Shocking news: turns out that Starbucks isn’t the best coffee in London. In fact, it was recently noted that:
(a) there has been an overwhelming number of exceptionally good [coffee] places opening over the past 18 months,
(b) many of these places are owned by, or staffed by Aussies and Kiwis, and
(c) the path of good coffee seems to lie in either central London (more explicitly, Soho and surrounding areas) or the East End (with a bias towards Hackney, Shoreditch and Clerkenwell/ Farringdon).
- Charmaine Mok, Timeout, Friday 31 July 2009
And so begins the tale of my quest to find the best coffee in London, hopefully with a happy ending.
Thus far, I have compiled a coffee ‘wish-list’, and am working my way through it as quickly as my money and legs will take me. I will update this list as and when I try new coffee.
09 November 2009
Urban Ramblings Part One
Date: 23 September, 4.30- 7.30pm
Start: Tower Hill Station
Finish: Royal Courts of Justice, Strand
Guide: Timeout London Walks, vol. One, Dan Cruikshank, 'Building Blocks'.
Length: guide says 7 miles/ 5.5 hours. I did a slightly modified route that I reckon was about 6.5 miles, in 3 hours.
Fantastic because: discovering such serene, gorgeous Churches felt magical and special; they were a welcome and calming sanctuary from the bustle around me, and it was almost like entering a different world.
Less fantastic because: getting dirty looks from City workers because you're blocking their streets looking touristy. They don't like.
So. In my day-to-day job I hate tourists. To the extent that I used to avoid them and the line of their photos, then became indifferent, but now *actively* seek to walk in front of them when they're taking a picture of Big Ben (a big clock yes but still JUST A CLOCK) and feel a certain satisfaction in releasing my tension by accidentally-oops-on-purpose barging into them when they've stopped in a particularly offensive place and I'm trying to buy lunch/get to work before I'm late/leave work. I suppose that working pretty much dead in the centre of Trafalgar Square, Houses of Parliament, Downing Street and the London Eye is never going to allow for much refuge from tourists, but I still like to complain. I love where I work, I just don't like to share.
Anyway, where am I going with this, and why have I bothered to indulge in such a long rambling vent of frustration over tourists? It's for more than just cathartic purposes (although I do feel better now I've released today's rage); it's so that you can fully appreciate the enormity of the inner turmoil and self-loathing this Urban Ramble caused me. I was deliberately and knowingly turning myself into a guidebook-toting, rush-hour-wandering, meandering, photograph-taking tourist, and god help me, I bloody enjoyed it. I may have even purchased some liquid refreshment from a certain American chain whose logo is green, white and features a crowned lady in a circle.
And so it was that, armed with only a small umbrella, map, phone and the sundry items contained within the strange and terrifying depths of a woman's handbag, I set upon Tower Hill. My journey commenced as follows:
4.30: exit Tower Hill station. Think: looks like rain's on the way.
4.32: it's raining.
4.33: after brief discussion with self about the sensibleness or otherwise of undertaking what I thought at the time would be nearly five and a half hours of walking in the rain, decide to soldier on regardless. Tower of London is covered with scaffolding and, for some reason, advertising. A sign (ho ho) of the times? Lots of tourists (like myself, I realise – and a wave of self-loathing hits me, not for the last time this afternoon), but also office-y people. Why aren’t they at work still? Shouldn’t they be trading away whatever remains of the London Stock Exchange or something?
4.40: Come to Lutyens’ War Memorial, as directed by the book. I don’t really get it.
4.41: Come to something which I realise is *actually* Lutyens’s War Memorial. Other thing was ugly stone building on hotel. This makes more sense now : it resembles the Cenotaph very closely, which figures, as he designed that and all. As I work very near to the Cenotaph, it occurs to me that I should, in an hour or so, be leaving work and battling against tourists to get to Westminster Tube, just as I have just battled against workers hoping to get to Tower Gateway Station. I am everything I have ever despised in the world, and yet I don’t mind too much. Really I’m just pleased at not having to be the embittered commuter, battling the tourists, for just one day; there but for the grace of God go I, etc.
4.50: St Olave’s Church: this was Samuel Pepys’ favourite Church and he wrote some lovely things about it. The gardens are quite sweet and I take a short amble through them, past where Sam himself is buried. Then spot a tramp cooking his dinner on the other side of the graveyard. Leave, briskly, noting to self: Do Not Make Eye-Contact.
4.58: Stop by wall of Church to write this down. Get moved on while writing this. Now feel strange affinity with tramp.
5-6pm or thereabouts: wandering around Fenchuch St / Leadenhall St Market / Gherkin / Lloyds Building etc etc. This is all very lovely, inspirational etc, and it is genuinely exciting to be in such a dynamic place with such a, sorry for the trite language but yes, buzz. You can almost smell the economy burning. What you can also smell, and feel, hear, touch and palpably taste, is the annoyance of City Folk who are desperately trying to get to places quickly. I sympathise: I am normally one of them- if somewhere’s worth going then it’s worth going to quickly, I say. However, today, I’m more interested in taking witty pictures of Old/New City of London (crumbling Church in the background with Gherkin in foreground etc) and just taking it all in, that I can’t quite keep pace and as such, they are pretty ratty with me. But I watch them (from a safe distance, sitting on a wall inobtrusively) and it turns out they’re pretty ratty with everyone and everything, so I don’t take it too personally. I can understand anyway; I was preventing the Lloyds / BNP Paribas workers from getting to their Chablis/ Strongbow, respectively. Time for a break.
I was originally sitting in the shop, fuming and thinking about how cathartic it’d be to write out my story of woe and horror and 30p overpaid but I now can’t be bothered to describe my Starbuck annoyance; it does serve me right for purchasing coffee from Starbucks after all. Onwards!
6-7pm: This was more freestyle: I decided I didn’t want to go all the way to Moorgate since all there was to see was more Churches and big buildings, and I’d seen a lot of them already. Instead, I went to the Guildhall and drank in its big-ness, then to a handfull of backstreets around Goldman Sachs and drank in their cute and small-ness, then got deliberately lost around Bank (since I knew my way around there fairly well anyway and had seen a lot of what the guide promised) and re-found myself at St Paul’s Cathedral, which was superbly beautiful at that time of evening. Needed toilet; followed signs for toilet but didn’t find it. What I did find was a huge spurting fountain instead; hardly an adequate substitute I’m sure you’ll understand.
7pm: decided that I would terminate my voyage at the far end of Fleet Street (where it turns into Strand), but would end with just one more spot: a pilgrimage to Samuel Johnson’s house. Found this down a lovely backstreet that you’d never know was there, were it not for about 15 signs from a mile radius pointing it out to every Tourist in the vicinity (including, I suppose, on this occasion, me). However, this didn’t seem to work perfectly because the couple of foreign tourists who were visiting around the same time I was didn’t actually know what they were visiting. I took great patriotic pleasure in telling them, and so it was that I realised that I needed to stop being a tourist, like, now.
So back to the land of knowing smirks and not needing a map to get from one place to another, away from discovery and back to familiarity, no longer to be the annoyance but once again to take the role of annoyed, furious, incredibly busy and important (obviously) worker. And the lesson: am I more tolerant, now that I’ve seen the other side of the coin? Now that I have been that person who was happily and peacefully meandering around this wonderful city, taking in its centuries of glorious history and inspiring new developments, pausing occasionally to capture the marvellous spectacle with my camera or to consult my guidebook to decide where next my adventure would take me? Of course not. Now, get the fuck out of my way; I’m going to miss my train.
Start: Tower Hill Station
Finish: Royal Courts of Justice, Strand
Guide: Timeout London Walks, vol. One, Dan Cruikshank, 'Building Blocks'.
Length: guide says 7 miles/ 5.5 hours. I did a slightly modified route that I reckon was about 6.5 miles, in 3 hours.
Fantastic because: discovering such serene, gorgeous Churches felt magical and special; they were a welcome and calming sanctuary from the bustle around me, and it was almost like entering a different world.
Less fantastic because: getting dirty looks from City workers because you're blocking their streets looking touristy. They don't like.
So. In my day-to-day job I hate tourists. To the extent that I used to avoid them and the line of their photos, then became indifferent, but now *actively* seek to walk in front of them when they're taking a picture of Big Ben (a big clock yes but still JUST A CLOCK) and feel a certain satisfaction in releasing my tension by accidentally-oops-on-purpose barging into them when they've stopped in a particularly offensive place and I'm trying to buy lunch/get to work before I'm late/leave work. I suppose that working pretty much dead in the centre of Trafalgar Square, Houses of Parliament, Downing Street and the London Eye is never going to allow for much refuge from tourists, but I still like to complain. I love where I work, I just don't like to share.
Anyway, where am I going with this, and why have I bothered to indulge in such a long rambling vent of frustration over tourists? It's for more than just cathartic purposes (although I do feel better now I've released today's rage); it's so that you can fully appreciate the enormity of the inner turmoil and self-loathing this Urban Ramble caused me. I was deliberately and knowingly turning myself into a guidebook-toting, rush-hour-wandering, meandering, photograph-taking tourist, and god help me, I bloody enjoyed it. I may have even purchased some liquid refreshment from a certain American chain whose logo is green, white and features a crowned lady in a circle.
And so it was that, armed with only a small umbrella, map, phone and the sundry items contained within the strange and terrifying depths of a woman's handbag, I set upon Tower Hill. My journey commenced as follows:
4.30: exit Tower Hill station. Think: looks like rain's on the way.
4.32: it's raining.
4.33: after brief discussion with self about the sensibleness or otherwise of undertaking what I thought at the time would be nearly five and a half hours of walking in the rain, decide to soldier on regardless. Tower of London is covered with scaffolding and, for some reason, advertising. A sign (ho ho) of the times? Lots of tourists (like myself, I realise – and a wave of self-loathing hits me, not for the last time this afternoon), but also office-y people. Why aren’t they at work still? Shouldn’t they be trading away whatever remains of the London Stock Exchange or something?
4.40: Come to Lutyens’ War Memorial, as directed by the book. I don’t really get it.
4.41: Come to something which I realise is *actually* Lutyens’s War Memorial. Other thing was ugly stone building on hotel. This makes more sense now : it resembles the Cenotaph very closely, which figures, as he designed that and all. As I work very near to the Cenotaph, it occurs to me that I should, in an hour or so, be leaving work and battling against tourists to get to Westminster Tube, just as I have just battled against workers hoping to get to Tower Gateway Station. I am everything I have ever despised in the world, and yet I don’t mind too much. Really I’m just pleased at not having to be the embittered commuter, battling the tourists, for just one day; there but for the grace of God go I, etc.
4.50: St Olave’s Church: this was Samuel Pepys’ favourite Church and he wrote some lovely things about it. The gardens are quite sweet and I take a short amble through them, past where Sam himself is buried. Then spot a tramp cooking his dinner on the other side of the graveyard. Leave, briskly, noting to self: Do Not Make Eye-Contact.
4.58: Stop by wall of Church to write this down. Get moved on while writing this. Now feel strange affinity with tramp.
5-6pm or thereabouts: wandering around Fenchuch St / Leadenhall St Market / Gherkin / Lloyds Building etc etc. This is all very lovely, inspirational etc, and it is genuinely exciting to be in such a dynamic place with such a, sorry for the trite language but yes, buzz. You can almost smell the economy burning. What you can also smell, and feel, hear, touch and palpably taste, is the annoyance of City Folk who are desperately trying to get to places quickly. I sympathise: I am normally one of them- if somewhere’s worth going then it’s worth going to quickly, I say. However, today, I’m more interested in taking witty pictures of Old/New City of London (crumbling Church in the background with Gherkin in foreground etc) and just taking it all in, that I can’t quite keep pace and as such, they are pretty ratty with me. But I watch them (from a safe distance, sitting on a wall inobtrusively) and it turns out they’re pretty ratty with everyone and everything, so I don’t take it too personally. I can understand anyway; I was preventing the Lloyds / BNP Paribas workers from getting to their Chablis/ Strongbow, respectively. Time for a break.
I was originally sitting in the shop, fuming and thinking about how cathartic it’d be to write out my story of woe and horror and 30p overpaid but I now can’t be bothered to describe my Starbuck annoyance; it does serve me right for purchasing coffee from Starbucks after all. Onwards!
6-7pm: This was more freestyle: I decided I didn’t want to go all the way to Moorgate since all there was to see was more Churches and big buildings, and I’d seen a lot of them already. Instead, I went to the Guildhall and drank in its big-ness, then to a handfull of backstreets around Goldman Sachs and drank in their cute and small-ness, then got deliberately lost around Bank (since I knew my way around there fairly well anyway and had seen a lot of what the guide promised) and re-found myself at St Paul’s Cathedral, which was superbly beautiful at that time of evening. Needed toilet; followed signs for toilet but didn’t find it. What I did find was a huge spurting fountain instead; hardly an adequate substitute I’m sure you’ll understand.
7pm: decided that I would terminate my voyage at the far end of Fleet Street (where it turns into Strand), but would end with just one more spot: a pilgrimage to Samuel Johnson’s house. Found this down a lovely backstreet that you’d never know was there, were it not for about 15 signs from a mile radius pointing it out to every Tourist in the vicinity (including, I suppose, on this occasion, me). However, this didn’t seem to work perfectly because the couple of foreign tourists who were visiting around the same time I was didn’t actually know what they were visiting. I took great patriotic pleasure in telling them, and so it was that I realised that I needed to stop being a tourist, like, now.
So back to the land of knowing smirks and not needing a map to get from one place to another, away from discovery and back to familiarity, no longer to be the annoyance but once again to take the role of annoyed, furious, incredibly busy and important (obviously) worker. And the lesson: am I more tolerant, now that I’ve seen the other side of the coin? Now that I have been that person who was happily and peacefully meandering around this wonderful city, taking in its centuries of glorious history and inspiring new developments, pausing occasionally to capture the marvellous spectacle with my camera or to consult my guidebook to decide where next my adventure would take me? Of course not. Now, get the fuck out of my way; I’m going to miss my train.
21 September 2009
Today Louise Explains... urban ramblings, part 0.
A blog update; shurley some mishtake? I've been properly neglectful recently (resisting urge to make Haringey council joke here), I know I know, and I am very very sorry. It's that time of year when Jews repent for their wrongdoings so I'm very much in the mood for atonement. Firstly, here are my new year's resolutions:
My body is a temple (and I don't mean H.P. Lovecraft's Temple.) and I am going to start treating it at such, by bestowing upon it greater gifts of exercise, sleep and nutrition.
Lunch is expensive and disappointing if I buy it from the work canteen, Boots or Tesco's (which are about the only places I ever get to), and exciting and free/cheap if I bring it from home. I'm going to stop being stupid and do the latter far, far more.
To buy many more navy blue clothes. I shouldn't have too much trouble with this one.
To visit Israel (this one's in progress...the planning that is, not the actual trip. I'm not in Israel now.)
To smile more on the Tube, and in general, so I don't end up with a droopy lined face where the corners of the mouth point downwards automatically into a cartoon-esque "sad face". This terrifies me.
To be a good driver.
To list things I’ve enjoyed doing and to make plans to do them again and to bring new people with me this time.
To sing, dance and run more.
To save up and purchase (and then add more) things on my Wish List of Awesome:
Shanah Tovah and lots of apples & honey to those of you who don't know what the first bit means. xxx
My body is a temple (and I don't mean H.P. Lovecraft's Temple.) and I am going to start treating it at such, by bestowing upon it greater gifts of exercise, sleep and nutrition.
Lunch is expensive and disappointing if I buy it from the work canteen, Boots or Tesco's (which are about the only places I ever get to), and exciting and free/cheap if I bring it from home. I'm going to stop being stupid and do the latter far, far more.
To buy many more navy blue clothes. I shouldn't have too much trouble with this one.
To visit Israel (this one's in progress...the planning that is, not the actual trip. I'm not in Israel now.)
To smile more on the Tube, and in general, so I don't end up with a droopy lined face where the corners of the mouth point downwards automatically into a cartoon-esque "sad face". This terrifies me.
To be a good driver.
To list things I’ve enjoyed doing and to make plans to do them again and to bring new people with me this time.
To sing, dance and run more.
To save up and purchase (and then add more) things on my Wish List of Awesome:
- Fitflop UGG-style boots (about £115)
- Aquascutum trench coat (lots of moneys)
- electric piano (ditto but am getting some assistance with this one)
- gym membership (about £28/month)
- jogging bottoms (£20?)
- haircut (less if I can help it!)
- forest green tights from H&M (£3, good old Hennes)
- skin illuminator (about £25's worth of advantage points... need to buy a few more meal deals although this is in direct contravention of pt 2, above)
Shanah Tovah and lots of apples & honey to those of you who don't know what the first bit means. xxx
06 June 2009
Today Louise Explains... modern art pretentious wank.
I quite like a lot of what would be referred to as ‘modern art’. Not just Pollack or Kandinsky, but even slightly more divisive stuff such as Fontana’s slashed canvas, or Nan Goldin’s uncomfortably candid photos; I’m not of the ‘if I could do it it’s not art’ school. And just so we're clear, it’s not the product which I consider to be pretentious wank; I do like modern art per se. So I enjoyed a recent evening of modern art-related escapades as part of Timeout/Whitechapel Gallery/Art Council – run ‘First Thursdays’. On the first Thursday of each month, lots of galleries in East London open late and have events etc. Many have free wine too, as we found to our delight when we started off at the Kowlasky Gallery at the DCA, Farringdon, where we were shushed by a pretentious wanky lady who nervously scuttled around telling people to be quiet, looking very disapprovingly at us for whatever heinous crime we'd committed, possibly that of existing, making it very obvious that she was thinking 'you know and I know that you're not going to buy anything, you're just going to stand there drinking the free wine, and I'm very suspicious of you'. I always find this kind of pretentious wankery ironic - especially when you’re looking at modern art which is pushing boundaries, saying ‘fuck you’ to authority, y’know.. generally not being constrained by the norm. But you have to experience it quietly and in an extremely decorius, sober manner - I thought for a minute that we'd accidentally taken the train to Normandy for the D-Day memorial service. However- did I mention there was free wine? And the art (interpretations of Orwell's 1984) was actually pretty good.
Brief interlude: I should mention at this point that our next stop was a small gallery where we walked in, saw the television screening showing a naked man, sitting on a Perspex box, trousers down, pooing, and then we left. There were only middle-aged white men in suits in this gallery. Very strange.
If I disliked the fact that the atmosphere in the DCA wasn’t quirky or expressive enough, I should’ve been pleased to enter the next place, where the building was asymmetrical, shabby and quirky, but not nearly so much as the haircuts and general attire of the amazingly cool people we shared the “space” (it’s not a gallery, it’s a space. Yup.) with. The ones outside had shunned the suffocating convention of standing up, choosing instead to sprawl over the concrete ground, in an edgy fashion. The girls were clad in skin-tight ripped leopardskin jeans, vintage-esque sweatshirts, brooches, heavy eyeliner, trilbies and pumps. The boys also. Yes, that’s right; we were in Hoxton. Meanwhile, inside, Alex and I were finding it increasingly difficult to out-pretentious the others- we struck upon a crack in the wall and spoke of how it clearly referred to the chasm in people’s hearts created by globalisation and the war in Iraq. Then one Hoxtonite (who’d probably popped over for the evening from his comfortable bedsit in Holland Park) said to another, completely seriously, ‘yah but like, it’s rahly about the space.’
I don’t want to be closed-minded or come across as a philistine, but I find a lot of pretentious modern art wank totally baffling. When people complain about disliking modern art, most of the time they actually quite like or at least don’t mind the paintings/installations, but it’s that little square of text next to the exhibit in the museum which puts them off; pretentious wank written by pretentious wankers. Having said this, I will keep trying with the modern art scene as I had a lot of fun nonetheless and the building of last place genuinely was pretty cool, if lacking in terms of Health and Safety (flip flops and crumbling stone staircases don’t mix, kids). We left Hoxton and headed for bagels, with me feeling profoundly uncool, but a little relieved that at least my hair was the same length on both sides.
Brief interlude: I should mention at this point that our next stop was a small gallery where we walked in, saw the television screening showing a naked man, sitting on a Perspex box, trousers down, pooing, and then we left. There were only middle-aged white men in suits in this gallery. Very strange.
If I disliked the fact that the atmosphere in the DCA wasn’t quirky or expressive enough, I should’ve been pleased to enter the next place, where the building was asymmetrical, shabby and quirky, but not nearly so much as the haircuts and general attire of the amazingly cool people we shared the “space” (it’s not a gallery, it’s a space. Yup.) with. The ones outside had shunned the suffocating convention of standing up, choosing instead to sprawl over the concrete ground, in an edgy fashion. The girls were clad in skin-tight ripped leopardskin jeans, vintage-esque sweatshirts, brooches, heavy eyeliner, trilbies and pumps. The boys also. Yes, that’s right; we were in Hoxton. Meanwhile, inside, Alex and I were finding it increasingly difficult to out-pretentious the others- we struck upon a crack in the wall and spoke of how it clearly referred to the chasm in people’s hearts created by globalisation and the war in Iraq. Then one Hoxtonite (who’d probably popped over for the evening from his comfortable bedsit in Holland Park) said to another, completely seriously, ‘yah but like, it’s rahly about the space.’
I don’t want to be closed-minded or come across as a philistine, but I find a lot of pretentious modern art wank totally baffling. When people complain about disliking modern art, most of the time they actually quite like or at least don’t mind the paintings/installations, but it’s that little square of text next to the exhibit in the museum which puts them off; pretentious wank written by pretentious wankers. Having said this, I will keep trying with the modern art scene as I had a lot of fun nonetheless and the building of last place genuinely was pretty cool, if lacking in terms of Health and Safety (flip flops and crumbling stone staircases don’t mix, kids). We left Hoxton and headed for bagels, with me feeling profoundly uncool, but a little relieved that at least my hair was the same length on both sides.
21 May 2009
Today Louise Explains... the wonderful world of MP lonely hearts adverts.
Are you looking for love? If so, one of these honourable members could be looking for you!
Oldham East. Man with own nappies and nail varnish WLTM younger brunette with strong regional accent for fun and non gurkha-related chats out of the public eye. No headmistresses.
Slea(ze)ford. Old Etonian with own homes, well-tuned piano and very clean moat. Seeking special person to while away new-found spare time, not fussy on age, height, smoker, drinker, interests, sense of humour, personality, etc. but must have no spots, blemishes or moles.
Brentford. Couple seeking third for easy-going fun. We are F/M, mid-50s, professional, two homes, SW London. Are you discreet? If so, we are Keen to meet you.
Manchester. Me: small red-head with own motorcycle and a passion for communities and local government. You: squirrel enthusiast.
Havant. Intellectual with GSOH seeks similar for meeting of minds (both of them mine) and joke-swapping. No light-bulb gags.
Barnet. Nice chap, sensitive and genuine, seeks soulmate for long walks, opera and companionship, denial of holocaust, inciting racial hatred. No ethnics please.
Redditch. Recently separated, lady in her prime seeks new partner in crime. Have own home plus spare room in sister’s house, lots of scatter cushions. Likes: law and order, surveillance, biometric data. Dislikes: habeas corpus, Shami Chakrabarti, cannabis, immigration statistics leaks, pornography. No police officers.
Hull(o). Do you enjoy making chip butties, working men’s clubs and playing croquet? Big-boned, cuddly chap from working-class background, two toilet seats, mock tudor beams, seeks whore in bedroom, wife in kitchen, to help fight the upper-class establishment from one of my two Jaguars. Must be good cook, cannot stress this enough.
Camberwell. Person seeks another person for neutral kinship and fully egalitarian relationship, trips to Greenham Common and equal sharing of household chores. Can make reasonable adjustments for disabilities and at least 50% of shortlisted candidates will be women, gay and black/minority ethnics.
More to follow in due course, please feel free to suggest your own.
Oldham East. Man with own nappies and nail varnish WLTM younger brunette with strong regional accent for fun and non gurkha-related chats out of the public eye. No headmistresses.
Slea(ze)ford. Old Etonian with own homes, well-tuned piano and very clean moat. Seeking special person to while away new-found spare time, not fussy on age, height, smoker, drinker, interests, sense of humour, personality, etc. but must have no spots, blemishes or moles.
Brentford. Couple seeking third for easy-going fun. We are F/M, mid-50s, professional, two homes, SW London. Are you discreet? If so, we are Keen to meet you.
Manchester. Me: small red-head with own motorcycle and a passion for communities and local government. You: squirrel enthusiast.
Havant. Intellectual with GSOH seeks similar for meeting of minds (both of them mine) and joke-swapping. No light-bulb gags.
Barnet. Nice chap, sensitive and genuine, seeks soulmate for long walks, opera and companionship, denial of holocaust, inciting racial hatred. No ethnics please.
Redditch. Recently separated, lady in her prime seeks new partner in crime. Have own home plus spare room in sister’s house, lots of scatter cushions. Likes: law and order, surveillance, biometric data. Dislikes: habeas corpus, Shami Chakrabarti, cannabis, immigration statistics leaks, pornography. No police officers.
Hull(o). Do you enjoy making chip butties, working men’s clubs and playing croquet? Big-boned, cuddly chap from working-class background, two toilet seats, mock tudor beams, seeks whore in bedroom, wife in kitchen, to help fight the upper-class establishment from one of my two Jaguars. Must be good cook, cannot stress this enough.
Camberwell. Person seeks another person for neutral kinship and fully egalitarian relationship, trips to Greenham Common and equal sharing of household chores. Can make reasonable adjustments for disabilities and at least 50% of shortlisted candidates will be women, gay and black/minority ethnics.
More to follow in due course, please feel free to suggest your own.
12 May 2009
Today Louise Explains... the beauty of mental kindness.
"A person who has good thoughts can never be ugly though. Whether you have a wonky mouth, a crooked nose, or a double chin, if you think good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."
-Roald Dahl, The Twits p.15
This morning on the tube, I was (as ever) mildly put out by a lady whose cardinal sin was to stand a little bit too close to me, thereby obstructing the reading of my book, just a bit. As the train trudged along, I got progressively, fractionally more uptight, my head practically reeling with all of her perceived crimes, letting myself get more and more wound up about it. By the time we had gotten to Leyton, I harboured such deep resentment towards this woman that my first reaction, had she tried to leave the train at the next station and spectacularly not minded the gap, I possibly would have laughed with mirth first and gone to help second. I could practically feel the beads of sweat tracking their way down my cheek, my teeth gritted and it requiring all the self-control I could muster not to.....
CRACK. There was suddenly an angry confrontation – raised voices, someone hissing at another passenger, muttering to themselves afterwards, pure vitriol. Surprisingly, this wasn’t me – this was Exhibit Number One herself, who had obviously been too busy being annoyed at some other hapless passenger to even notice her own comportment. And at that moment, I noticed how wrinkled her face was – like she’d spent the better (or worse, I suppose) part of her life sucking lemons through a straw, and she was damn unhappy about it – and how her little angry face was contorted into an expression of such rage and antagonism, and how genuinely bothered she seemed by the whole situation which ultimately was nothing. And I giggled. My shoulders dropped, my hands unclenched, my expression softened, and I smiled for the rest of the journey to work.
This episode demonstrates extremely well why mental kindness is a great habit to get oneself into. It sounds absolutely batshit crazy, and feels it at first, until you realise that it genuinely does lift your mood and make all of those necessary transactions and encounters with the outside world that much more bearable, that it is genuinely worth perservering with. It’s not difficult to do, you’ll pick it up as you go along, but here are some basic pointers:
Practising mental kindness means doing so both to yourself and others.
To yourself, it means being a bit less hard on yourself, giving yourself some leeway and mentally patting yourself on the back from time to time and saying, ‘aw, poor me’ – and actually meaning it. There’s a clear difference between doing this, and thinking ‘I am going to have some me-time’ and plugging in your Glade Airwick, or eating a bar of Galaxy Caramel. This is a genuine attempt to be self-aware enough to recognise changes to your emotional state and your mood, try and understand why this might be the case, and give yourself a break. Rather than trying on a dress in a size 8 and then berating yourself for being fat and greedy when it doesn’t fit, how about not even getting to the stage where you end up clothes shopping in a bad/irritable mood? Mental kindness to self is infinitely more difficult than to others to successfully observe, and I struggle with this constantly, which is why it’s probably best to start this as soon as possible and get into practice. It’s hugely worth it, though, because you can overcome obstacles which don’t actually exist as they are imposed only by your own self-criticism and doubt. Before I start talking in self-help catechisms though, let’s move on to...
Others. This is slightly more simple, since it primarily involves two things:
1. Keeping things in perspective; and
2. Smiling.
Perspective means that the lemon-faced lady above wouldn’t have spent her whole life procuring an ugly face which bears the tell-tale lines of years spent thinking ugly, bitter thoughts. People almost definitely don’t realise that they’re being as annoying as they are – you probably spent a good part of your day doing the odd thing that others find annoying – give them a break. Or at least don’t let yourself get wound up about it; force yourself to smile. It needn’t be a huge, wide grin, but you will assume that at rest your face doesn’t look annoyed or pissed off: the news is that if you’ve been thinking annoyed thoughts then your face will portray this. When you try putting on an expression which is mid-neutral to ‘pleasant’, you will be surprised at first how different this feels to what it’s replacing; it will hit you how you must have looked before, and you will make a mental note to keep your face looking bright and pleasant in future. You will forget.
As mentioned, though, this isn’t a problem, because it will become more intuitive as time goes on and you keep pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and forcing yourself not to get wound up by ridiculously tiny, petty things. And I would recommend that you do keep forcing yourself; as unlikely as it sounds, people will react better to you when you practise mental kindness – I don’t necessarily buy into the aura thing, but I do genuinely think that people can sense something in what you give out to the surrounding area. If that something is barely-contained rage, you’re going to get negativity back. If you are bobbing away serenely, calmly, and pleasantly – if you force yourself to smile at people and engage in tiny snippets of small-talk, give away a seat on the tube even (god forbid)- you will have this repaid tenfold in the quality of your daily life and transport around this uptight little city. And if you do it for no other reason, do it because no amount of Estée Lauder moisturiser can prevent the horrible, ugly lines you will get after 60 years of verbal unkindness – and possibly the black-eye or two as well.
-Roald Dahl, The Twits p.15
This morning on the tube, I was (as ever) mildly put out by a lady whose cardinal sin was to stand a little bit too close to me, thereby obstructing the reading of my book, just a bit. As the train trudged along, I got progressively, fractionally more uptight, my head practically reeling with all of her perceived crimes, letting myself get more and more wound up about it. By the time we had gotten to Leyton, I harboured such deep resentment towards this woman that my first reaction, had she tried to leave the train at the next station and spectacularly not minded the gap, I possibly would have laughed with mirth first and gone to help second. I could practically feel the beads of sweat tracking their way down my cheek, my teeth gritted and it requiring all the self-control I could muster not to.....
CRACK. There was suddenly an angry confrontation – raised voices, someone hissing at another passenger, muttering to themselves afterwards, pure vitriol. Surprisingly, this wasn’t me – this was Exhibit Number One herself, who had obviously been too busy being annoyed at some other hapless passenger to even notice her own comportment. And at that moment, I noticed how wrinkled her face was – like she’d spent the better (or worse, I suppose) part of her life sucking lemons through a straw, and she was damn unhappy about it – and how her little angry face was contorted into an expression of such rage and antagonism, and how genuinely bothered she seemed by the whole situation which ultimately was nothing. And I giggled. My shoulders dropped, my hands unclenched, my expression softened, and I smiled for the rest of the journey to work.
This episode demonstrates extremely well why mental kindness is a great habit to get oneself into. It sounds absolutely batshit crazy, and feels it at first, until you realise that it genuinely does lift your mood and make all of those necessary transactions and encounters with the outside world that much more bearable, that it is genuinely worth perservering with. It’s not difficult to do, you’ll pick it up as you go along, but here are some basic pointers:
Practising mental kindness means doing so both to yourself and others.
To yourself, it means being a bit less hard on yourself, giving yourself some leeway and mentally patting yourself on the back from time to time and saying, ‘aw, poor me’ – and actually meaning it. There’s a clear difference between doing this, and thinking ‘I am going to have some me-time’ and plugging in your Glade Airwick, or eating a bar of Galaxy Caramel. This is a genuine attempt to be self-aware enough to recognise changes to your emotional state and your mood, try and understand why this might be the case, and give yourself a break. Rather than trying on a dress in a size 8 and then berating yourself for being fat and greedy when it doesn’t fit, how about not even getting to the stage where you end up clothes shopping in a bad/irritable mood? Mental kindness to self is infinitely more difficult than to others to successfully observe, and I struggle with this constantly, which is why it’s probably best to start this as soon as possible and get into practice. It’s hugely worth it, though, because you can overcome obstacles which don’t actually exist as they are imposed only by your own self-criticism and doubt. Before I start talking in self-help catechisms though, let’s move on to...
Others. This is slightly more simple, since it primarily involves two things:
1. Keeping things in perspective; and
2. Smiling.
Perspective means that the lemon-faced lady above wouldn’t have spent her whole life procuring an ugly face which bears the tell-tale lines of years spent thinking ugly, bitter thoughts. People almost definitely don’t realise that they’re being as annoying as they are – you probably spent a good part of your day doing the odd thing that others find annoying – give them a break. Or at least don’t let yourself get wound up about it; force yourself to smile. It needn’t be a huge, wide grin, but you will assume that at rest your face doesn’t look annoyed or pissed off: the news is that if you’ve been thinking annoyed thoughts then your face will portray this. When you try putting on an expression which is mid-neutral to ‘pleasant’, you will be surprised at first how different this feels to what it’s replacing; it will hit you how you must have looked before, and you will make a mental note to keep your face looking bright and pleasant in future. You will forget.
As mentioned, though, this isn’t a problem, because it will become more intuitive as time goes on and you keep pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and forcing yourself not to get wound up by ridiculously tiny, petty things. And I would recommend that you do keep forcing yourself; as unlikely as it sounds, people will react better to you when you practise mental kindness – I don’t necessarily buy into the aura thing, but I do genuinely think that people can sense something in what you give out to the surrounding area. If that something is barely-contained rage, you’re going to get negativity back. If you are bobbing away serenely, calmly, and pleasantly – if you force yourself to smile at people and engage in tiny snippets of small-talk, give away a seat on the tube even (god forbid)- you will have this repaid tenfold in the quality of your daily life and transport around this uptight little city. And if you do it for no other reason, do it because no amount of Estée Lauder moisturiser can prevent the horrible, ugly lines you will get after 60 years of verbal unkindness – and possibly the black-eye or two as well.
07 May 2009
Today Louise Explains... the News. And brings you Value Judgement
Bringing you an open-minded, objective breakdown of current affairs, and then discarding it all and just making spurious generalisations. It’s all very well balanced though, so don’t worry.
Politics:
PRO.
The fact that Gordon Brown has ‘the worst fucking smile in the world’ is now in the public domain, this having finally been revealed by, of all people, the Rt Hon John Prescott...truly a man who should have no trouble in spotting ridiculous things, unless he makes a habit of avoiding mirrors. Brown’s smile and indeed face and general appearance have troubled me for some time, however, I’ve never felt completely comfortable in expressing this. So I am of course delighted that someone has publicly done this for me, and we can all get on with our lives, although I nonetheless feel a bit sad for our PM. What was that saying again? You wait for decades for a job, and then you get it but you’re fucking awful at it and you manage to completely wreck the British economy in the process. Something like that, anyway. Frankie Boyle, imbued with none of the burden of social niceties nor diplomacy of most reasonable people, has previously described his fellow Scotsman’s visage as being ‘like a sad face painted onto someone’s scrotum’, and now that Brown’s loyal colleague has joined the catcalls, I feel that I am finally free to declare Brown’s smile, face and indeed premiership as a huge, terrifying farce. Cheers, John.
CON.
This probably is fairly bad for society as a whole, what with it now being absolutely fine to brazenly insult and ridicule our leaders. I highly doubt that this is what Peter Cook and the nice chaps at Beyond the Fringe had in mind when they set about to satirically undermine deference towards our ruling class. Have we really gone from thinking of our leaders as a flawless elite, to treating them as if they were in some way inferior to the rest of humanity? There isn’t room here for a rant about what the row over MPs’ expenses has done for their credibility in the public’s eyes, but suffice it to say that really aren’t all self-interested, egotistic wankers a la Lord Archer (of Weston-super-Mare, a great town for a great man).
Film:
PRO.
In the Loop is spectacular, I can’t elaborate any more without tedious quoting or lots of exclamation marks, but do see it. The world of film is, net, a happy place.
CON.
Hannah Montana, the existence of.
Health:
PRO.
We seem not to have been obliterated by Swine Flu as previously predicted, good stuff. Props to the Sun who tackled the issue in their usual, moderate way, by proclaiming ‘This Has the Potential to Wipe Out All of Humanity’.
CON.
Tragic deaths, possibility of having spoken too soon. Plus, more importantly, no more jokes about people’s illness manifesting itself with styes or rashers, or of treating the flu with oinkment.
Tv:
PRO.
Eastenders has a new doctor and I can confirm that he’s more attractive than Dr Legg.
CON.
Phillip was fired from the Apprentice last night.
Home affairs:
PRO.
Gurkhas are well on their way to finally and very deservedly receiving the right to settle freely in Britain. As someone or other (almost definitely not Brown) said, anyone good enough to die for England is good enough to live in England. This also represents more embarrassment for Gordon Brown, thereby hopefully leading to his speedy departure from number 10.
CON.
Joanna Lumley is now in with a very genuine chance of becoming the next Prime Minister of Great Britain and First Lady to the Treasury.
Hygiene:
PRO.
All Ladies of Scotland whose husband has just been involved in slaying the heir to the throne for his own personal gain, take heart; hand-washing is now tres chic. Thanks to swine flu, sales of liquid soap have soared and everyone’s doing it, all the time. This can only be a good thing.
CON.
Overly uptight people on the tube who shoot you the Deathglare of Doom when you so much as sniff on a train – it’s not like I’m shooting up, just scratching my nose, okay?
Nationalism:
PRO.
Essex has turned out to be a nice place after all, and not all of it is like Southend, Basildon (Baz Vegas) or indeed Ilford. Some bits of Essex are rather lovely, like Thaxted, where a windmill, cream tea and a lovely walk were all enjoyed on the Bank Holiday.
CON.
No morris dancing to be sighted.
Humour:
PRO.
A pensioner in Berkshire alerted police to the fact that the house next door was being used as a factory to grow fifty-thousand pounds’ worth of cannabis, after she noticed a funny smell... oh, and that her dog, Holly, had started to sleep until mid-morning. Brilliant.
CON.
I thought that Sion Simon’s twitter update, "I'm not saying Susan Boyle causes swine flu. I'm just saying nobody had swine flu, she sang on tv, people got swine flu.", was great. Turns out that this isn’t the general consensus. So the country gets a fuck-off big ‘Sense Of Humour Fail’ from me.
---
A pictoral representation to follow.
Politics:
PRO.
The fact that Gordon Brown has ‘the worst fucking smile in the world’ is now in the public domain, this having finally been revealed by, of all people, the Rt Hon John Prescott...truly a man who should have no trouble in spotting ridiculous things, unless he makes a habit of avoiding mirrors. Brown’s smile and indeed face and general appearance have troubled me for some time, however, I’ve never felt completely comfortable in expressing this. So I am of course delighted that someone has publicly done this for me, and we can all get on with our lives, although I nonetheless feel a bit sad for our PM. What was that saying again? You wait for decades for a job, and then you get it but you’re fucking awful at it and you manage to completely wreck the British economy in the process. Something like that, anyway. Frankie Boyle, imbued with none of the burden of social niceties nor diplomacy of most reasonable people, has previously described his fellow Scotsman’s visage as being ‘like a sad face painted onto someone’s scrotum’, and now that Brown’s loyal colleague has joined the catcalls, I feel that I am finally free to declare Brown’s smile, face and indeed premiership as a huge, terrifying farce. Cheers, John.
CON.
This probably is fairly bad for society as a whole, what with it now being absolutely fine to brazenly insult and ridicule our leaders. I highly doubt that this is what Peter Cook and the nice chaps at Beyond the Fringe had in mind when they set about to satirically undermine deference towards our ruling class. Have we really gone from thinking of our leaders as a flawless elite, to treating them as if they were in some way inferior to the rest of humanity? There isn’t room here for a rant about what the row over MPs’ expenses has done for their credibility in the public’s eyes, but suffice it to say that really aren’t all self-interested, egotistic wankers a la Lord Archer (of Weston-super-Mare, a great town for a great man).
Film:
PRO.
In the Loop is spectacular, I can’t elaborate any more without tedious quoting or lots of exclamation marks, but do see it. The world of film is, net, a happy place.
CON.
Hannah Montana, the existence of.
Health:
PRO.
We seem not to have been obliterated by Swine Flu as previously predicted, good stuff. Props to the Sun who tackled the issue in their usual, moderate way, by proclaiming ‘This Has the Potential to Wipe Out All of Humanity’.
CON.
Tragic deaths, possibility of having spoken too soon. Plus, more importantly, no more jokes about people’s illness manifesting itself with styes or rashers, or of treating the flu with oinkment.
Tv:
PRO.
Eastenders has a new doctor and I can confirm that he’s more attractive than Dr Legg.
CON.
Phillip was fired from the Apprentice last night.
Home affairs:
PRO.
Gurkhas are well on their way to finally and very deservedly receiving the right to settle freely in Britain. As someone or other (almost definitely not Brown) said, anyone good enough to die for England is good enough to live in England. This also represents more embarrassment for Gordon Brown, thereby hopefully leading to his speedy departure from number 10.
CON.
Joanna Lumley is now in with a very genuine chance of becoming the next Prime Minister of Great Britain and First Lady to the Treasury.
Hygiene:
PRO.
All Ladies of Scotland whose husband has just been involved in slaying the heir to the throne for his own personal gain, take heart; hand-washing is now tres chic. Thanks to swine flu, sales of liquid soap have soared and everyone’s doing it, all the time. This can only be a good thing.
CON.
Overly uptight people on the tube who shoot you the Deathglare of Doom when you so much as sniff on a train – it’s not like I’m shooting up, just scratching my nose, okay?
Nationalism:
PRO.
Essex has turned out to be a nice place after all, and not all of it is like Southend, Basildon (Baz Vegas) or indeed Ilford. Some bits of Essex are rather lovely, like Thaxted, where a windmill, cream tea and a lovely walk were all enjoyed on the Bank Holiday.
CON.
No morris dancing to be sighted.
Humour:
PRO.
A pensioner in Berkshire alerted police to the fact that the house next door was being used as a factory to grow fifty-thousand pounds’ worth of cannabis, after she noticed a funny smell... oh, and that her dog, Holly, had started to sleep until mid-morning. Brilliant.
CON.
I thought that Sion Simon’s twitter update, "I'm not saying Susan Boyle causes swine flu. I'm just saying nobody had swine flu, she sang on tv, people got swine flu.", was great. Turns out that this isn’t the general consensus. So the country gets a fuck-off big ‘Sense Of Humour Fail’ from me.
---
A pictoral representation to follow.
30 March 2009
Sartre's revenge
Today Louise Explains... Tube Etiquette.
1. Trains are noisy bastards. This is because they zoom through tunnels at speeds in excess of 50mph: you may be aware that humans don't do this. At this point, I would like to suggest that neither should humans try to COMPETE with the sound of a train in motion, because it is a very difficult competition to win. If you are special enough to try, however, you will annoy fellow passengers in the process and even if you do win, the prize isn't all that great. Because a hangover is 64.7% more distressing when you are SHOUTING EVERYTHING, my rules go as follows: if I can still hear your noise over my iPod at full volume, you will find yourself rewarded with the Glare of Disapproval. This is stage one of the passenger complaints procedure. Being English, my next move will be to break out the Tut of Intolerance, often followed in quick succession by stage three, the Throat-Clearing of Grumpiness, and four, the Eye-Roll of Frustration. If you are wise you will cease and desist at this point, for stage five is not to be attempted without the help of a responsible adult, before the watershed, or without wearing protective clothing. Stage four is only to be used to avert imminent apocalypse, and it is this: the Polite Request. Nothing is ever this bad, however, and crises are often averted by simply getting off the train and changing carriage or, to avoid embarassment, just putting yourself out by waiting for the next one. Simple.
2. It is considered very rude to walk up to someone in the street and point a knife perilously close to a their throat, or to mix shards of glass into the glass of Jacob's Creek they are about to consume in a bar, no? And yet it apparently is socially acceptable to stand directly behind someone while they are waiting on the platform for a train. Why do people do this!? It makes me very very nervous and as though, at any moment, you might lurch forward and send me careening off the edge, to a shocking (ha ha) death. And in terms of ways to die, it's a pretty annoying way to go - having been delayed many a time by others' selfishness and refusal to top themselves in a way that doesn't hold up the District Line at rush hour, it worries me to think I might be the next 'earlier person under a train causing severe delays we suggest you take the replacement bus service'.
Interlude: an ode to personal space.
This is a tricky one, as if you particularly value it then what on earth are you doing taking the tube in the first place? Alas there *are* people in existence who act terribly surprised/offended that they must deign to share a arm-rest/pole/carriage with the masses of the unwashed (which, contrary to the saying, isn't all that Great really), and these people have clearly failed to spot the 'public' in public transport. They soon learn; you can't not, really, when forcibly inserted into armpits with alarming regularity. However, the greater crime is surely the inverse, the invading of others' space without it being absolutely clinically necessary. If we really must share the same air-space, then let's please at least be stoic and British about it, staring at our shoes, into middle distance or at the strip lighting which is suddenly and inexplicably fascinating. The worst breaches include standing with your back/shoulder/bag in contact with my book, so that it gets rhythmically jolted every time the train hits a sleeper/commuters who's been pushed off a platform by someone standing too close behind them.
3. Short but nonetheless very important: if you are reading the paper during busy times (viz. the FT and Telegraph, what is it about understanding the difference between the RPI and CPI that makes people such wankers?) then don't do it with the papers opened to the full capacity of your arms' span, with pages turned and re-folded ostentatiously. The financial sector won't collapse if you don't get to read about the merger between GlaxoSmithKline and HMRC right now this very second. Although it's very difficult to tell nowadays, maybe I'll just let that one go.
4. Seat wars. This will hopefully make it to the 2012 Olympics as it is a great British tradition and certainly makes my daily life more interesting. There's certainly nothing like a bit of healthy competition to make your journey go a bit quicker and completely alienate fellow passengers with your scary level of zeal and speed. However, if you lose this vital battle then please accept defeat gracefully, rather than spending the rest of the journey making the victor Pay, by 'accidentally' swinging your shopping bag against their leg. This is hardly likely to endear them to you to the extent that they jump up and offer the seat to you - most likely they'll bide their time a bit, wait 'til you both get off and then push you under a train (see #2). All's fair in love and tube-seat-acquisition: deal with it or...
5. Get better at it, with one of Louise's Top Tube Tips. I don't want to reveal them all, as I worked bloody hard to figure them out and they're MINE. But I will share this: most importantly, you need to find your spot on the platform - not exactly where the doors open but just to the left or right, so that when a train arrives you can casually slink to the side of the opening doors and be oh-so-considerate by letting others off first (naturalement), but then dashing on before everyone else in the vicinity and then you are the winner. This is not sad, it is just part of life. Best to find a visual aid so that you can always go straight to your spot of a morning/evening. My spot used to be marked by a Virgin Active poster which said "Fear not Mr Worry // Cheer up Mr Grumpy", and this understandably topped and tailed my days with a smile. Unfortunately, it was thoughtlessly changed to a poster which depicts Britney Spears' bum in shiny gold hotpants, so I am currently getting some rather bemused/pervy looks from fellow commuters as I await my daily train to the land of joy. Maybe make your visual aid a cracked tile or something else to avoid such embarassment.
6. Escalator usage. Guess what “stand on the right” means? It means STAND ON THE GODDAMN RIGHT. Some people are Very Busy and Important and like to actually move once in a while when in transit – don’t be so bloody selfish. If you don’t move out of the way, prepare to feel the wrath of huffing and/or puffing as we walk annoyedly past, although this could just be wheezing from the exertion of having power-walked everywhere.
So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives' tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS-- OTHER PEOPLE!There are certain 'rules' which one associates with travelling on the Tube, lovingly recreated in posters around the Underground network circa 2001 (Love is... letting other people off first), and oft-referred to. One assumes that these rules are universally acknowledged, and yet the experience of twice-daily commuting proves otherwise. Therefore, in the feeble hope of sorting this out, and the more realistic aspiration to get some frustration off my chest, I present a far from exhaustive list of How to Be a Good Tube Passenger. By a Great One.
- Garcin, 'No Exit', Jean-Paul Sartre
1. Trains are noisy bastards. This is because they zoom through tunnels at speeds in excess of 50mph: you may be aware that humans don't do this. At this point, I would like to suggest that neither should humans try to COMPETE with the sound of a train in motion, because it is a very difficult competition to win. If you are special enough to try, however, you will annoy fellow passengers in the process and even if you do win, the prize isn't all that great. Because a hangover is 64.7% more distressing when you are SHOUTING EVERYTHING, my rules go as follows: if I can still hear your noise over my iPod at full volume, you will find yourself rewarded with the Glare of Disapproval. This is stage one of the passenger complaints procedure. Being English, my next move will be to break out the Tut of Intolerance, often followed in quick succession by stage three, the Throat-Clearing of Grumpiness, and four, the Eye-Roll of Frustration. If you are wise you will cease and desist at this point, for stage five is not to be attempted without the help of a responsible adult, before the watershed, or without wearing protective clothing. Stage four is only to be used to avert imminent apocalypse, and it is this: the Polite Request. Nothing is ever this bad, however, and crises are often averted by simply getting off the train and changing carriage or, to avoid embarassment, just putting yourself out by waiting for the next one. Simple.
2. It is considered very rude to walk up to someone in the street and point a knife perilously close to a their throat, or to mix shards of glass into the glass of Jacob's Creek they are about to consume in a bar, no? And yet it apparently is socially acceptable to stand directly behind someone while they are waiting on the platform for a train. Why do people do this!? It makes me very very nervous and as though, at any moment, you might lurch forward and send me careening off the edge, to a shocking (ha ha) death. And in terms of ways to die, it's a pretty annoying way to go - having been delayed many a time by others' selfishness and refusal to top themselves in a way that doesn't hold up the District Line at rush hour, it worries me to think I might be the next 'earlier person under a train causing severe delays we suggest you take the replacement bus service'.
Interlude: an ode to personal space.
This is a tricky one, as if you particularly value it then what on earth are you doing taking the tube in the first place? Alas there *are* people in existence who act terribly surprised/offended that they must deign to share a arm-rest/pole/carriage with the masses of the unwashed (which, contrary to the saying, isn't all that Great really), and these people have clearly failed to spot the 'public' in public transport. They soon learn; you can't not, really, when forcibly inserted into armpits with alarming regularity. However, the greater crime is surely the inverse, the invading of others' space without it being absolutely clinically necessary. If we really must share the same air-space, then let's please at least be stoic and British about it, staring at our shoes, into middle distance or at the strip lighting which is suddenly and inexplicably fascinating. The worst breaches include standing with your back/shoulder/bag in contact with my book, so that it gets rhythmically jolted every time the train hits a sleeper/commuters who's been pushed off a platform by someone standing too close behind them.
3. Short but nonetheless very important: if you are reading the paper during busy times (viz. the FT and Telegraph, what is it about understanding the difference between the RPI and CPI that makes people such wankers?) then don't do it with the papers opened to the full capacity of your arms' span, with pages turned and re-folded ostentatiously. The financial sector won't collapse if you don't get to read about the merger between GlaxoSmithKline and HMRC right now this very second. Although it's very difficult to tell nowadays, maybe I'll just let that one go.
4. Seat wars. This will hopefully make it to the 2012 Olympics as it is a great British tradition and certainly makes my daily life more interesting. There's certainly nothing like a bit of healthy competition to make your journey go a bit quicker and completely alienate fellow passengers with your scary level of zeal and speed. However, if you lose this vital battle then please accept defeat gracefully, rather than spending the rest of the journey making the victor Pay, by 'accidentally' swinging your shopping bag against their leg. This is hardly likely to endear them to you to the extent that they jump up and offer the seat to you - most likely they'll bide their time a bit, wait 'til you both get off and then push you under a train (see #2). All's fair in love and tube-seat-acquisition: deal with it or...
5. Get better at it, with one of Louise's Top Tube Tips. I don't want to reveal them all, as I worked bloody hard to figure them out and they're MINE. But I will share this: most importantly, you need to find your spot on the platform - not exactly where the doors open but just to the left or right, so that when a train arrives you can casually slink to the side of the opening doors and be oh-so-considerate by letting others off first (naturalement), but then dashing on before everyone else in the vicinity and then you are the winner. This is not sad, it is just part of life. Best to find a visual aid so that you can always go straight to your spot of a morning/evening. My spot used to be marked by a Virgin Active poster which said "Fear not Mr Worry // Cheer up Mr Grumpy", and this understandably topped and tailed my days with a smile. Unfortunately, it was thoughtlessly changed to a poster which depicts Britney Spears' bum in shiny gold hotpants, so I am currently getting some rather bemused/pervy looks from fellow commuters as I await my daily train to the land of joy. Maybe make your visual aid a cracked tile or something else to avoid such embarassment.
6. Escalator usage. Guess what “stand on the right” means? It means STAND ON THE GODDAMN RIGHT. Some people are Very Busy and Important and like to actually move once in a while when in transit – don’t be so bloody selfish. If you don’t move out of the way, prepare to feel the wrath of huffing and/or puffing as we walk annoyedly past, although this could just be wheezing from the exertion of having power-walked everywhere.
7. Once upon a time I would’ve said that it is bad to eat odourous food on the train, however, nowadays I think we’re globalised and enlightened enough to put up with sushi, aloo gobi etc. The glaring exception to this is food which everyone knows smells an astonishing amount worse than it tastes, for example Nik Naks.
8. An oldy but a goody: eye contact. Ask any Lonely Planet-reading, Big Ben-photographing, pavement-taking-up tourist worth his salt about tube etiquette, and he will reply that eye contact on the tube is a Bad Thing (and do you really know the Queen?) However, this is grossly oversimplifying things: plenty of people on the tube make eye contact, but there is a subtly-organised ecosystem in operation - a knack, if you will. Contrary to Urban Legend, most commuters do not sit perfectly still for their whole journey, starting intently at their book/shoelaces. On the contrary, any brief journey will demonstrate that Londoners are a nosy, inquisitive bunch, and it is quite usual to spot a commuter in his natural habitat covertly glancing over his Metro at other passengers, casually surveying his Tube-y kingdom. Where it becomes unacceptable is once looks become ‘over the top’, or lasts for more than a split second at a time. There are exceptions to this rule: it is fine to very obviously regard people who are committing cardinal sins such as being too loud (see especially #1), being drunk or French, sleeping (more so if dribbling or head beginning to loll onto neighbour’s shoulder), or preaching Jesus’ love. In these cases it is actually considered rude *not* to exchange knowing smirks with fellow passengers, while staring as brazenly as you like, perhaps selecting your facial expression from the ‘disapproving/outraged’ spectrum. It is also fine to acknowledge that you and the other passengers are humans sharing the same space when the driver announces that your train won’t be moving from the tunnel for an unknown period of time (generally accompanied by generic gripes about how awful the tube/privatisation is). The other anomaly is when one occasionally spots someone in whom they are romantically (or one-night-standly, for that matter) interested. As seen in bars (since the summer of 1969, when love was invented), the requisite flirting will ensue, which entails stolen glance-eyes meet-then look away, rinse and repeat. However, Tube-land has a new invention which means that the next step of actually talking to the object of one’s desire can be conveniently avoided. Reluctant Rhetts and Shy Scarletts can declare their undying love in 160 characters or fewer thanks to the ‘Lovestruck’ column in the London Paper. I think that anything which encourages tube-users to express their emotions, however passively, can’t be a bad thing.
Finally, I present my easy-to-use guide to eye-contact on the Tube (click it and it gets bigger). I hope it is useful next time you are confused as to why you are being stared at, and whether you actually need to (god forbid) take action. Heaven knows the London Underground needs less passive-aggression and more human contact. Do always keep in mind, however, that at any moment the train could stop, trapping you in a tunnel with these other people for an unspecified amount of time. Might be safer just to go back to furiously reading your book in silence, tutting under your breath.
26 March 2009
Today Louise Explains... why the blog?
I write a lot; on computers (mostly that), in notebooks, on the backs of bank statements/receipts/any paper to hand which generally ends up being my birth certificate or similar. I also compose written things in my head, but they for whatever reason don't find a home in actual ink or the electronic equivalent of ink - which I think is quite sad - and these pieces just float around and eventually evaporate into the ether. Therefore, this is an attempt to capture those orphaned thoughts and jottings which never quite were, as well as to transcribe the scrawlings currently resident upon the Indian takeaway menu, and immortalise them for all to see, enjoy, and possibly interact with. (And maybe tell me off for my quasi-deliberate grammatical slips).
I also have some earlier writings which I will be transferring across, notably a travelogue of sorts from Costa Rica which needs a general tidy-up, plus some new germs of ideas (interesting fact of the day: germs are from Germany). Currently dancing the fandango around my head and therefore coming soon... Louise Explains: tube etiquette, dressing for a recession (or: partying like it's 1974), and how to be a tourist in one's own city (serialisation). The anticipation is killing me; I do hope it lasts.
Lou
Ps. a nice bitchy picture of the day to start off with, I think. Incidentally, if you turn your head upside-down, sh
e's smiling.
I also have some earlier writings which I will be transferring across, notably a travelogue of sorts from Costa Rica which needs a general tidy-up, plus some new germs of ideas (interesting fact of the day: germs are from Germany). Currently dancing the fandango around my head and therefore coming soon... Louise Explains: tube etiquette, dressing for a recession (or: partying like it's 1974), and how to be a tourist in one's own city (serialisation). The anticipation is killing me; I do hope it lasts.
Lou
Ps. a nice bitchy picture of the day to start off with, I think. Incidentally, if you turn your head upside-down, sh
e's smiling.
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