Staying at home: a guide to enjoying isolation

I know when to go out
And when to stay in
Get things done
– David Bowie, Modern Love

Apart from the imminent collapse of capitalism, the cancellation of Eastenders and the possible salvation of the environment, it’s hard to find much positivity around the coronavirus. Luckily, if you’re self-isolating or on lockdown, here’s some handy hints on staying in and having fun. I am never, ever bored at home – only at work. Home is the most exciting place, ever – it's also where the heart is; it's your refuge and safe place.

Imagine, if you like, it’s that wonderful time after Christmas and between New Year, when people are away, streets are empty, there's no work, you've stocked up on food for the holidays, the kids are at home...

Start a hobby
I am always working on a project of some sort – I’ve been doing a photography one for the past year, now in the post-production stage so I do it at home. I also draw, paint, design, and edit videos. Oh yeah, I write too, like this blog.

Learn something new
Mandolin or the violin.

Embrace chores
Ironing is fun.

Time for a spring clean
It is spring after all.

Plant a vegetable garden
If you’re lucky enough to have a garden, it’s time to ditch your pointless, perfect lawn, and plant some fruit and vegetables. You may have noticed there's none in the supermarkets any more. 

Cooking and baking
Proper cooking and baking take time. No need now to survive on microwave meals and Sainsbury's Meal Deals. Go on, make an effort, they'll taste so much better than anything the supermarkets can offer. Homemade bread is another experience compared to a pappy loaf of Hovis or Warburtons. 

Quality time with the family
You spend eight hours a day pointlessly working in a sterile office with people you, at best, feel absolutely nothing towards; at worst, actively despise. Presumably you love your spouse and children and want to spend more time with them!

N.B. If you don’t have a family or a partner, get a pet or even a plant. 

Board games, cards and jigsaws
Get out those 20th century games and try some actual, real interaction.

Nap
If it all gets too real, nap. It's a great way to break up the day. Read my top five here.

Read some proper books
I recommend 19th century Russian literature greats like Gogol, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky.

Watch some proper films
Start with some great directors like Bergman, Bunuel, Hitchcock, Tarkovsky, Godard and Fassbinder; work your way through their oeuvres. Discuss them over dinner.

If you've no time to do any of these because you've got to work at home, ignore the above. You have my sympathies.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Armchair atlases
The top 100 films
The top 100 books
Start of Basic Income for the Finnish 
The dream of basic income for everyone
Don't become a graphic designer
Wasting time
In terms of moving forward 
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
Top ten film directors

Not the narrowest street in the world

Flanked by two bakeries, a crappy Greggs on one side, a lovely French Patisserie Valerie on the other, Parliament Street in Exeter, Devon, is the narrowest street in Britain. The metal plaque beside it states: 'Believed to be the narrowest street in the world' but there's a narrower one in Germany. Nevertheless, at only 25 inches wide at its narrowest point, your typical lardy Brit wouldn't fit along it, especially after a visit to both bakeries.

Previously on Barnflakes
Notes on Brian Rice
The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, Exeter

Letters of complaint

It's now something of a habit that whenever I meet up with my daughter, I manage to embarrass her by complaining to someone, usually a waitrer or waitress, about the quality of something in a cafe, restuarant or some other public place. Last time it was a breakfast menu which said "an array of pastries", which my daughter ordered, to be presented with a single pastry. I complained to the Italian/Russian waitress, who exclaimed, "Oh! No one has ever complained about that before!" Everyone in the room looked at us. Daughter looked down at her plate, embarrassed. I probably turned red too. Well, I said, it says an array, which implies many, and there's only one. It's not going to fill anyone up. She got two more pastries (she still wasn't full and had be bought another breakfast half an hour later – elsewhere). Life went on. It's good to complain. As the world gets worse, I'm doing it more. Well, we're asked for our feedback constantly nowadays. Here's three recent emails.

TO CORNWALL COUNCIL

Hi Planning and Forest for Cornwall

Let me introduce you to each other!

I live in the Redruth/Carn Brea area. Whenever I go for a walk around the mining trails, I see some more land has been fenced up, boarded up or destroyed. This time it was the trees. Along the mining path that runs roughly parallel between Dudnance Lane and Carn Brea (couldn't find its exact name, if it has one), I noticed hundreds of trees had been chopped down, the small woodlands I'd noticed before which were abundant with trees were now threadbare (some of this, which I've also noticed elsewhere in the county, was due to new telegraph poles being installed – but really, the area all around them looks like a ton of napalm has been dropped. Surely this much destruction is unwarranted, or how about putting the telegraph poles elsewhere?).

Your Forest for Cornwall project is deeply flawed. You can't go around chopping down mature trees, expecting newly planted ones to take their place. It takes 100 years for a woodland to reach maturity.

From the saplings I've seen (specifically, along Kerrier Way), they have not been cared for since being planted. They are being suffocated in their horrible plastic tubes. Most look battered or dead. Trees did fine for billions of years without plastic tubes. The so-called mycorrhizal networks will presumably not operate with your roadside saplings (without similar, more mature trees nearby).

Wanton destruction in the name of car parks has occurred opposite Heartlands next to a hideous new supermarket, where another small woodland was destroyed, on the college grounds. Was the local populace consulted on the supermarket, or with McDonald's, KFC, Subway and other horrible outlets I will never visit, you just want to send the already-obese locals into an even earlier grave? If even these kinds of companies supported the local economy, but did you know at least 60% of profit from places like this (Costa, McDonald's etc) immediately leave the local area? Aside from the fact that places like McDonald's are contributing to the destruction of the rain forests.

Anyway, I diverge (the above is for the Planning department, but one day you will realise IT IS ALL CONNECTED).

YOU ARE TURNING ALL THE NATURAL LAND INTO CAR PARKS, RETAIL PARKS, CAR SHOWROOMS AND HOUSING. EVERY DAY BIT BY BIT YOU ARE DESTROYING THE NATURAL HABITAT OF WILDLIFE. YOU ARE PREVENTING BIODIVERSITY. YOU ARE TRYING TO CONTROL NATURE AND IT DOESN'T NEED OR WANT CONTROLLING.

Now, let me explain about your so-called Climate Emergency:

TREES ARE PART OF THE EQUATION; CHOPPING THEM DOWN ISN'T.

CARS AND CAR PARKS AREN'T.

A SPACE STATION ISN'T.

A HELIPORT ISN'T.

I'm not sure how to make it clearer. But you are managing to get planning completely wrong on a daily basis – or can't see how your decisions impact on wildlife. We don't need more car parks. We don't need new retail parks (with high streets simultaneously being decimated). We don't need new houses (the shortage is a myth – look at all the empty houses, buildings, offices, factories in the UK), we certainly don't need junk food outlets in deprived areas. Litter and fly tipping is everywhere in the area. On verges, in fields, in hedgerows. Plastic bottles, cans, nothing seems to get ever picked up.

This was only about the trees but I'm on a roll now.

My last complaint is concerning the St Austell 'eco village', whose name has changed to 'garden village', someone at the Eden Project informed me; presumably because there is nothing remotely 'eco' about it. I realise these are countrywide schemes requested by the government. However, choosing a site with abundant trees, foliage and wildlife, a haven for birds and a popular location for dog walkers is crazy. I had often climbed over the fence and enjoyed tranquil times watching birds flying over the lakes. I felt like I was in another world, all alone. Now when I pass by I see hundreds of trees and bushes destroyed.

The thing about humans, and small-minded, small-sighted councils in particular, is a compulsion TO DO STUFF. ALL THE TIME. In the case of nature, IT DOES IT ON ITS OWN. It wants to be left alone, it doesn't want you interfering. Or culling badgers or building roads or car parks or crappy houses or unhealthy supermarkets or destroying hedgerows – all these things prevent the growth of biodiversity and destroy what little natural habitat they have left.

TO FIRST BUS, CORNWALL
The price of bus journeys in Cornwall is EXTORTIONATE* (you know it's so when the bus driver apologises for a five mile journey costing almost a tenner). Let's take one of the poorest counties in EUROPE and have the buses three times more expensive than its wealthier neightbour, Devon (where an hour long journey has cost me £4), and five times more expensive than London (all journeys £1.50). Then let's have the buses turn up LATE once an hour, stop at every stop for five minutes, presumably to even out the journey but leading to frustration for all on board. Let's have the rail fares at least half the price of the buses. Let's also say cycling is always quicker than the bus, and walking is sometimes quicker. Let's have a climate crisis as well, and a half baked attempt to get people to use public transport more – not with the service or prices you provide. To cap it all, shall we only have one set of doors on the buses.

*I'm talking single or return fares, I realise the weekly/monthly pass works out good value if you use the service every day.

TO THE EDEN PROJECT
My first letter of complaint had been hand-written on the complaint form at the Eden Project, mainly about the food being wasted there. Someone replied via email. I wrote back to them.

Perhaps try giving away the fruit and veg to the deprived of St Austell. Charity begins at home and all that. I've also seen staff throw leftover sandwiches in the compost bin at the end of the day. Better than recycling or composting is reusing and eating.

I see St Austell's "eco" village, presumably inspired by yourselves, is well underway. I can tell because they've destroyed hundreds of trees, foliage and habitats for animals and birds. Progress, huh?

I feel bad criticising a charity when there are so many other evil organisations to target, but there's something deeply unfulfilling about the place, and a golden opportunity missed in these terrible times. And it's insane that your car parks are bigger than the actual Eden Project!

Previously on Barnflakes 
Bus pass
Success and failures of the Eden Project
Abandoned Halloween Pumpkins
The China Clay pits around St Austell
Reviving Reduth (and environs)

Never being lost for words

I often Google words for their meaning or spelling – recently I checked on verdant, for example. What I thought meant 'green with vegetation' is actually a brewing company in Falmouth – Verdant Brewing Co. Oblivion – a state of being unaware of things happening around you? Nope, first place is a post-apocalyptic adventure film starring Tom Cruise. Wayfinder is not 'a traveller on foot', but a type of Ray-Ban sunglasses. Dawn is a Pakistani newspaper. Supreme is a skateboard brand. Ripe is either an insurance company or a Network Coordination Centre. Quartz is a business-focused English-language international news organisation. Catastrophe is a TV series. Believe is a song by Shawn Mendes.

You get the idea. Any word I look up is something else. More and more words are becoming brands, products, bars, restaurants, films, songs. I think it belittles words. And we're now running out of them. Any word is up for grabs for crappy companies and pointless films.

And words don't have anyone to perform SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for them. The humble spelling and meaning of a word now takes second place to commerce, or worse still, a film (usually starring aforementioned Cruise in a movie such as Collateral or Magnolia).

It took a while to realise that to find the definition of a word, I need to Google the word followed by 'definition', 'meaning' or 'synonym'.

Origins of the word 'career'

The word ‘career’ has its more recent origins in ‘carer’, meaning to devote your life pointlessly for the benefit of another for no seeming advantage to yourself; to be unappreciated and underpaid. Previous to that, origins are mid-16th century; from the French carriere, the Italian carriera, and the Latin carrus; ‘wheeled vehicle' (such as a chariot or more likely, a cart); i.e. being taken for a ride; going round and round with no discernible point or destination.

Previously on Barnflakes
Inspirational demotivational business slogans
Top five office moments
The dream of basic income for everyone
Don't become a graphic designer
Dream job is an oxymoron
'Having a job makes you sick'
Don't just be yourself
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

Abandoned Halloween pumpkins

I’m really not sure most Britons realise that pumpkins can actually be eaten; according to The Guardian, some eight million (or 18,000 tonnes) squashes per year are binned after being carved out for Halloween.

In the States, pumpkin pie has long been a post-Halloween tradition (usually on Thanksgiving at the end of November), but the concept hasn't taken off here. Seeing as I'd stolen one from the Eden Project (I will explain), risking arrest and sore shoulders (it weighed a ton in my backpack), H said the least she could do was make a pumpkin pie with it. I've always loved the concept of pumpkin pie (probably from American movies), despise not being sure I'd ever tasted one (but somehow knowing exactly how it should taste). Anyway, two hours later, as if by magic, H produced the most gorgeous-looking pie. And it tasted it too, the added honey and cinnamon bringing out the subtle taste of the pumpkin. We had it with single cream.

So, stealing a pumpkin from the Eden Project: we visited recently and noticed hundreds of pumpkins, squashes and gourds on display for autumn and Halloween. I innocently asked a Team Member standing nearby what they were all for. For the Halloween carving, he replied. Okay, I said, what happens to them afterwards. They go in the compost, he told me. You know they can be eaten, I retorted. Yes, he said, a few are given to staff, the rest are composted.

A bit later in the rainforest biome, we saw bunches of bananas fallen on the ground from the banana trees. They'd obviously been there a while, some were going soft with ants all over them; others looked fine. I picked one off the bunch and shared it around; tasted yum.

Later still, outside and up the meandering slope a bit is a lovely-looking vegetable garden, pretty substantial, with aforementioned squashes as well as many other vegetables including tomatoes, aubergines and chard. But on closer inspection I noticed a lot of the vegetables looked rotten. Again, there was a handy Team Member walking past, and I asked him about the fruit and veg. He wasn't aware of anyone ever picking them and said they would just all rot. I was stunned. But what about everything the Eden Project stands for? He shrugged his shoulders. But what about the cafes and restaurants? They're run by different companies who source their food from outside. Surely something can be done – the vegetables sold to visitors or given to charity? Yeah, you're probably right. What if I took some now? If no one's looking, go ahead. So I did – a pumpkin and some tomatoes.

I was appalled by the waste of food (when there's Zero Waste slogans plastered on their website) – but remembered previously seeing staff binning leftover sandwiches at the end of the day. I always go into the Eden Project quite excited but leave feeling depressed, like it's all for appearances, all a sham, all for profit.

Anyway, in case you're wondering about the above photo of abandoned pumpkins spotted in the local woods post-Halloween (there were lots of others too), do not fret for it's all for a good cause – squirrels love eating them, as do birds, hedgehogs, badgers and foxes. No waste.

Previously on Barnflakes
Success and failures of the Eden Project
Notes on dog poop bags
Top ten breakfasts
Five a day?
Blackberry season

Boycotting buffoons

Hot on the heels of Kim Kardashian – Who Thankfully Looked Stunning On A Night Out with Kanye 17 Hours Ago – insulting an entire culture with her Kimono range, rapper-husband Kanye – who makes most of his money from sneakers, his first love – is hoping to cause similar offence with his low-cost homeless accommodation “inspired by the Star Wars slave architecture on Tatooine”.

If there was a media boycott on Kim Kardashian, Kayne West, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, they would annoy me a lot less. If you took the four buffoons, stupid at best, dangerous and offensive at worst, and banished them to an island with no form of communication to the outside world for the rest of their lives, you know what, it might even make me happy. They can all live happily ever after in Kanye's Star Wars huts.

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

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. 

Yes, I want to log out!

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.

Misheards*

Man chest hair

(Manchester)

A pair of teeth /

Imperative

(Aperitif)

Hot cock, late

(Hot chocolate)

Acid-faced finance

(Asset-based finance)

I sing sugar

(Icing sugar)

We eight at nine

(We ate at nine)

Snot sleeve shirts

(Short sleeve shirts)

Becks any dicks

(Eggs Benedict)

Hygiene

(Hi Jean)

*Mist herds?

Previously on Barnflakes:

Overheard #10

Mishearing Dylan

City Syndromes

There aren't many cities which have a syndrome named after them – Stockholm is probably the most well-known but there are a few others, including Helsinki, Lima, Oslo, Paris, Florence and Jerusalem. Going to any one of these cities made me think I'd automatically succumb to their syndromes – but I haven't so far. Stockholm syndrome is the phenomenon where victims of a crime, such as hostages in a robbery, express positive emotions towards their captors. The term comes from a bank robbery in Stockholm in 1973.

Less well known is the Helsinki syndrome, usually referred to when mistakenly meaning Stockholm syndrome, such as in the movie Die Hard, for example, and by Richard Hammond on Top Gear, but it actually originates from the Helsinki Accord of 1975, which attempted to thaw relations between the communist bloc and the west. It was non-binding. The syndrome alludes to a psychological lack of attention, for example if you'd run over a deer in your car but blocked out all memory of it (as it was too upsetting).

Other cities with syndromes sound like they're just getting on the city syndrome bandwagon: Lima syndrome, coined in 1996, is the opposite of Stockholm, so it's where the criminals feel sympathy for their hostages. Oslo syndrome posited the theory that Stockholm syndrome can be applied to an entire people – in the case of Kenneth Levin's 2005 book, The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege, it's the Arab-Israel conflict.

By the time we get to the Paris syndrome, things are getting odd: it's a delusional state which can occur whilst visiting the city. Affecting mainly Japanese tourists, it's apparently an extreme form of culture shock and is blamed on Japanese magazines which feature idealised images of Paris. Florence syndrome, or Stendhal's syndrome, is a similar occurrence, which can produce fainting and confusion when exposed to beauty and art, such as is found in the Italian city. Jerusalem syndrome involves psychotic decompensation when visiting the city.

Paris, Florence and Jerusalem are the only three syndromes that pertain to being in the actual city (and all involve the difference between the city of the imagination, and being unable to cope with the actual reality of the place); with the others it doesn't matter. For example, you can suffer from Oslo syndrome in Jakarta and Stockholm syndrome in London, as long as you get kidnapped, of course.

In the news recently: there was a China syndrome of sorts the other day when the Chinese stock market suffered heavy losses. The term actually refers to a nuclear meltdown, from the somewhat outdated notion that the meltdown would go far down to the other side of the world (apparently, China). Also a fine 1979 thriller starring Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda.

Contexts

The dumped chest of drawers covered in rubbish beside the council estate bins was worthless, until it was taken home, cleaned, and flogged for £150 at a vintage fair. The tack at the car boot sale was worth next to nothing, until identical items appear in vintage shops in Columbian road, EC1, then it becomes vintage, retro crap, I mean chic, and sells for ten times as much. What I'm getting at is that stuff is all about context. And people are all about context too.

My ex bemoans the fact that I (and my parents too actually) like seeing my daughter in context (ie where she lives, not just visiting me) but like seeing animals in a zoo as compared to seeing them in the wild, context is everything.

In a Ted Talk, educationist Ken Robinson talks about creativity in education. He argues that creativity is largely squeezed out of children at a young age in favour of maths, English and the sciences; he believes this is wrong – and cites the example of a now-famous ballet dancer who at school displayed signs of ADHD (this was before the term was invented, mind) and would have been wrongly diagnosed had it not been for an attentive teacher – who realised she just wanted to dance. She went on to start her own dance company and perform in such shows as Cats the Musical.

Many of us are stifled at school and work unable to fulfil our full potential in either. We need to be in the right environment and context to perform well at school and work – all institutions have a tendency to pigeon hole and fail - or don't give a shit – to spot our true talents.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Atmosphere
Absolutely famous

Doing it yourself all hours

In the old days, rich and even not so rich people used to have everything done for them by servants, butlers and cooks. Some still do today. But generally, today more than any other time, despite – or because of – technology and so-called leisure time, we have to do virtually everything ourselves. It's fair enough we have to dress ourselves and make dinners, but now just about everything else is self-service: petrol stations, supermarkets, and recently the post office. I mean, shouldn't we get a discount if we have to pack our own food or assemble our own furniture? It all feels like more hard work, especially if the bloody machine doesn't work.

It's just been announced that shops will be extending their opening hours on Sundays, and the post office has recently extended its opening times too (no idea why; no one sends letters anymore – let's blame technology again; funny how such an old-fashioned institution has been revitalised due to the internet). All this means more time to spend in queues, more time to get frustrated by self-service machines.

I vaguely remember a time when shops were open 9-5, Monday to Saturday, and closed all day Sunday. If I'd been an adult in those days I would probably have died: if one was doing a 9-5 job, when did they have time to buy food, let alone post letters?

I've always been bemused by shops closing when work finishes; surely they'd do a better trade opening when most people finish work – so, say, 5pm to midnight? The only people around during the day are, well, the retired, the young, the poor and out of work – not, presumably, the demographic of the biggest spenders.

Everyone's a curator

Once upon a time, if you wanted to be a curator (from the Latin for 'take care'), you needed a good honours degree and a PhD in your specialism or a Masters in museum studies. You would also find skills in chemistry, physics, design, business administration, human resources and marketing useful. You would start off doing unpaid work in a museum, then become a museum assistant and eventually working your way up to become a curator (no, life never worked that way for me, either).

However, the modern, hip way to do it is much quicker. Just about everything cool is curated nowadays, be it a website, Instagram account, music festival, DJ set list or a pop up restaurant menu. Maybe even a gallery or museum exhibition. This involves absolutely no experience, skills or qualifications; mostly it's a case of just being a cool musician, photographer, critic, artist or chef and writing a list of your favourite things. Curating can even just be sharing some of your favourite things on the web.

Not surprisingly, proper curators are getting miffed at these upstarts poaching their good, and hard worked for, name. But the English language is constantly evolving (or devolving, depending on your point of view) and no doubt they will come up another term to better describe their job and expose the hipster curators for what they are. Like, er, proper traditional curator?

The Regeneration Game

I genuinely start to feel a little queasy when I read words like 'regeneration' and phrases like 'fresh urban thinkers' and 'cultural place-making', all of which were read in an Evening Standard article about the 'cultural quarter' planned at Nine Elms and Vauxhall. The piece was essentially an advertorial, naturally, and included phone numbers of estate agents in the body copy. I felt like weeping.

It's all part of the Bilbao effect, where a poor, industrial city was revitalised by plonking a post-modern art gallery in the middle of it; in this case it was Frank Gehry's Guggenheim, an extraordinary building which houses art unable to compete with it.

As I've mentioned previously, this model has been replicated in several dilapidated UK seaside towns including Bexhill-on-Sea, Margate and Eastbourne (with mixed results) and now parts of London too.

Traditionally, though, struggling artists would move into poor, edgy areas and rent cheap studio space. Over time, artisan bakeries and art galleries would pop up, the developers would move in, ruin any character the place had in the first place, and everyone (except the rich, who would move in) would be priced out. This has happened in the east end of London on a large scale in areas like Dalston, Shoreditch and Hoxton. What's also happening now, though, is that this formerly not-exactly-perfect-but-at-least-organic process (which might take years) is forsaken for ready-made 'artists quarters' to provide instant culture kudos and authenticity in order to make a fast buck.

Kings Cross is a recent successful regeneration story which has rebranded itself from a neglected, dodgy no-go area (though I, perversely, prefer the old days of the Scala, the drunks and the skanky prostitutes – now that was character) into an 'extraordinary neighbourhood' with bars, restaurants, apartments, offices (including the Guardian newspaper) and culture. But as a Guardian article points out (whilst failing to mention their new offices being based there), although the area is open to the public, it's all privately owned and a criticism of such projects has been that they favour business over community.

Says Naomi Colvin, Occupy activist: 'You may possibly go to some officially sanctioned kind of entertainment activity which is sponsored by X but there's no scope for people to do something of their own – to do something spontaneous.' Indeed, everything's hunky dory as long as you are working, shopping, eating, drinking or indulging in some kind of X-sponsored activity.

The so-called housing crisis (where 72,000 London homes remain empty and God knows how much empty office space there is) has meant large swathes of the capital being ruined, in particular along the Thames the so-called luxury apartments which to me look ugly as sin. These exclusive, elitist, gated communities have all the atmosphere and charm of a morgue (and indeed, largely remain empty; bought as investment). And they're all identical, with their Carluccio's, Waitrose's and water features.

A form of ethnic (or at least social) cleansing is occurring where a borough like Wandsworth admitting to displacing poor residents to Birmingham to make way for shiny new apartments for the shiny new rich. This is apparently legal. Similarly, I've watched the Heygate estate in Elephant and Castle be completely demolished to make way for new flats as part of the regeneration of the whole area with no concern for the local residents who have no way of affording the new housing.

As London becomes a rich man's circus where community is contrived and art is commerce, the character of the city is being annihilated before our eyes. Developers, big business and government expect us to be thrilled about these 'exciting new retail and office opportunities' but they're all bland and boring and don't really benefit us at all.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Diversity deficit
Modern architecture is rubbish
The Lighthouse at King's Cross

Diversity deficit

It's well known that London is rapidly becoming a millionaire's playground, with large swathes of it bought up by big business and foreign tycoons whilst the poor are priced out. This, in theory, should make it a more interesting and fun place. To be rich is to be free, independent, to do whatever you damn well like. Unfortunately, as no doubt you've noticed, the new affluent areas look identical; bland and homogeneous, devoid of character, like airports the world over.

Conversely, it follows that poor areas should be dull and depressing: after all, there's no money, no freedom, no choice. Yet poorer areas are usually far more interesting than affluent ones. This is usually to with the colourful, multi-cultural mix of people. Traditionally vibrant, poor and multi-cultural areas such as Peckham, Dalston and Brixton are all now rapidly changing but the streets still feel dynamic and full of character. The life is on the street, as it is predominately in Asia and Africa, and these parts of London buzz with the colour, sights, taste and smells of Lagos or Marrakesh (however, I'll be the first to admit that predominately white, poor areas are insufferably depressing).

But the funny thing about being rich is – it's such a leveller. It doesn't matter if they're white American, Saudi, Chinese or Russian – they're rich all the same, with the same tastes. The rich have a diversity deficit. Once you have the most expensive car, watch, house and wife, where do you go from there? Exclusivity is actually less choice by its very nature – it's the top of the pyramid. It's less choice by choice. But if you've got Poundland and Primark and a limited budget the opportunities are endless.

Death of the Polymath

Picture Leonardo da Vinci as your ultimate polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. It seems almost greedy of him to have so many abilities, what with the rest of the population in those days being unable to read let alone paint masterpieces and invent stuff. Even Michelangelo, though arguably not quite touched with the same brush of genius as Leonardo, did paint the Sistine Chapel (though obviously not all by himself) and carved some decent sculpture, including David, as well as being an accomplished architect, poet and engineer.

The Renaissance – which means rebirth – was a great time of learning, enlightenment and flourishing creativity in the arts and sciences. So it makes sense that the term Renaissance Man derives from this age, where men were experts in many fields of art and science (and indeed, the division between the two wasn't as marked as it is now).

Victorian times also embodied many of these Renaissance elements, with great leaps in knowledge, science, engineering and the arts. It seems polymaths flourished in these times too, and some were autodidacts (I imagine the Victorian polymath as a gentleman – always a man – of means, pottering around in his laboratory or on the Devon coast with his geology hammer and notebook).

In the sciences there was Thomas Young (1773-1829) who made important discoveries in the fields of  vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony and Egyptology. Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) was an explorer, meteorologist, statistician, biometrician and expert in personal identification. William Whewell (1794-1866) was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, as well as being a scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science who also achieved distinction in both poetry and mathematics.

Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) was an explorer, geographer, translator (most famously of the Kama Sutra and A Thousand and One Nights), writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist (he apparently spoke 29 languages), poet, fencer, and diplomat.

Even if they weren't actually 'officially' deemed polymaths, Victorians such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle packed an awful lot into their days: he was rather dismissive of his most famous character Sherlock Holmes, and thought he would be remembered instead for the dozens of other sci-fi, fantasy, historical and romance novels he wrote, as well as plays, poetry and non-fiction works. Conan Doyle was also a physician (before he became a full-time writer) and prolific public speaker who dabbled in politics. He was a tireless campaigner for justice (see Julian Barnes' book Arthur & George) and in his later years, advocate of Spiritualism. Likewise, William Morris (1834-1896) was a textile designer, poet, novelist, translator and socialist activist.

Nowadays we don't stay at jobs as long as we used to, so we ought to all be seasoned polymaths, but going from, say, admin assistant in one company to marketing assistant in another, doesn't exactly embody the spirit of the term. The contemporary polymath is more likely to be a pop star who also acts in Eastenders.

There is so much knowledge floating around at the click of a button (or swipe of a screen) that there's really no time or reason to become a polymath: if we want to understand something, we look it up, then move onto the next thing. Instead of polymaths, we now have generalists (the opposite of specialists) who aren't as bright as polymaths, but like to know a little bit of everything.

For me, it's enough to get out of bed in the morning, commute to work, perform a soul-destroying pointless activity all day, go back home, eat, go to sleep, wake up and do it all over again. That's being a polymath in my book.

Crisp colours

Ever since I can remember, green packets of crisps meant Cheese and Onion; blue packets was Salt and Vinegar; red was Ready Salted. Maybe it was because it was always that way that made it seem logical – I imagined the onions as green spring onions; and blue is the colour of the sea where salt comes from. Ready Salted is in the name – ready = red. Whatever the reason, the colour seemed to reflect the taste  somehow. But since the 1980s, Walker's crisps have insisted on the reverse: their Cheese and Onion crisps come in blue packs; their green packs contain Salt and Vinegar crisps. I've never got used to this and never will. It just seems perverse, akin to a council suddenly deciding to change the meaning of traffic light signals – the red light meaning go and the green light signifying stop.

Such is the influence of Walker's that other brands now emulate their backwards crisp packet colouring – I've recently discovered Sainsbury's crisps follow the same pattern. It irks me; there should be standardisation of such things. Customers in supermarkets complain that they've bought the wrong pack of crisps – yes, they could read the pack but the shelves are so full of different brands and varieties, it would be reassuring to buy according to colour and not have the complication of having to actually read the pack.

The three basic crisp types – despite the introduction of such mouth watering flavours as Sweet Chill, Paprika, Marmite, Salsa, Steak & Ale, Honey & Mustard – have stood the test of time and remain the best selling crisp varieties.

Previously on Barnflakes
The agony of choice

Socks for Life

Suddenly, socks, which used to be hidden and purely functional, are now hip, ubiquitous and to be showed off. Before Christmas I noticed several adverts belittling the so-called dull tradition of giving socks as presents. Socks and underwear are like my dream presents. For me, nothing else gets more personal, practical and closer to the skin than socks and pants. So this year it's been good to see two features – in the Evening Standard and Time Out – featuring sock subscription services. Socks, ties and pants often seem like the only spheres where the average man can truly express himself sartorially. I love the idea of sock subscriptions – I am always getting holes in mine, and never have enough.