans has a strange pulling power, people come down for Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest and never leave. It’s a city to hang out in, do nothing in, listen to jazz or be a murderer and get away with it.
But The Big Easy isn’t big and it’s not easy.
My heart beat fast for my first two weeks there: I couldn’t relax. It may have been the copious amounts of coffee and chicory consumed (either at Café du Monde, where the waiters are either gay, drug addicts, alcoholics, murderers, child molesters or old Vietnamese colonels – New Orleans East has a Vietnam village), or Kaldi’s, just up the road, where homeless kids on acid hang out along with gays, goths and freaks). It may have been the headlines every day in the Times Picayune of at least five people having been shot the day before.
Or was the smell of coffee mixing with the smell of danger on every dimly lit street corner, mingling with the live music coming from every direction, twenty-four-seven. It didn’t calm me knowing New Orleans had just recently slipped to becoming murder capital number two of the U.S.A., pipped to the post by Gary, Indiana.
If only I had stayed just a week: I would have gone home with the city’s superficial impression as a non-stop party (there was a bar in New Orleans before there was a church). Seemingly always happening on Bourbon Street, that addictive neon vision of hell with its blaring bars, strip joints, pushers and hookers, tourists are adventurous if they leave the street, let alone the touristy French Quarter which is relatively safe, and white.
The French Quarter is stiflingly small, humid, crowded and claustrophobic, consisting of one square mile (the population of New Orleans is only 475,000, a tiny city with no hills, perfect for a bike), the streets arranged in a confusing (at first) grid structure of similar looking buildings: French-style apartments with wooden shutters, iron-laced balconies with hanging plants and plastic Mardi Gras necklaces, tacky tourist art galleries, voodoo and witchcraft shops, restaurants and gallons of bars. It has a heady charm and its buildings are well looked after, but there’s never any breeze and its sidewalks are smelly and dirty. Barely two hundred years old, for the tourists it’s called New Orleans historical district, and that’s all they need. Armed with cameras, camcorders and a plastic cup of $1 beer, tourists record the beautiful history-laden quarter, editing out any blacks, beggars or freaks who might accidentally get in the way. But what they don’t get is that the city is the people, not the buildings.
But if wasn’t for the tourists New Orleans would surely sink back into the swamps from whence it came, and Louisiana is the second poorest state in the US, after Mississippi. Yet ask any local what they hate most about the city and before they mention the crime, the violence, the housing projects or the police corruption they will emphatically say: ‘the tourists’.
I wonder how American cities survive with their mass of contradictions and ironies. I love you, I hate you. The mood of New Orleans can change so quickly, so drastically. The city has the power to change people too, if they stay there for long enough. From virgin to whore, pacifist to murderer, teetotaller to alcoholic, sane to crazy, innocence to experience, or indeed vice versa. But the seediest, most decadent, often uncaring, murderous city in the US is often strangely spiritual and magical. And it has very little to do with voodoo, witches or Anne Rice.
It can be intense, nasty and unfeeling or it can be beautiful, warm, relaxing, friendly and caring, a community spirit rising from the poverty. I watch the sun rise over the Mississippi river with a beautiful black eighteen-year-old girl on the River Walk, we’re surrounded by the homeless sleeping on the grassy bank (you can be homeless and happy here), an accordion player with a blank look in her eyes plays the accordion badly, then an old black dude passes us and says we make a pretty couple and it’s like a dream.
Or we’re at the Joy cinema on Canal Street which only shows ‘black’ films and every other black guy asks me for a quarter and I get the dirtiest looks and they say things to me I can’t understand but I’m sure they’re wondering what this skinny white guy is doing with this beautiful black girl.
But I think I leave New Orleans less sexist and racist than I’ve ever been. I visit some friends who live near the railway track on North Rampart Street, maybe a mile out of the Quarter. Black kids are playing in the street, a water hydrant explodes water to cool them down and they’re laughing and playing without a care in the world. I pass old black dudes smoking on their verandas on a Sunday afternoon and we greet each other as you do in the English countryside. I think to myself this place has always been here, always been the same. Untouched and decaying beautifully. Buildings and signs from the thirties and forties, left alone to rust and decay. In late spring the moss growing along the telegraph wires, plants creeping up the wooden houses, as if it’s in tune with nature.
But New Orleans is either a living dream or a living nightmare. The housing projects are definitely not on any tourist agenda. Coming up Basin Street from Canal Street, on your left is the Iberville housing project, on the outskirts of the French Quarter (a drunken tourist makes a wrong turn and risks death), a little further up the Louis #1 cemetery, a tourist stop off point, but only in packs because Iberville surrounds it and a little plague advises to enter at your own risk. It’s opposite a police station.
Desire is the biggest housing project in New Orleans. It goes on for miles, never ending, modelled after German concentration camps, I’m told. 100% black with only half the ‘units’ occupied, the other half burnt down or boarded up. This is where the killings happen – black on black, in the housing projects. The projects aren’t talked about. The people in them are left alone to kill each other. The streets which intersect Desire are like a bad joke: Piety, Annunciation, Benefit and Charity.
Beside the Florida housing project is a church, a liquor store and a huge billboard, black lettering on white: THOU SHALT NOT KILL, the NOT underlined in case you had read THOU SHALT KILL by mistake. In the space of a block you can go from housing project to mansions, good neighbourhood to bad and it makes no sense.
Behind Café du Monde, late at night, are held monthly dogfights, organised by the cooks who work at the café. The losing dog gets a bullet in the head, delivered by one of the cops, who are there to watch and bet.
New Orleans: I love you and hate you, and I know you love and hate me too.
– 1996; submitted and rejected for a Time Out travel writing competition.
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Tuna Tunis
The Saturday in London had been a beautiful autumn day – a last shock of sun. The Sunday was cold and raining and when we arrived in Tunisia that night, it was likewise. Sunday in London engineering work had cancelled trains, so we had to catch a replacement bus from Putney to Kew Bridge, then a train to Feltham, and finally another bus to Heathrow. A three-hour wait at Heathrow, a delayed plane, and by nine 'o'clock, local time, we arrived in the rain of Tunis.
M said our hotel was like the movie Cocoon. More like The Shining, I quipped. A thousand shades of pastel, old people ready to die, inedible western buffet food. Coffee like mud, tea like rusted metal. All Tunisian food seems to come with tuna sprinkled on top – which led M to speculate maybe that was the reason Tunisia got its name – because of the tuna. It seemed possible. But then she had made me once believe the Boer War was fought over feather boas.
I woke on my birthday the next morning feeling like shit with flu, cold and cough and eyes that wouldn't open properly. The night before we'd gone to a little cafe round the corner from our hotel to get a coffee and gateau. The first question asked, inevitably, was how many camels I wanted for M. The second inevitable question was whether I wanted some hash. I took out my liquorice Rizlas to make a roll-up. Everyone in the cafe looked at them, then wanted a couple of leaves. I knew I should have bought more packs with me.
So far – we're in Sousse – the buildings are great. Old tumbling down French ones – but lots of new, funky, post-modern ones too. Buildings are going up everywhere, new roads too. Tunisia feels quite affluent, liberal and modern. At least compared to its neighbours Morocco and Egypt.
The hotels are like palaces and (in the tourist area) Sousse feels like a second-rate Vegas. Caribbean casino, restaurants, nightclubs, all neon-lit. Hotels line the beach front. The whole town feels like hotels and hassles.
No dogs but hundreds of skinny little dying cats everywhere. I want to do something to save the cats. As a gesture I take some fish out to the black cat by the pool area – only to be bombarded by about eight cats all screeching and fighting and the fish is gone in less than a second.
I thought I finished a roll of film then realised I hadn't loaded the film. Monday, wake up ill, again. Sousse all day. Tuesday, Kairouan. Wednesday – waiting for a very late bus most of the day. Arrived in El-Jem with ten minutes left to see the impressive amphitheatre – we get in half price but have to make way for a car advert being filmed in the middle of it.
The next day on a first class train carriage to Gabés. Everyone, aside from the shabby tourists, looks so well-groomed, affluent, proper. The landscape remains the same. Half the sky lit by the sun, half by the moon and in the middle, cloud. The lighter the skin, the more affluent the people. On Tunisian TV, everyone has light skin. On the first class carriage, everyone has light skin. Finally approaching Gabés. A two-mile stream of palm trees and industrial factories, chimneys spewing yellow smoke, carrots from the ground a luminous orange. I thought we were going the wrong way on the train for a while.
Taxi to Matmata nouvelle – stalling – going back. Another taxi – Matmata (old town). Pulled over by the police. It feels like a pilgrimage going to where Star Wars was filmed. Star Wars full of Muslim architecture and costume. We chatted and laughed with a restaurant owner then ate in his restaurant. We were overcharged; we didn't say anything but it left a sour taste.
Back at the hotel, the pensioners are dancing to instrumental versions of My Way... When I Fall in Love... John Denver. Pensioners on parade – it's not a bad life.
George Harrison died today: 30th November 2001. I thought I'd given up smoking, but felt light-headed and had to go buy a pack. One shop had sold out of cigarettes – it took me half an hour to buy a pack in all. When I came back his death was there on the news. Yesterday we'd talked about him; one of his songs had been in my head all day (My Sweet Lord). We're half an hour from where The Life of Brian was filmed – George Harrison's Handmade Films produced it.
It being Ramadan, there's a feverish rush about fourish, and by five everything is empty – the medina, the nouvelle ville – because everyone is inside eating. We tuck into our Briks – a thin pastry with a whole fried egg built into it filled with tuna (of course), onion, harissa and parsley – with gusto.
Of course, it's only on our last day that we find in our hotel complex: sauna, shops, table tennis, indoor swimming pool and gym. Not that we would have used any of them anyway. But still.
Sousse, Tunisia, 2001
M said our hotel was like the movie Cocoon. More like The Shining, I quipped. A thousand shades of pastel, old people ready to die, inedible western buffet food. Coffee like mud, tea like rusted metal. All Tunisian food seems to come with tuna sprinkled on top – which led M to speculate maybe that was the reason Tunisia got its name – because of the tuna. It seemed possible. But then she had made me once believe the Boer War was fought over feather boas.
I woke on my birthday the next morning feeling like shit with flu, cold and cough and eyes that wouldn't open properly. The night before we'd gone to a little cafe round the corner from our hotel to get a coffee and gateau. The first question asked, inevitably, was how many camels I wanted for M. The second inevitable question was whether I wanted some hash. I took out my liquorice Rizlas to make a roll-up. Everyone in the cafe looked at them, then wanted a couple of leaves. I knew I should have bought more packs with me.
So far – we're in Sousse – the buildings are great. Old tumbling down French ones – but lots of new, funky, post-modern ones too. Buildings are going up everywhere, new roads too. Tunisia feels quite affluent, liberal and modern. At least compared to its neighbours Morocco and Egypt.
The hotels are like palaces and (in the tourist area) Sousse feels like a second-rate Vegas. Caribbean casino, restaurants, nightclubs, all neon-lit. Hotels line the beach front. The whole town feels like hotels and hassles.
No dogs but hundreds of skinny little dying cats everywhere. I want to do something to save the cats. As a gesture I take some fish out to the black cat by the pool area – only to be bombarded by about eight cats all screeching and fighting and the fish is gone in less than a second.
I thought I finished a roll of film then realised I hadn't loaded the film. Monday, wake up ill, again. Sousse all day. Tuesday, Kairouan. Wednesday – waiting for a very late bus most of the day. Arrived in El-Jem with ten minutes left to see the impressive amphitheatre – we get in half price but have to make way for a car advert being filmed in the middle of it.
The next day on a first class train carriage to Gabés. Everyone, aside from the shabby tourists, looks so well-groomed, affluent, proper. The landscape remains the same. Half the sky lit by the sun, half by the moon and in the middle, cloud. The lighter the skin, the more affluent the people. On Tunisian TV, everyone has light skin. On the first class carriage, everyone has light skin. Finally approaching Gabés. A two-mile stream of palm trees and industrial factories, chimneys spewing yellow smoke, carrots from the ground a luminous orange. I thought we were going the wrong way on the train for a while.
Taxi to Matmata nouvelle – stalling – going back. Another taxi – Matmata (old town). Pulled over by the police. It feels like a pilgrimage going to where Star Wars was filmed. Star Wars full of Muslim architecture and costume. We chatted and laughed with a restaurant owner then ate in his restaurant. We were overcharged; we didn't say anything but it left a sour taste.
Back at the hotel, the pensioners are dancing to instrumental versions of My Way... When I Fall in Love... John Denver. Pensioners on parade – it's not a bad life.
George Harrison died today: 30th November 2001. I thought I'd given up smoking, but felt light-headed and had to go buy a pack. One shop had sold out of cigarettes – it took me half an hour to buy a pack in all. When I came back his death was there on the news. Yesterday we'd talked about him; one of his songs had been in my head all day (My Sweet Lord). We're half an hour from where The Life of Brian was filmed – George Harrison's Handmade Films produced it.
It being Ramadan, there's a feverish rush about fourish, and by five everything is empty – the medina, the nouvelle ville – because everyone is inside eating. We tuck into our Briks – a thin pastry with a whole fried egg built into it filled with tuna (of course), onion, harissa and parsley – with gusto.
Of course, it's only on our last day that we find in our hotel complex: sauna, shops, table tennis, indoor swimming pool and gym. Not that we would have used any of them anyway. But still.
Sousse, Tunisia, 2001
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Why is a Nando's ‘cheeky’?
There are various explanations for the origins of the British phrase ‘Going for a cheeky Nando’s’. Usually it dates back to someone on social media sometime in 2011 posting he was ‘going for a cheeky Nando’s with the lads’.
But there’s no explanation as to why it’s cheeky. My theory is it’s because they charge over £10 for a small piece of dry, burnt chicken and coat it in a hot sauce to disguise the fact that it’s completely tasteless. Combined with chips and coleslaw, you’re not looking at much change out of £20, for what is essentially the same as the chicken and chips you get at Chicken Cottage for less than £5. Great marketing, Nando’s. But pretty cheeky.
Previously on Barnfllakes:
Pet hates #3729: Nando's
But there’s no explanation as to why it’s cheeky. My theory is it’s because they charge over £10 for a small piece of dry, burnt chicken and coat it in a hot sauce to disguise the fact that it’s completely tasteless. Combined with chips and coleslaw, you’re not looking at much change out of £20, for what is essentially the same as the chicken and chips you get at Chicken Cottage for less than £5. Great marketing, Nando’s. But pretty cheeky.
Previously on Barnfllakes:
Pet hates #3729: Nando's
Monday, September 19, 2016
Top ten Jeff Bridges films
Lists of top ten Jeff Bridges films tend to focus on his performances, rather than the films, hence Rolling Stone has The Contender and The Door in the Floor in their top ten, two films I haven't even heard of let alone seen. Even recent films such as True Grit and Crazy Heart feature great performances from Bridges but aren't great films. Film critics have such short memories. I'm focusing on the films themselves; his run of films in the 1970s – from The Last Picture Show to Cutter's Way (1981, but signifying the end of the 70s) – is almost unparallelled in modern cinema (De Niro's trilogy of films, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, feel self-conscious and laboured compared to Bridges' laid back performances). Jeff Bridges is currently featuring in the well-received Hell or High Water (De Niro has almost completely erased his performances in The Deer Hunter and The Godfather Part II et al by years of terrible comedies).
1. Fat City (1972)
2. The Last Picture Show (1971)
3. Cutter's Way (1981)
4. Bad Company (1972)
5. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
6. The Big Lebowski (1998)
7. The Fisher King (1991)
8. Winter Kills (1979)
9. Star Man (1984)
10. Fearless (1993)
Previously on Barnflakes:
A Jeff Bridges too far
Random Film Review: Fat City
1. Fat City (1972)
2. The Last Picture Show (1971)
3. Cutter's Way (1981)
4. Bad Company (1972)
5. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
6. The Big Lebowski (1998)
7. The Fisher King (1991)
8. Winter Kills (1979)
9. Star Man (1984)
10. Fearless (1993)
Previously on Barnflakes:
A Jeff Bridges too far
Random Film Review: Fat City
Thursday, September 15, 2016
Random Film Review: Captain Fantastic
Dir: Matt Ross | 2016 | USA
Mark Kermode, reviewing Captain Fantastic in the Guardian, makes the link between the film and the Elton John album of the same name, released in 1975. Though there were references throughout to high culture, from Glenn Gould to Noam Chomsky, I must admit I felt the spirit of Bob Dylan permeate the film and was surprised at no mention of the man – until the final credits, when a lovely cover version of I Shall be Released (sung by Kirk Ross) is played over the letterpress-style end credits.
The film, in its rejection of consumer culture and retreating into the wilderness, reminded me of Bob Dylan circa. 1967-1970, the period after his infamous motorcycle crash when he vanishes from public view and retreats to his house in bucolic Woodstock, NY. Here he produces albums tinged with the pastoral, the spiritual and nature: The Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline and New Morning.
Other music in the film includes a snippet from Glenn Gould's famous Goldberg Variations. Linking to this and perhaps more relevant, Gould's Solitude Trilogy is a fascinating series of hour-long radio shows he produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Service between 1967-77. Reflecting the theme of 'withdrawal from the world', the first show looks at the Idea of North, specifically the North Canadian wilderness. Experimental in style, with over-lapping voices (nurse, sociologist, anthropologist, prospector) sometimes speaking at once, as well as music and the rumbling of trains, it creates a unique collage of sound. Quotes from it, such as 'it's easier to be against something than for something' and the battle 'not against mother nature but human nature' could almost come from the film.
The second part, The Latecomers, looks at Newfoundland. Recorded in 1969, with the sound of crashing waves roars continually over the soundtrack and a male voice declaring presciently ‘we’re all victims of technology’ and in the future we will pay people to be idle. An alternative to work will have to be found, and we need to find a fulfilling life without having to punch a clock every morning. It was hoped that the next generation would be able to combine material and spiritual life.
The third episode, Quiet in the Land, deals with the Mennonite community of Red River, Manitoba. Janis Joplin's anti-consumerism song Mercedes Benz (recorded three days before she died) plays over the voices. It questions the American Dream, and looks at alternatives to consumerism. The Mennonite community at the time were moving to the cities and becoming more materialistic. Solitude and isolation are the main themes of the trilogy; Gould himself was a bit of a hermit.
Viggo Mortensen's character (Ben Cash) in Captain Fantastic reminded me of my brother – everything from the beard to his way of life (though not the six kids). But by the end of the film, Ben has let go his rather extreme existence, and reached a happily compromise – something I mentioned in my recent Peru post, where I'd been looking fruitlessly for a happy medium between travelling (fun) and working (boring) for twenty years.
The film has had mixed reviews, but for me (and my girlfriend) it was pure joy and inspiration.
5/5
Mark Kermode, reviewing Captain Fantastic in the Guardian, makes the link between the film and the Elton John album of the same name, released in 1975. Though there were references throughout to high culture, from Glenn Gould to Noam Chomsky, I must admit I felt the spirit of Bob Dylan permeate the film and was surprised at no mention of the man – until the final credits, when a lovely cover version of I Shall be Released (sung by Kirk Ross) is played over the letterpress-style end credits.
The film, in its rejection of consumer culture and retreating into the wilderness, reminded me of Bob Dylan circa. 1967-1970, the period after his infamous motorcycle crash when he vanishes from public view and retreats to his house in bucolic Woodstock, NY. Here he produces albums tinged with the pastoral, the spiritual and nature: The Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline and New Morning.
Other music in the film includes a snippet from Glenn Gould's famous Goldberg Variations. Linking to this and perhaps more relevant, Gould's Solitude Trilogy is a fascinating series of hour-long radio shows he produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Service between 1967-77. Reflecting the theme of 'withdrawal from the world', the first show looks at the Idea of North, specifically the North Canadian wilderness. Experimental in style, with over-lapping voices (nurse, sociologist, anthropologist, prospector) sometimes speaking at once, as well as music and the rumbling of trains, it creates a unique collage of sound. Quotes from it, such as 'it's easier to be against something than for something' and the battle 'not against mother nature but human nature' could almost come from the film.
The second part, The Latecomers, looks at Newfoundland. Recorded in 1969, with the sound of crashing waves roars continually over the soundtrack and a male voice declaring presciently ‘we’re all victims of technology’ and in the future we will pay people to be idle. An alternative to work will have to be found, and we need to find a fulfilling life without having to punch a clock every morning. It was hoped that the next generation would be able to combine material and spiritual life.
The third episode, Quiet in the Land, deals with the Mennonite community of Red River, Manitoba. Janis Joplin's anti-consumerism song Mercedes Benz (recorded three days before she died) plays over the voices. It questions the American Dream, and looks at alternatives to consumerism. The Mennonite community at the time were moving to the cities and becoming more materialistic. Solitude and isolation are the main themes of the trilogy; Gould himself was a bit of a hermit.
Viggo Mortensen's character (Ben Cash) in Captain Fantastic reminded me of my brother – everything from the beard to his way of life (though not the six kids). But by the end of the film, Ben has let go his rather extreme existence, and reached a happily compromise – something I mentioned in my recent Peru post, where I'd been looking fruitlessly for a happy medium between travelling (fun) and working (boring) for twenty years.
The film has had mixed reviews, but for me (and my girlfriend) it was pure joy and inspiration.
5/5
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Top 5 over-rated sex locations
1. Beach
Salt plus sand. One word: chafing.
2. Public toilets
Unhygienic.
3. Mile-high club
Too cramped and clichéd.
4. Office
All the sexiness of a hospital/morgue.
5. Car/car park
Uncomfortable/weird.
Salt plus sand. One word: chafing.
2. Public toilets
Unhygienic.
3. Mile-high club
Too cramped and clichéd.
4. Office
All the sexiness of a hospital/morgue.
5. Car/car park
Uncomfortable/weird.
Thursday, September 08, 2016
Top ten sister films
1. Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)
2. My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
3. Hannah and her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)
4. Whatever happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962)
5. Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013)
6. Sisters (Brian de Palma, 1973)
7. Frozen (Chris Buck/Jennifer Lee, 2013)
8. The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999)
9. The Parent Trap (Nancy Myers, 1998)
10. Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)
2. My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
3. Hannah and her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)
4. Whatever happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962)
5. Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013)
6. Sisters (Brian de Palma, 1973)
7. Frozen (Chris Buck/Jennifer Lee, 2013)
8. The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999)
9. The Parent Trap (Nancy Myers, 1998)
10. Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)
Wednesday, September 07, 2016
Tuesday, September 06, 2016
Top ten Caroline songs
According to the Urban Dictionary, most Caroline's have a fine booty. I don't think I've ever fancied a Caroline but I have a friend who seems to have only dated Carolines. Even when he dated a German girl, that was a Carolyn. Caroline is the feminine form of Carl. No idea why it's been the subject of so many songs.
1. Sweet Caroline Neil Diamond
2. Caroline No The Beach Boys
3. Caroline Says II Lou Reed
4. Caroline Says I Lou Reed
5. Roses Outkast
6. O Caroline Matching Mole
7. Does Caroline know? Talk Talk
8. King and Caroline Guided by Voices
9. Caroline Fleetwood Mac
10. Caroline Aminé
1. Sweet Caroline Neil Diamond
2. Caroline No The Beach Boys
3. Caroline Says II Lou Reed
4. Caroline Says I Lou Reed
5. Roses Outkast
6. O Caroline Matching Mole
7. Does Caroline know? Talk Talk
8. King and Caroline Guided by Voices
9. Caroline Fleetwood Mac
10. Caroline Aminé
Monday, September 05, 2016
In 100 years everyone in the world will be dead
Recent research conducted by scientists has led to the discovery that, even with 353,000 babies being born today (UNICEF's estimated daily average), 99.9% of the world's population will be dead 100 years from right now. That is, the population of the world will be completely different a century from now. Miraculously, the next population will do pretty much exactly the same things as the previous population. This sobering, yet somehow inspiring discovery, has sent shock waves across the scientific community, with some scientists wondering what the point of it all is, and others figuring it's actually quite exciting, and a great opportunity to fuck up the world as much as possible until the next lot come along. The current population of the planet is just over 7 billion; there will be a lot more when the next batch comes along, in 100 years time. So far, 108 billion people have existed on planet earth; presumably, most of them have died at some point in the last 200,000 years.
This comes hot off the heels of scientists declaring – somewhat late in the day – a new geological epoch, the Anthoprocene, which they want to backdate to the 1950s. So for the past sixty-odd years we've all been happily existing in the Holocene epoch (or 'recent' – it began 9,700 years BCE), oblivious to the fact that we've actually been living in the Anthropocene epoch, or 'new age of man'.
Previously on Barnflakes:
Aspire to be average
This comes hot off the heels of scientists declaring – somewhat late in the day – a new geological epoch, the Anthoprocene, which they want to backdate to the 1950s. So for the past sixty-odd years we've all been happily existing in the Holocene epoch (or 'recent' – it began 9,700 years BCE), oblivious to the fact that we've actually been living in the Anthropocene epoch, or 'new age of man'.
Previously on Barnflakes:
Aspire to be average
Friday, September 02, 2016
Top ten female film characters
1. Ripley Alien
2. Scarlett O'Hara Gone with the Wind
3. Varla Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill
4. Sally The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
5. Dorothy The Wizard of Oz
6. Princess Leia Star Wars
7. Sarah Connor Terminator
8. Mary Poppins Mary Poppins
9. Mrs Robinson The Graduate
10. Annie Hall Annie Hall
2. Scarlett O'Hara Gone with the Wind
3. Varla Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill
4. Sally The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
5. Dorothy The Wizard of Oz
6. Princess Leia Star Wars
7. Sarah Connor Terminator
8. Mary Poppins Mary Poppins
9. Mrs Robinson The Graduate
10. Annie Hall Annie Hall
Thursday, September 01, 2016
Top ten river songs
1. The River Bruce Springsteen
2. River Man Nick Drake
3. Many Rivers to Cross Jimmy Cliff
4. Take me to the River Talking Heads
5. The River Tim Buckley
6. River Joni Mitchell
7. Ballad of Easy Rider Roger McGuinn
8. Watching the River Flow Bob Dylan
9. Down by the River Neil Young
10. Moon River Mancini and Mercer
Previously on Barnflakes:
Top ten river films
2. River Man Nick Drake
3. Many Rivers to Cross Jimmy Cliff
4. Take me to the River Talking Heads
5. The River Tim Buckley
6. River Joni Mitchell
7. Ballad of Easy Rider Roger McGuinn
8. Watching the River Flow Bob Dylan
9. Down by the River Neil Young
10. Moon River Mancini and Mercer
Previously on Barnflakes:
Top ten river films
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Notes on Apple Notes
Recently The Guardian, that online database of breathtakingly important Apple news, published an article on how Apple has lost its sense of simplicity. This is what Steve Jobs was all about and why we all loved the brand, its products, its adverts.
The lack of simplicity has emerged in recent years with each update of its computers, phones and tablets. It now steers too close for comfort to Microsoft, where clicking on one window leads you onto another... then another; where sub menus have sub menus. I can't even just click 'no updates' anymore – I've got to go a step further and say when I want an update (Later? Tonight? Tomorrow at 8am?). As each new OS on the computers have sought to emulate the phone iOS, it's become more fiddly and annoying, with notifications popping up all over the place like it was made for children (I know, probably was. I know also, you can turn off the notifications, but it took me two years to find out how).
The Notes app on the iPhone is a good example of an app which started simple then got unnecessarily complicated. Back in the early days of iPhone, Notes was simply for writing notes – as simple as a pen and paper. Then there's two kinds of notes – Google notes and Apple notes. And folders. And synced via iCloud. Then they naturally added a pen, paintbrush and eraser. And formatting – titles, heading, body copy, colours. And then inserting photos and videos too of course. Before you know it it's bloody Microsoft Word.
The lack of simplicity has emerged in recent years with each update of its computers, phones and tablets. It now steers too close for comfort to Microsoft, where clicking on one window leads you onto another... then another; where sub menus have sub menus. I can't even just click 'no updates' anymore – I've got to go a step further and say when I want an update (Later? Tonight? Tomorrow at 8am?). As each new OS on the computers have sought to emulate the phone iOS, it's become more fiddly and annoying, with notifications popping up all over the place like it was made for children (I know, probably was. I know also, you can turn off the notifications, but it took me two years to find out how).
The Notes app on the iPhone is a good example of an app which started simple then got unnecessarily complicated. Back in the early days of iPhone, Notes was simply for writing notes – as simple as a pen and paper. Then there's two kinds of notes – Google notes and Apple notes. And folders. And synced via iCloud. Then they naturally added a pen, paintbrush and eraser. And formatting – titles, heading, body copy, colours. And then inserting photos and videos too of course. Before you know it it's bloody Microsoft Word.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Are you sure you want to log out?
Asks the website/app.
No, I reply sarcastically, I just spent five minutes trying to locate the log out button and accidentally clicked on it for no apparent reason.
No, I reply sarcastically, I just spent five minutes trying to locate the log out button and accidentally clicked on it for no apparent reason.
Yes, I want to log out!
Monday, August 29, 2016
Top five office moments
The interesting thing about office life is there's nothing remotely
interesting about office life. In over four years in the same office I could count the
interesting things that have happened on one hand. And here they are:
1. The office Christmas party
In the lead up to Christmas there is magic in the air; people are more social; barriers come down; fun is to be had. By New Year, and back at work, the spell is broken. It was spoken about for months after but even by the Monday after the Friday office party just before Christmas, even the people who were there were unsure about who sat on whose lap, whose pocket her flicked gold chocolate coin had miraculously landed in, who put out whose cigarette with the fire extinguisher.
1. The office Christmas party
In the lead up to Christmas there is magic in the air; people are more social; barriers come down; fun is to be had. By New Year, and back at work, the spell is broken. It was spoken about for months after but even by the Monday after the Friday office party just before Christmas, even the people who were there were unsure about who sat on whose lap, whose pocket her flicked gold chocolate coin had miraculously landed in, who put out whose cigarette with the fire extinguisher.
In
other words, details were hazy two days after the event, let alone eight months. Seemingly insignificant events assumed massive proportions. Who threw the first cherry tomato? Was Steve really levitated? Did I really juggle with lemons? Details were hazy.
The
evening did not bode well. For a start the company was down to thirteen
members of staff. It had been double that six months ago. By
the time bingo, musical chairs and musical statues had finished (I'd come second in the last two; story of my life), and Secret Santa's opened, it was 5:30pm, and several people went home on the
dot. Nothing more was expected to happen. They'd been nibbles and a few
drinks. No one was feeling very merry. There was eight of us left. We toyed with going to the pub, but with booze, food and music in the office, we decided to stay.
We all started drinking and dancing. The two MDs of the company (both women), another three women and three guys, including me. One guy was too cool to dance, he just leaned against a post, stroking his beard. It was down to me, Amy, Steve and Laura to do the moves. Suddenly, a cherry tomato comes flying my way – and hits me on the arm. And that signals the start of the food fight. Tomatoes, carrots, apples, oranges, lemons, scotch eggs, crisps, cup cakes and chicken legs all go flying around the office. I'm pretty sure I juggled with the lemons.
At some point, one of the MDs opened the floodgates by smoking a cigarette in the office. It felt very naughty and decadent indeed. So others followed suit, even Steve, who hadn't had a cigarette for years, though I'm sure it was him who then let off the fire extinguisher. By now we were all pretty drunk, and started playing the shopping list memory game, 'I went to the shops and bought...' Traditionally a children's game, we played the adult version with an assortment of sexual toys in the basket, only some of which I'd actually heard of. I did quite well nevertheless.
Next the MD suggested levitation, something I used to play at school, where a group of us would put a couple of fingers underneath someone lying down and miraculously lift them up as if they were light as a feather. After a few false starts (giggling), I was chosen to lie down. Each person put their fingers underneath me, and spoke the same lines: 'He's looking sick / Call an ambulance / He's looking very ill / Where's the ambulance?' Then, 'He's dead' and whoosh – up I went. Sort of.
We finished with pushing each other around in the office chairs, went to a bar about 2am, then headed home. Naturally, I got lost about 3am or so when the night bus left me stranded in the middle of nowhere. Nevertheless, it had been a good evening.
2. The big showdown*
One was a production manager (PM), the other a freelance graphic designer (FGD). They didn't quite see eye to eye: the PM would design pages; the FGD would tinker with them for days. The showdown was like what the meeting of De Niro and Pacino in the film Heat should have been like. They were working opposite each other. It was lunchtime, the office virtually empty. Something snapped in the PM; probably it was the overpriced FGD fiddling with the Quark (yes, Quark) pages yet again. The PM started shouting at the FGD about changing the pages just before press day. The FGD had no choice but to shout back, telling him his pages were rubbish and needing changing. This goes on for a bit and by now they are both standing up. Then the FGD utters the words which might actually be straight from the film Heat: "If you want me gone, just say the word. I'm gone in five minutes. I'm out of here and you'll never see me again." Four years later, he's still there and the PM isn't.
3. The dramatic resignation*
The new magazine editor was born on exactly the same day, month and year as me – we had been on earth exactly the same time, and had had different life experiences to say the least. More worryingly, a young woman we worked with – well, her mother was also exactly the same age as us. He had issues: since leaving the army he'd been listless and lacked direction. I didn't know anything about him, except he'd only just met his nine year-old son for the first time the previous year. He'd had a turbulent affair for six months with a Spanish woman (who he said was crazy) a decade previously. Ten years later she'd called him up and said he had a nine year-old son. He'd been able to meet him once, in Spain, chaperoned by his son's mother's sister. Neither the mother or the sister approved of him, and didn't want him seeing his son again.
He worked with us for a few months. He obviously wasn't enjoying it. One day, just before home time, he was getting upset about being dictated to by PR agencies; he said he couldn't work under these conditions. The managing editor informed him it was the nature of the beast. His face turned red; he slammed a load of papers down on his desk; stood up, and declared, in that case, 'I resign'. It just came out, I wasn't sure he actually meant it. He looked surprised that the words had come out of his mouth. People don't resign like that any more; I admired it. There were only a few of us in the office, but the words had been uttered, and he had to pretty much follow through with it.
4. The crazy freelancer*
She looked like what I imagine a Marxist lesbian would look like. Very intense, she could barely look at men, and sneered when I suggested she could use the men's toilet (the women's being occupied). She slammed drawers and office stationary loudly and muttered to herself. The incident happened, again, at lunchtime; the office was almost empty. She was a freelance reporter, interviewing someone on the phone for a magazine article. At some point a couple of us sitting nearby realised she was having an argument with her interviewee, and her voice got louder and more aggressive. She had our full attention by the time she was shouting at him "You will not hang up on me! You will finish the interview! Don't you dare hang up on me!" She was gone the next day.
5. I resign
I saved the best till last didn't I?
*I know what you're thinking – the office was virtually empty in all three episodes – how was I the only person to witness all three events? Just lucky I guess.
I know I moan about office life a fair bit (see below) but seriously, taking a bunch of random people; putting them in a grey box with strip lighting (ie an office); staring at a screen all day; getting them to have to work together eight hours a day, five days a week; where passive aggressive behaviour is the order of the day; and do activities that are at best pointless, at worse painful; I don't know, it just seems like a perverse joke.
Previously on Barnflakes:
The dream of basic income for everyone
Don't become a graphic designer
Wasting time
Just a quick one
Four-day working week
Introverts vs extroverts
'In terms of' overtakes 'literally'
London Bridge Lunches
The Metros
Email étiquette
I'm literally not being funny but let me ask you a question
Aspire to be average
The Offensive Office
We all started drinking and dancing. The two MDs of the company (both women), another three women and three guys, including me. One guy was too cool to dance, he just leaned against a post, stroking his beard. It was down to me, Amy, Steve and Laura to do the moves. Suddenly, a cherry tomato comes flying my way – and hits me on the arm. And that signals the start of the food fight. Tomatoes, carrots, apples, oranges, lemons, scotch eggs, crisps, cup cakes and chicken legs all go flying around the office. I'm pretty sure I juggled with the lemons.
At some point, one of the MDs opened the floodgates by smoking a cigarette in the office. It felt very naughty and decadent indeed. So others followed suit, even Steve, who hadn't had a cigarette for years, though I'm sure it was him who then let off the fire extinguisher. By now we were all pretty drunk, and started playing the shopping list memory game, 'I went to the shops and bought...' Traditionally a children's game, we played the adult version with an assortment of sexual toys in the basket, only some of which I'd actually heard of. I did quite well nevertheless.
Next the MD suggested levitation, something I used to play at school, where a group of us would put a couple of fingers underneath someone lying down and miraculously lift them up as if they were light as a feather. After a few false starts (giggling), I was chosen to lie down. Each person put their fingers underneath me, and spoke the same lines: 'He's looking sick / Call an ambulance / He's looking very ill / Where's the ambulance?' Then, 'He's dead' and whoosh – up I went. Sort of.
We finished with pushing each other around in the office chairs, went to a bar about 2am, then headed home. Naturally, I got lost about 3am or so when the night bus left me stranded in the middle of nowhere. Nevertheless, it had been a good evening.
2. The big showdown*
One was a production manager (PM), the other a freelance graphic designer (FGD). They didn't quite see eye to eye: the PM would design pages; the FGD would tinker with them for days. The showdown was like what the meeting of De Niro and Pacino in the film Heat should have been like. They were working opposite each other. It was lunchtime, the office virtually empty. Something snapped in the PM; probably it was the overpriced FGD fiddling with the Quark (yes, Quark) pages yet again. The PM started shouting at the FGD about changing the pages just before press day. The FGD had no choice but to shout back, telling him his pages were rubbish and needing changing. This goes on for a bit and by now they are both standing up. Then the FGD utters the words which might actually be straight from the film Heat: "If you want me gone, just say the word. I'm gone in five minutes. I'm out of here and you'll never see me again." Four years later, he's still there and the PM isn't.
3. The dramatic resignation*
The new magazine editor was born on exactly the same day, month and year as me – we had been on earth exactly the same time, and had had different life experiences to say the least. More worryingly, a young woman we worked with – well, her mother was also exactly the same age as us. He had issues: since leaving the army he'd been listless and lacked direction. I didn't know anything about him, except he'd only just met his nine year-old son for the first time the previous year. He'd had a turbulent affair for six months with a Spanish woman (who he said was crazy) a decade previously. Ten years later she'd called him up and said he had a nine year-old son. He'd been able to meet him once, in Spain, chaperoned by his son's mother's sister. Neither the mother or the sister approved of him, and didn't want him seeing his son again.
He worked with us for a few months. He obviously wasn't enjoying it. One day, just before home time, he was getting upset about being dictated to by PR agencies; he said he couldn't work under these conditions. The managing editor informed him it was the nature of the beast. His face turned red; he slammed a load of papers down on his desk; stood up, and declared, in that case, 'I resign'. It just came out, I wasn't sure he actually meant it. He looked surprised that the words had come out of his mouth. People don't resign like that any more; I admired it. There were only a few of us in the office, but the words had been uttered, and he had to pretty much follow through with it.
4. The crazy freelancer*
She looked like what I imagine a Marxist lesbian would look like. Very intense, she could barely look at men, and sneered when I suggested she could use the men's toilet (the women's being occupied). She slammed drawers and office stationary loudly and muttered to herself. The incident happened, again, at lunchtime; the office was almost empty. She was a freelance reporter, interviewing someone on the phone for a magazine article. At some point a couple of us sitting nearby realised she was having an argument with her interviewee, and her voice got louder and more aggressive. She had our full attention by the time she was shouting at him "You will not hang up on me! You will finish the interview! Don't you dare hang up on me!" She was gone the next day.
5. I resign
I saved the best till last didn't I?
*I know what you're thinking – the office was virtually empty in all three episodes – how was I the only person to witness all three events? Just lucky I guess.
I know I moan about office life a fair bit (see below) but seriously, taking a bunch of random people; putting them in a grey box with strip lighting (ie an office); staring at a screen all day; getting them to have to work together eight hours a day, five days a week; where passive aggressive behaviour is the order of the day; and do activities that are at best pointless, at worse painful; I don't know, it just seems like a perverse joke.
Previously on Barnflakes:
The dream of basic income for everyone
Don't become a graphic designer
Wasting time
Just a quick one
Four-day working week
Introverts vs extroverts
'In terms of' overtakes 'literally'
London Bridge Lunches
The Metros
Email étiquette
I'm literally not being funny but let me ask you a question
Aspire to be average
The Offensive Office
Sunday, August 28, 2016
Top ten unexpected musical moments in movies
The musical genre is perhaps the most underrated (how can you not love Busby Berkeley?) in cinema, but delightful, moving, beautiful, surreal, unexpected musical – whether dancing or singing or both – moments often occur in non-musical films, sometimes in quite bad films (and not exactly great songs), as the following list demonstrates. But the mix of sound and image somehow works to create something sublime.
1. Mauvais Sang (1986) – Modern Love David Bowie
This extraordinary clip of Denis Lavant running, coughing, stumbling, dancing, cartwheeling and punching himself to the tune of David Bowie's Modern Love is one my favourite film sequences – it's certainly the reason Modern Love is my favourite David Bowie song. (Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha has a homage to the scene with Greta Gerwig dancing through NYC to the same song.)
2. Big (1988) – Heart and Soul / Chopsticks
3. Rush hour (1988) – War Edwin Starr
Best bit of the film.
4. Ten things I hate about you (1999) – Can’t take my eyes off you Frankie Vallie
Someone singing to a loved one in public is the ultimate romantic gesture, fraught as it with complete embarrassment and humiliation. Naturally, it always comes off okay in the movies.
5. 13 going on 30 (2004) – Thriller Michael Jackson
The song was also used to great effect by the inmates of a Filipino prison.
6. Pretty in Pink (1986) – Try a Little Tenderness Otis Redding
7. Almost Famous (2000) – Tiny Dancer Elton John
8. A Clockwork Orange (1971) – Singing in the Rain Gene Kelly
9. A Bigger Splash (2015) – Emotional Rescue Rolling Stones
Ralph Fiennes does Jagger.
10. Train wreck (2015) – Uptown Girl Billy Joel
Though this sequence is to woo back her boyfriend, it comes just after alcoholic/nymphomaniac Amy Schemer has got drunk and tried to rape a 16-year-old boy. I personally wouldn’t go anywhere near her.
Previously on Barnflakes:
Top ten film musicals
Modern Love
1. Mauvais Sang (1986) – Modern Love David Bowie
This extraordinary clip of Denis Lavant running, coughing, stumbling, dancing, cartwheeling and punching himself to the tune of David Bowie's Modern Love is one my favourite film sequences – it's certainly the reason Modern Love is my favourite David Bowie song. (Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha has a homage to the scene with Greta Gerwig dancing through NYC to the same song.)
2. Big (1988) – Heart and Soul / Chopsticks
3. Rush hour (1988) – War Edwin Starr
Best bit of the film.
4. Ten things I hate about you (1999) – Can’t take my eyes off you Frankie Vallie
Someone singing to a loved one in public is the ultimate romantic gesture, fraught as it with complete embarrassment and humiliation. Naturally, it always comes off okay in the movies.
5. 13 going on 30 (2004) – Thriller Michael Jackson
The song was also used to great effect by the inmates of a Filipino prison.
6. Pretty in Pink (1986) – Try a Little Tenderness Otis Redding
7. Almost Famous (2000) – Tiny Dancer Elton John
8. A Clockwork Orange (1971) – Singing in the Rain Gene Kelly
9. A Bigger Splash (2015) – Emotional Rescue Rolling Stones
Ralph Fiennes does Jagger.
10. Train wreck (2015) – Uptown Girl Billy Joel
Though this sequence is to woo back her boyfriend, it comes just after alcoholic/nymphomaniac Amy Schemer has got drunk and tried to rape a 16-year-old boy. I personally wouldn’t go anywhere near her.
Previously on Barnflakes:
Top ten film musicals
Modern Love
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
The dream of Basic Income for everyone
Imagine a society where every citizen gets £30,000 a year, paid for by the government, just for existing. Basic Income, also known as Unconditional Basic Income and Universal Basic Income, has been an economic theory for some time but has only recently become a feasible possibility. Jeremy Corbyn has been 'looking at' the theory, and several nations and states, including Switzerland and some cities in the Netherlands, have or will hold referendums on the topic (Switzerland recently rejected the plan but has been the first country to hold a vote for it). Ontario, Canada, is also looking to initiate a pilot project for Basic Income.
The concept is not a new one: from Thomas Paine to Richard Nixon the idea has been around, in various forms, for hundreds of years. Basically, Basic Income gives every individual a livable amount of income every year without means test or work requirement, regardless of any other income, regardless of background, sex or age.
There are some big questions around it – some economical (can it financially be done? Apparently, yes), others philosophical (what would we do with our time?). The time question is the most interesting one. Would we want to work? Well, a lot of would probably not, seeing as most of the population work in minimum wage, pointless soul-destroying jobs. Hopefully some people would still want to work (!), but the idea is they'd work fewer hours, giving them more free time and enabling others to also work part-time in their jobs, creating more work.
I literally dream of a world of Basic Income, where work and financial worry isn't the sole focus of our lives; where we're not wasting eight hours a day, five days a week doing mindless activities simply to exist; where we spend more time with our families and friends; where we have time to explore and develop other interests in life – spirituality, learning to play the violin, spending six months in Morocco painting. Being free from financial worry would enable us to pursue our dreams, and though – if that dream amounts to being a rock star, writer or painter – might not amount to fame and riches, at least we'd have the time and money to explore it. Alternatively, one could just become an alcoholic and watch YouTube videos all day and night.
"Socialism!" I hear you cry! It'll never work! Okay, let me try to sell you this one instead: Capitalism. A system where only the top 5% are the winners and the gulf between rich and poor gets wider and wider; where profit comes at the expense of everything from personal feelings to the environment; where corporations rule the world and have no accountability for whatever they do, whether it's destroy the environment or pay no taxes. Surely it'll never catch on.
Previously on Barnflakes:
Wasting Time
Four-day Working Week
Introverts vs Extroverts
Aspire to be Average
Absolutely Famous
The Offensive Office
The concept is not a new one: from Thomas Paine to Richard Nixon the idea has been around, in various forms, for hundreds of years. Basically, Basic Income gives every individual a livable amount of income every year without means test or work requirement, regardless of any other income, regardless of background, sex or age.
There are some big questions around it – some economical (can it financially be done? Apparently, yes), others philosophical (what would we do with our time?). The time question is the most interesting one. Would we want to work? Well, a lot of would probably not, seeing as most of the population work in minimum wage, pointless soul-destroying jobs. Hopefully some people would still want to work (!), but the idea is they'd work fewer hours, giving them more free time and enabling others to also work part-time in their jobs, creating more work.
I literally dream of a world of Basic Income, where work and financial worry isn't the sole focus of our lives; where we're not wasting eight hours a day, five days a week doing mindless activities simply to exist; where we spend more time with our families and friends; where we have time to explore and develop other interests in life – spirituality, learning to play the violin, spending six months in Morocco painting. Being free from financial worry would enable us to pursue our dreams, and though – if that dream amounts to being a rock star, writer or painter – might not amount to fame and riches, at least we'd have the time and money to explore it. Alternatively, one could just become an alcoholic and watch YouTube videos all day and night.
"Socialism!" I hear you cry! It'll never work! Okay, let me try to sell you this one instead: Capitalism. A system where only the top 5% are the winners and the gulf between rich and poor gets wider and wider; where profit comes at the expense of everything from personal feelings to the environment; where corporations rule the world and have no accountability for whatever they do, whether it's destroy the environment or pay no taxes. Surely it'll never catch on.
Previously on Barnflakes:
Wasting Time
Four-day Working Week
Introverts vs Extroverts
Aspire to be Average
Absolutely Famous
The Offensive Office
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Now we are ten
Ten years ago today, this blog started simply with 'Hello' followed by 'Is anyone out there?' It proved to be one of my most popular posts, amassing four comments in the space of over nine years. It was a hard act to follow, and ten years and over 800 posts later I'm still chasing the dream. You would have noticed I've been writing less and less posts – time and inspiration are often lacking. I'll try to keep up writing at least one a month. Thanks for watching.
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
Top ten river films
1. L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
2. Aguirre, Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
3. Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982)
4. Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972)
5. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
6. Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015)
7. The African Queen (John Huston, 1951)
8. Anaconda (Luis Llosa, 1997)
9. A River Runs Through It (Robert Redford, 1992)
10. The River Wild (Curtis Hanson, 1994)
2. Aguirre, Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
3. Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982)
4. Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972)
5. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
6. Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015)
7. The African Queen (John Huston, 1951)
8. Anaconda (Luis Llosa, 1997)
9. A River Runs Through It (Robert Redford, 1992)
10. The River Wild (Curtis Hanson, 1994)
Monday, August 08, 2016
Celebrating Cornwall's mining heritage
We visited ones around Carn Brae, walking some of the Great Flat Lode trail, a seven mile journey along the old tramway routes that miners used to use. On a beautiful day, the paths were virtually empty (most people at the beach, we surmised), and the mines are tumbling down and overgrown with ivy and flowers; it felt like stumbling across the ancient abandoned kingdoms of Cambodia or Peru. The mines look like Gothic ruined abbeys, churches and castles. I swear I heard the clippety clop of horses approaching us on the path – but it was empty; just the echo of history was all I heard.
Sunday, August 07, 2016
Travel first class on Southern trains
 |
| First class... before and after |
Saturday, August 06, 2016
In search of Emmett Grogan
"Mr Grogan writes so clearly that he almost convinces us the whole story could be true."
– The New Yorker
"This book is true."
–Emmett Grogan
"The best and only authentic book written on the sixties underground."
– Dennis Hopper
According to his autobiography, Ringolevio, A Life Played for Keeps, by the age of 21, Emmett Grogan (born Kenny Wisdom) had fought in a gang fight with the largest gang in New York (The Chaplains); spent time in jail; become a heroin addict, a burglar and a robber; watched as he and his mates kill a heroin addict with battery acid (it looks like heroin and leaves no trace); attended a posh prep school on Park Avenue, Manhattan, where he excels at basketball and goes to weekly parties with the rich kids and their parents for the sole reason to scope out the houses to rob them – which he does very successfully, waiting for the owners to go on vacation then looting them all of money and jewellery. Whilst doing this, he stays at a posh hotel and hangs out at Birdland listening to the likes of Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and Dizzy Gillespie. But when local gangsters get wind of his selling the stolen jewellery he becomes a wanted man.
He flees the States with $40,000 in his pocket; first to Amsterdam (on the boat across has an affair with a model), then Paris, where the tensions between the Algerians and the French are high – a bomb explodes just outside his hotel room. Meeting two men in a cafe, he drives with them across the Alps into Geneva, Switzerland then Italy, where he climbs mountains, learns to speak fluent Italian and helps build a church. He spends eight months in Heidelberg partying and spends a large chunk of his money; goes to Italy, witnessing the funeral of "Lucky" Luciano; then Rome, where he gets set up by a dealer called Squint Laszlo and spends seven months in jail (he's 17 by now). He swears revenge on Laszlo, tracks him down to the States, watches his house for a month, kills him with a shotgun, expertly making it look like an accident (they'd been a lot of recent mishaps with local residents killing themselves whilst cleaning their guns).
Emmett goes back to Italy and in Rome he watches films and reads the beat writers. He meets a girl, attends film school and immerses himself in New Wave cinema, Pasolini, Fellini. Adapts TS Eliot's Wasteland into a screenplay. Makes and acts in a few films, one of which wins a prize at a film festival but then is expelled from film school when one of the judges recognises him from when he was arrested and tried in Rome previously. Reads Joyce – goes to Dublin. Gets a job at the Guinness brewery, hangs out with the IRA, blows up a few buildings. Goes to London; writes pornography books for a while until, again, gangsters are after him for muscling in on their turf (his partner in writing had just been hospitalised).
(When he's not doing these things, he's either beating the shit out of someone, drinking Cutty Sark, taking drugs, getting busted by the cops, having casual sex (most notably in the back seat of a limousine with four beautiful black chicks and a lot of cocaine, whilst being driven through the Newark riots of 1967) or reading Beat writers.)
At 21, Emmett Grogan returns to the States for good, where he immediately gets drafted into the Vietnam war. In army training, where, naturally, he excels, Grogan deliberately gets himself discharged by popping a load of pills and aiming a bazooka at his fellow soldiers, and subsequently spends time in the psychiatric ward before being set free.
Grogan finds himself in San Francisco in the mid-1960s and becomes immersed in the counter culture, founding the Diggers, the anti-establishment anarchist group who distributed free food, put on improvised street theatre and organised free concerts with the like of The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin. Entirely distrustful of the whole flower power movement, he becomes a kind of outlaw figure and legend, equally admired and despised. His reputation spreads, and Grogan gives talks in London, New York and San Francisco; he coins the phrase "Today is the first day of the rest of your life"; hangs out with The Black Panthers, Timothy Leary, The Hell's Angels, Michael X, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Bob Dylan; organises the Rolling Stones' Altamont free concert (whilst in police custody). He kidnaps Governor George Romney and his wife, Lenore, in a large truck in San Francisco, managing to lose the FBI and the police. One of the most moving sequences in the book occurs when he leaves San Francisco briefly to learn how to hunt deer with an American Indian in a forest in New Mexico.
This was all before he was thirty; by thirty-five he would be dead of a heroin overdose. Whether or not it's all true or not is a moot point; it's a terrific read. Whether or not there even existed a man called Emmett Grogan is also fairly moot (my boon companion think he's fictional, and in the book there are several allusions to Emmett Grogan being a myth – he shuns all publicity, refuses interviews, the photos that exist of him are not him but an actor. He basically works like a dog, stealing food and setting up 'free' shops to help the poor and needy (an about-turn for someone who used to beat the shit out of people, and murdered a few too). There's not that much information about him online.
The 500-page autobiography, written in crystal clear, detailed prose in the third person, where, confusingly, for the first half of the book he is Kenny Wisdom before changing his name to Emmett Grogan, is part polemic and part unbelievable adventure story. Why is there not a film made of this man's life?
If writing an autobiography by the age of thirty seems a little vain, well, Kenneth Branagh, merely an actor, wrote his first one by the same age, and Jordan, a model, has so far ghostwritten* four, the first of which was the biggest selling autobiography sold at WH Smith** in a single week.
*I don't mind ghost-written autobiographies at all – unless they're a writer, there's no reason to suppose any celebrity should be able to write a book of their life. However, Jordan has also ghostwritten three novels, which is slightly beside the point for a novelist.
**I've been meaning to write a post about WH Smith for years, but it'll just consist of this: it's crap. It's always been crap. It's like jack of all trades, master of none. Its greetings cards are tacky, magazines and books bland and mainstream, chocolate overpriced, toys and stationary limited... Bring back Borders! Did I actually dream Borders? It was like my favourite shop ever, yet no one I mention it to have even heard of it.
– The New Yorker
"This book is true."
–Emmett Grogan
"The best and only authentic book written on the sixties underground."
– Dennis Hopper
According to his autobiography, Ringolevio, A Life Played for Keeps, by the age of 21, Emmett Grogan (born Kenny Wisdom) had fought in a gang fight with the largest gang in New York (The Chaplains); spent time in jail; become a heroin addict, a burglar and a robber; watched as he and his mates kill a heroin addict with battery acid (it looks like heroin and leaves no trace); attended a posh prep school on Park Avenue, Manhattan, where he excels at basketball and goes to weekly parties with the rich kids and their parents for the sole reason to scope out the houses to rob them – which he does very successfully, waiting for the owners to go on vacation then looting them all of money and jewellery. Whilst doing this, he stays at a posh hotel and hangs out at Birdland listening to the likes of Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and Dizzy Gillespie. But when local gangsters get wind of his selling the stolen jewellery he becomes a wanted man.
He flees the States with $40,000 in his pocket; first to Amsterdam (on the boat across has an affair with a model), then Paris, where the tensions between the Algerians and the French are high – a bomb explodes just outside his hotel room. Meeting two men in a cafe, he drives with them across the Alps into Geneva, Switzerland then Italy, where he climbs mountains, learns to speak fluent Italian and helps build a church. He spends eight months in Heidelberg partying and spends a large chunk of his money; goes to Italy, witnessing the funeral of "Lucky" Luciano; then Rome, where he gets set up by a dealer called Squint Laszlo and spends seven months in jail (he's 17 by now). He swears revenge on Laszlo, tracks him down to the States, watches his house for a month, kills him with a shotgun, expertly making it look like an accident (they'd been a lot of recent mishaps with local residents killing themselves whilst cleaning their guns).
Emmett goes back to Italy and in Rome he watches films and reads the beat writers. He meets a girl, attends film school and immerses himself in New Wave cinema, Pasolini, Fellini. Adapts TS Eliot's Wasteland into a screenplay. Makes and acts in a few films, one of which wins a prize at a film festival but then is expelled from film school when one of the judges recognises him from when he was arrested and tried in Rome previously. Reads Joyce – goes to Dublin. Gets a job at the Guinness brewery, hangs out with the IRA, blows up a few buildings. Goes to London; writes pornography books for a while until, again, gangsters are after him for muscling in on their turf (his partner in writing had just been hospitalised).
(When he's not doing these things, he's either beating the shit out of someone, drinking Cutty Sark, taking drugs, getting busted by the cops, having casual sex (most notably in the back seat of a limousine with four beautiful black chicks and a lot of cocaine, whilst being driven through the Newark riots of 1967) or reading Beat writers.)
At 21, Emmett Grogan returns to the States for good, where he immediately gets drafted into the Vietnam war. In army training, where, naturally, he excels, Grogan deliberately gets himself discharged by popping a load of pills and aiming a bazooka at his fellow soldiers, and subsequently spends time in the psychiatric ward before being set free.
Grogan finds himself in San Francisco in the mid-1960s and becomes immersed in the counter culture, founding the Diggers, the anti-establishment anarchist group who distributed free food, put on improvised street theatre and organised free concerts with the like of The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin. Entirely distrustful of the whole flower power movement, he becomes a kind of outlaw figure and legend, equally admired and despised. His reputation spreads, and Grogan gives talks in London, New York and San Francisco; he coins the phrase "Today is the first day of the rest of your life"; hangs out with The Black Panthers, Timothy Leary, The Hell's Angels, Michael X, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Bob Dylan; organises the Rolling Stones' Altamont free concert (whilst in police custody). He kidnaps Governor George Romney and his wife, Lenore, in a large truck in San Francisco, managing to lose the FBI and the police. One of the most moving sequences in the book occurs when he leaves San Francisco briefly to learn how to hunt deer with an American Indian in a forest in New Mexico.
This was all before he was thirty; by thirty-five he would be dead of a heroin overdose. Whether or not it's all true or not is a moot point; it's a terrific read. Whether or not there even existed a man called Emmett Grogan is also fairly moot (my boon companion think he's fictional, and in the book there are several allusions to Emmett Grogan being a myth – he shuns all publicity, refuses interviews, the photos that exist of him are not him but an actor. He basically works like a dog, stealing food and setting up 'free' shops to help the poor and needy (an about-turn for someone who used to beat the shit out of people, and murdered a few too). There's not that much information about him online.
The 500-page autobiography, written in crystal clear, detailed prose in the third person, where, confusingly, for the first half of the book he is Kenny Wisdom before changing his name to Emmett Grogan, is part polemic and part unbelievable adventure story. Why is there not a film made of this man's life?
If writing an autobiography by the age of thirty seems a little vain, well, Kenneth Branagh, merely an actor, wrote his first one by the same age, and Jordan, a model, has so far ghostwritten* four, the first of which was the biggest selling autobiography sold at WH Smith** in a single week.
*I don't mind ghost-written autobiographies at all – unless they're a writer, there's no reason to suppose any celebrity should be able to write a book of their life. However, Jordan has also ghostwritten three novels, which is slightly beside the point for a novelist.
**I've been meaning to write a post about WH Smith for years, but it'll just consist of this: it's crap. It's always been crap. It's like jack of all trades, master of none. Its greetings cards are tacky, magazines and books bland and mainstream, chocolate overpriced, toys and stationary limited... Bring back Borders! Did I actually dream Borders? It was like my favourite shop ever, yet no one I mention it to have even heard of it.
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