Disabled man in wheelchair wants to catch a train home. Somehow, for some reason, the station staff refuse to put a ramp down to let him board. Man films this, puts it on YouTube, then goes to media with the story.
Somehow, a small subset of the good people of DigitalSpy [are continuing to] fill a single forum thread with every single example of conjecture, pedantry, exaggeration, bollockery and counter-bollockery known to Internet Forum Man and Woman. Arguments about the whys and wherefores of the situation dissipate and spin off into their own little eddies and vortices of angst and drama, and in the end the whole sorry affair looks like an Eton Mess of frustration and complication blended through a random number generator and thrown against a pebbledashed wall. Read the thread from soup to nuts and the actual situation is barely decipherable.
After we’ve passed a point where the arguments traverse ‘Your last post was incorrectly spelled and your user profile smells of wee’, Godwin’s Law is the inevitable consequence. Make your bets when the entire discussion becomes so heavy with bullshit it collapses in on itself.
For just over a month I’ve been living in the sleepy outlying reaches of SW London. Where I live now is some five or six miles from the capital’s own take on ‘The Prisoner’ – Barnes, where I whiled away some quite content years by the river. Much of my spare time was spent staggering between The Red Lion and The Sun pubs, leaping into the road to avoid oncoming double-width baby buggies or murmuring in quiet disbelief as the ever-suave Peter Bowles ambled by in a cravat and jacket. And I loved the place. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, didn’t want to even think about it.
The Old Man’s pub.
Down by the river.
Financial reality (amongst other things) eventually kicked in, and when looking to buy somewhere of my own, Zones 5 and 6 were the only realistic option. In some crazy ways I’ve sent myself into some bizarre suburban exile. Perversely that would explain why I’m finding it so enjoyable.
That and the absolute quiet on the streets, which is proving an odd and unexpected novelty to shake. For five years I’ve lived with the combination of plane, road and train noise. There’s never been a quiet moment on the streets. From 5am until near midnight, aircraft filled the sound gap when there wasn’t a truck, bus or train to be heard. Now – nothing. When walking around the neighbourhood I can pick up on other people’s conversations a hundred yards away. Living in the sticks has afforded me some weird sort of spidey-sense, and it’s as great as it is unnerving. Play GTA4 or Saints Row 2, find yourself a quiet corner of the map, and you’ll hear long periods of absolutely nothing punctuated by occasional voices. That’s just what it’s like.
Watching England play in serious competition is akin to English food in the 1970s. Grey, lumpen, lukewarm slop served in a cracked bowl. There’s no flair, no passion, no purpose, no point. Until the English team and – more generally, English football – sort out a LOT of stuff on and off the pitch, there’s no way any England fan should expect anything serious of the national side when the pressure’s really on.
What today has done has reminded me that I’m no serious football fan, and that any disappointment was fleeting. It certainly helped not having any expectation to begin with.
(and now we return you to your regularly scheduled lives).
In 1988 my parents bought a CD player. Thinking back, it wasn’t quite the ‘white heat of technology’ even then. I swear the lights dimmed when it was turned on, and it probably needed bolting to the hifi stand when the tray went in or out. As part of this investment in all things audio, my father got himself hooked up with Britannia Music Club. (think of it as some sort of mail order Mafia, a collective you could never ever leave, even when dead). The shiny ‘free introductory CDs’ probably helped sweeten the deal. Sweeping aside the regulation Brothers in Arms disc, I found this.
In 1988, OMD was a new and exciting world for me, albeit vaguely familiar through earlier childhood. I played the crap out of this CD. I bored everyone to death with it. Everyone. “Ohh, listen to that bit!”. “Ohhh choirs!”. “Niiiice”. Even typing this I’m boring myself. They became my first proper musical passion, right as their Best Of had been released. Back then, a greatest hits album meant the related band were on their way out / about to wind up in court over some internal nastiness..and how right that was. Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys (along with Mal Holmes and Martin Cooper) musically divorced each other as official newsletter promises of new stuff went unfulfilled. In the meantime I’d religiously bought every single album, knew every song intimately, would wear out lovingly-compiled C90 tapes containing all the best bits.
At a rather crappy point in my life during early 1991, SOTSS and Sugar Tax came along as a happy distraction. I mentally spun with glee as McCluskey and his rag-tag bunch of session musos would turn up on Pebble Mill, The O-Zone or Wogan, pushing (admittedly an non great Gary Glitter-esque single) to number 3 in the UK and putting the Wirral firmly back on the popular shelves of Our Price. The album was very decent and thankfully almost contemporary. Naturally, the two follow-ups dropped in quality and the public’s fickle interest lapsed as they realised that a tinkly melody atop clattery rhythms and a over-used choir preset didn’t make for a continuing strong raft of sales. In short; 1990s OMD went from ‘really good’ to ‘ok’, as McCluskey lost direction and wrote songs for people ten years older than the chart-swaying public. ‘Universal’ saw Humphreys partially return to the fold, but by then it was all too late.
Meanwhile, musically, I moved on in the usual and expected ways. I discovered ambient, IDM, music with real geetars and drums, music with no chance of coming anywhere near a chart run-down. To me, OMD are like the archetypal dusty cassette in the back of the cupboard. They’ve barely featured in the true Big Moments of my late 20s and early to mid 30s. Boards of Canada, New Order and Aphex Twin took those moments. And yet, a bunch of years and reunion gigs later, we’re on the cusp of seeing the first OMD-proper album since 1986′s ‘The Pacific Age’ – an album which indicated their wheezing, dying gasps of their ability to work together. ‘The History Of Modern’ is expected to be released in the late summer of 2010.
This time we’ll be devoid of the Weir Bros brass section (no bad thing). But – and here’s where it gets frustrating – we’re promised the ‘best album we’ve done since Architecture & Morality’. Please don’t make those promises. Please don’t set the expectations that high. How about just releasing something and letting us decide?
I worry about hating this. I’ve been able to ignore the ‘Sister Marie Says’ demo, mainly because it’s so McCluskey cliched it’s understandable why it may not surface at all in its current form. In a way, I’ve been waiting for 24 years for this. And even though my musical tastes have moved on, there’s a bit of me that won’t let go of this band completely. I really want it to be good, and to be popular, and to be admired. For this album, we’ve been waiting, looking skyward. So please McCluskey, Humphreys, Cooper and Holmes; don’t let it be shit?
We’re now four days beyond the Election (and what feels like four weeks since we heard anything from Gordon Brown). I’m still excited and enthralled by it all. For the first time that I can remember, people seem to be having real, meaningful debates and conversations about the state of Britain’s democracy. The electorate has – inadvertently – created a situation which invokes total uncertainty and unfamiliar process, and which may possibly redefine the nature of our bizarre and flawed democratic process.
And yes. Inadvertently. Any pundit that infers the British public knew exactly what they were doing to get us to the current situation (and yes, many have inferred just this) really overplays our collective intelligence as an electorate. The outcome is a result of people not being convinced enough to turn in any one specific direction. No set of voters bought into any one party’s arguments more than any of the others.
Politicians just didn’t do good enough a job of persuading people to vote for their cause. Maybe the Tories made such enemies in their last stint in office that our memories run too deep to give them another chance. Maybe Gordon Brown’s reminders that the entire universe is in recession and not just the UK have gone unheeded. Maybe Nick Clegg worse a naff tie on the third debate and voters wimped out when it mattered. Nonetheless, the attempt at post-election shutting of the Westminster stable door after the horse has bolted is hilarious. The political parties – or at least two of them – are suffering because of the electoral system they deserve to have and refuse to change. I hope these thrills last until the very end.
First admission; I’ve not voted in a British election since 1997. During those intervening years I sat through two entirely depressing overseas elections, unable to vote in either. Watching as my adopted home participated in some barely watchable morris dance involving semi-hanging bits of paper and Floridian lawyers. Watching again as the populace made the same tragic mistake for a second depressing time, not even pausing for breath to take into account the insanity of a war started the previous year by someone who actually believed God wanted him to run for President.
So on a calm May evening in 2010, I’ve been able to exercise my democrat right here in a quiet London suburb. You don’t need to know who I voted for. But you need to know how good it feels..fuck..how exciting it can be, and how important the act of placing pieces of paper into plastic ballot boxes is.
I don’t understand those that don’t give a shit.
I don’t understand those that don’t vote, then whine for five solid years about some aspect of government.
I don’t understand those that don’t understand / WANT to understand.
It’s fine to claim tiredness from the coverage which fills the media for a month before the Big Day, and it’s understandable that some of the reporting is so unbearably awful it will drive a non-drinker to the nearest bottle of Shiraz. And our electoral system isn’t perfect. Some claim that the fate of the UK’s election result lays with a mere 100,000 people. And ‘first past the post’ isn’t ideal, we all get it. Many of the people we’ll vote for are dreadful human beings. We can’t stand them as our elected arbiters of moral decency. Many of them can’t stand us as the trustworthy, intelligent, informed voting public.
So it’s imperfect, but right now it’s all we have. And it’s ours. Not using your vote, not feeling a little privileged at having such a right – I find that baffling. If you’ve not voted, go do it. You have two and a half hours left.
(and if you’ve voted for the first time today..nice going, and welcome to the club )
Sitting on VS01, two seats plus two windows all to myself on a spring evening. Entertainment is a little spotty. I audibly yawned during the first ten minutes of Avatar (so that went well) and gave up on everything bar Family Guy. Sorry, yes, Family Guy. In ten whole years it’s not gotten old.
Anyway, there it is. In a few hours I’ll be safely back in the choked armpit of Newark, NJ. When I was younger, VS01 was the winged doubledecked bus I used to commute on to the east coast. Haven’t been on it for many years now, yet some stuff never changes here in the cheap seats. The wine still flows, the babies still scream in your ear and the cabin crew ponder about the guy in 49F who moved seats and now can’t remember if he really ordered the vegetarian meal or not. I missed the experience. Though back then we didn’t have the “volcanic ash will be 20,000 ft below us” reassurance. Shame – it would have added a little geological frisson and spark to the whole adventure.
Listening to OK Computer all the way through, just when I first flew this service way back when. “Let Down” is the tune that binds me to the flying along the turnpike and into Newark Airport. Even relevant in the lyric department.
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And we’re back. First time in this specific part of country for a long time. Would like to say “it all feels so different” but I can’t, because one of the first things that I wanted to do was go find my car in the parking garage and drive it home, or what used to pass for it. Even now I forget. All the smells, the sounds and sights are so stupidly reassuring and familiar. Anyway. VS02 comes Sunday night. That’s the second half of the old story. It’s quicker than the flight out and with fewer daylight hours. In the meantime, loads of friends to see and a fair bit of catching up to be done. And shopping. I nearly forgot about the shopping.
The ONE downside about not living here anymore. Not getting to pop through the ‘US Residents’ aisle at immigration. Queued for an hour in the waiver line tonight, that’s how I remember I’m back on the other side of the tracks once more. No big deal, just bloody tiring.
[Content is R-rated. May contain adult themes such as 'money', 'responsibility', 'yet more responsibility' and 'oh shit what am I doing?']
This growing-up thing, I’ve been avoiding it for years. And in this financial climate where interest rates are barely higher than Gordon Brown’s approval rating, I’ve finally taken the plunge. All being well with the glut of legal and financial paperwork that my poor solicitor is wading through, I’ll be a homeowner in a matter of weeks. Plus horribly in debt to the tune of dozens of your Earth pounds.
As I sit here – my little clockwork brain doing backflips trying to figure out what the hell I’ve committed myself to – at the very top of my mind the headline thought is, ‘I’d love a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive’. Why is this? I’m told that at some point that this will hit me like a brick wrapped in a copy of FHM. When does this happen please? The anticipation is killing me, or chilling me out, or something.
Sitting at the departure gate of McCarran airport sucking up the free wifi like it’s Stoli and Diet Coke. The cliche is to say ‘all too quickly the holiday is at an end’, but actually I’m ready to go home. My Learjet is parked outside and even as I type, the staff are hand-smoothing my reclining seat with an Alpaca brush while the chef is prepping a plate of bacon sarnies purely for my enjoyment.
Oh, sorry, reality.
The 747 is parked outside, the cabin crew practicing their throwing skills at the target painted on my Squidge-o-matic tiny seat so an economeal can be chucked at me at 30,000 ft. The meal itself is being scraped off the floor of the terminal Burger King and prepped neatly so it looks like something that would befit an airline meal (so mixed, stirred, painted an interesting shade of mustard and left to congeal for two hours).
As it is, on arrival just now the plane spat out a jolly ensemble of pink furry hen weekend hats and XL England shirts barely concealing a sizeable collection of moobs. Hooray for Las Vegas. As for me, I’m off home, and I’ll miss this corner of the world like mad (as per usual) and I’ll count down the minutes until it can all happen again. But meanwhile reality awaits. I could do with a dose of that, yeah?
The final scenes were fitting to the trip. Driving back through the eastern gateway, the sun setting, looking like the entire sky was exploding throughout the valley behind me. And then it vanished behind a mountain. I drove back into town in a weird Nevada desert half-light. The day over, the trip done in terms of amazing things to see.
And with that, I’m going to mill around Old Vegas for a bit, take a couple more pictures and head home. London and bills and househunting and post offices queues and signal failures at Battersea Park…all that reality awaits me.
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