Nlogaxical

Is fifteen minutes enough time to get a coffee and a paper when you’re miles and miles from London? Not today, not here. Serving speed is at several minutes per customer. Each coffee bean is being lovingly fondled before being individually crushed ‘neath velvet rollers. Hand pumped local spring water is then heated in a copper kettle and encouraged (via kind words and positive thoughts) to seep into the powder, before falling into a hand-crafted paper cup made from only the finest Amazonian wood pulp. You get the idea, right?

Thing is, I’d like a coffee today, not on appointment next Thursday. So I’ve given up. The onboard trolley service is closed and therefore my displacement activity is to sit here and bitch about it. And play Depeche Mode and Aphex Twin very loudly indeed to drown out all these people who are sitting and chatting amiably over their..sodding cups of coffee.

Whew that feels a bit better. Sad truth is, you take the caffeine addict out of London but you can’t take London out of the caffeine addict.

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(Thoughts while househunting)

Things I like to consider when scouting out a new sarf Lahnden ‘burb.

1 – The high street. What’s the ratio of gadget and coffee shops to pound stores? A clue to the unwise; the ‘golden ratio’ is 5:0. Already this part of town takes a knock.

2 – Percentage of locals with all their own teeth. Lucky for them I’m willing to be fairly flexible. Just having teeth is enough, and as long as they’re vaguely in the right area, ‘the mouth’ being a good spot. You’d not believe some of the sights I’ve seen elsewhere in London.

3 – Is this a place I could be reasonably ok with being unemployed in? What’s the likelihood of morbid depression if living here while jobless? I don’t know. The shopping area is one big hill, so consider the ‘uphill walk in a cold rainstorm while listening to Joy Division having just been made redundant’. Christ, this isn’t looking great so far. I may slit my wrists now just in case. Longways isn’t it?

4 – Smile Factor. If the teeth are in the vaguely normal place (see 2) then we can expect to see some smiles. Maybe it’s because today’s cold and blowy, but from the looks of the faces I’ve seen, the natives appear to have stumbled on mass conspiracy that involves their entire families, Michael Winner and a industrial-sized crate of lard. Again, not so promising.

5 – Whoah. Is that Gary Glitter sitting at the other window of Starbucks..? Brrrr.

6 – There is a Laura Ashley store here. This is a Good Sign. It means there shall be summertime ladies with flowing tresses, floral printed sofas on every corner and dainty cups of lemon tea served by polite gentlemen in hats and long coats. Yes? No? Oh.

7 – Quality of coffee found on station platforms. Here on Platform 4 is a real Starbucks. Bearable, though it’d mean I’d need to lower my caffeine standards. Starbucks is to coffee as The Nolans are to neo-industrial Kraut rock.

8 – I need a wee..sorry.

9 – If EVER there was a redeeming feature of a town, I’ve just found it. There’s a goddamned Auntie Anne’s Pretzels here. Surely Fulham Broadway saw the last of those? I love Auntie Anne’s. Where do I sign?

10 – Wait. I can hear those crying babies *through* the double-glazing of the coffee shop. That’s not good.

11 – I really need that wee now. Bye.

–

Needless to say the area got the thumbs-down. Didn’t feel it at all. Next!

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Dodgy Profiteroles [HD test - 1080p / low light] from Andy Martin on Vimeo.

Gross desserts

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Been thinking a lot about the two hours of film I saw on Saturday evening that’s been consistently noted and accurately rated as ‘a film which is about two hours long’. The more I say about Sherlock Holmes and the Sodding Huge Robotic Spiders From Croydon , the less the effect on paper. So some brief thoughts;

- Turn the lights up a little bit? Either I’m getting old or things were way too dark (Not asking for Blackpool illuminations here, just a notch up, that’s all)
- Between Guy Ritchie and the editor, there was an evil plot at work to speed up and slow down the pace. The overall impression was that the film was playing off a 1980s Walkman with cheap batteries.
- Geography. My internal satnav hurt. Baker St, Pentonville, Westminster, all conveniently located to, er, Tower Bridge. We get that Tower Bridge (part-constructed, like a 19th century ROTJ Death Star) is the big ticket CGI item – but the constant reminders were a bit much. No, a lot much.

It wasn’t a bad film per se. Just needed some additional tweaking. Deserves a second chance in the form of a sequel – which looks possible considering how things ended.

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Without going into any deep detail, I found out this morning – quite accidentally – that someone with whom I’ve worked closely (while in a previous job) committed suicide just before Christmas. We may have only been com-padres in the professional sense..we didn’t go out drinking or socialise outside of a server facility or meeting room, but nonetheless I admired the guy an awful lot. He was an immense talent, and worked harder than anyone else I’ve known. He was respected by his peers and colleagues, and adored by everyone who met him. He was two years younger than me.

All I can really state beyond the obvious shock and sadness, is the utter waste and futility of his passing, and..anger. I wish he’d said something, anything, to his close friends and colleagues. The truth is, however, he’s dead, and there’s nothing anyone can do except remember.

The new year can only improve, can’t it? Let’s hope so. Have a happy 2010.

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This is my favorite part of the year. No-one really knows what day it is, what’s open or closed, whether 6pm will bring the evening news or Wallace & Gromit. In the midst of everything, people just go to ground and stay home staring at their rapidly shedding Christmas trees, their eyes unable to obtain focus through near-diabetic comas brought on by too many dips into the Celebrations tin.

It’s also a superb time to go walking. Enough room on the pavements to swing a dozen cats attached to an industrial bungee cord.

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Testing the new Wordpress 2 client for iPhone. So far so good, it’s not died on me yet! Photo integration seems ok as well. If this works I may celebrate somehow. Maybe another coffee?

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Holy shit. My senses have just been released from a 158 minute torture session in the annex of Guantanamo Bay know as ‘Cineworld Hammersmith’. All my own fault. Since seeing the first trailer of ‘2012′, I’ve been waiting impatiently, looking forward to watching whole meaty chunks of Los Angeles turn upside down and become a sort of artificial coral reef in the Pacific. ‘Yayy’, I thought. Big stuff falling into the sea, volcanoes, tidal waves higher than mountains. Brill, bring it on.

Tonight I finally managed a viewing. Christ on a bike, what the FLYING FUCK was that?

Imagine every single nightmare scenario / apocalyptic mega film from the past fifteen years of movie history as it’s passed through a Hollywood body shop. It emerges from the garage in the shape of a 30ft patchwork limo stitched together from the most cliched of all movie scenes. What was witnessed tonight was an abortion..a complete Californian cut’n’shut disaster movie. Let’s look at some of those highlights checkboxes, yeah?

- Divorced dad who becomes hero to his family. CHECK.
- Two adorable kids. CHECK and CHECK.
- Noble US president. CHECK.
- Young scientist. CHEEECKK.
- Nasty gub’mint man in suit getting in the way of decent human acts happening. CH-CH-CH-CHECK.
- Presidential ‘Dudes, we’re all dead, thanks for all the fun’ final speech to the world. CHECK.
- Last phonecalls to family members. CHEC..uh, can’t be bothered anymore.

It was all there. Human tragedy on an epic scale, swelling strings, ‘I love you baby’ moments, bad scientific theories I’ve not seen since reading Whizzer and Chips. I could go on, but I won’t because I’m boring myself right this second. But the film went on..and on…and on. This stretched turd of a limo took two and a half hours to crawl past our faces, every panel straining with embarrassment at its own overblown presence. I don’t mind admitting there were moments when I thought to myself, “Why can’t they ALL just DIE NOW? I want to GO HOME.” By the end it felt as though I’ve been assaulted on every inch of my skull by a flailing disaster movie robot which felt the job hadn’t been done until bits of frontal lobe dribbled out of my nostrils and my pupils wore little ‘Tilt’ signs like a disgruntled pinball machine. I don’t know how I remember to walk from my seat when it finally ground to a halt, but somehow I did – two hours too late for my own good.

And yet…and yet…John Cusack still emerges from this with a modicum of cool. If this bullshit film doesn’t kill him or his acting career, it’s obvious he is a true superhero as the man is obviously indestructible.

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Photos from Aveiro and Porto, last week.

Portugal 2009

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