Greetings from a non-denominational robin
Monday 7 December 2009
I got so excited about the George Crumb Total Immersion day over the weekend I broke a tooth. While I recuperate and write up the contrasting concerts (including a rare chance to hear an evening of Crumb’s orchestral music), here’s a picture of a friendly robin who was hanging around the chapel when I last walked through Abney Park.
Still Number One!
Monday 30 November 2009
Too busy to post words and stuff right now, but stay tuned because this blog is No. 1 FOR HIP|HOP & R’n'B!
One-Minute Mystery
Tuesday 15 September 2009
Every morning I go past Conway Hall on my way to work. A while ago I just twittered that for the last two days the front entrance has been surrounded by truckloads of pianos being wheeled inside. This morning I caught a glimpse through the front door of the corridors lined with pianos.
I’d been hoping for at least a super-duper version of Les noces, if not some sort of weird, quasi-musical ritual going down – the hall opens its doors to all sorts of meetings. Instead, according to their website they’re just hosting a piano auction this week. Google takes the fun out of everything.
No wonder London’s public transport is so unreliable.
Thursday 6 August 2009
All this time, and I never realised that the buses were made of cardboard.
Street Art, Hackney
Thursday 25 June 2009
Filler By Proxy LXIX: This post has made me hungry
Saturday 6 June 2009
It’s been a bastard of a week, so no time for lovefun online. I’m firmly relocated back in East London, the world capital for dodgy chicken shops. It’s good to see I’m not the only one with a fascination for these establishments. Now here’s a musical tribute we can all sing along with! (Found via Floccinaucinihilipilification.)
The Giant Adenoid that Ate St James’s takes a step closer to reality
Thursday 2 April 2009
Now it turns out that this light bulb over the colonel’s head here is the same identical Osram light bulb that Franz Pokler used to sleep next to in his bunk at the underground rocket works at Nordhausen. Statistically (so Their story goes), every n-thousandth bulb is gonna be perfect, all the delta-q’s piling up just right, so we shouldn’t be surprised that his one’s still around, burning brightly. But the truth is even more stupendous. This bulb is immortal! It’s been around, in fact, since the twenties, has that old-timery point at the tip and is less pear-shaped than more contemporary bulbs….
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, pp.647.
Welcome to the homepage devoted to the Longest burning Light Bulb in history. Now in its 108th year of illumination.
First Meggezones, now this.
Google vs Death, Round 2
Monday 23 March 2009
Google Street View has finally launched in the UK and is already out of date. This is a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. I’m more interested in checking up on where I used to be than where I am now, despite the new pictures looking like they’re better quality than the Australian ones (and the taunts about growing up in a tip).
The Google camera car went up my street last summer. In fact, it went up my street twice:
I’ve talked before about how Street View’s illusion of the present masks a preserved version of the recent past, already decaying and proving less and less true to reality. Now we can see street corners that exist simultaneously in two time zones at once.
For most Britons, the illusory, alternate-reality nature of Street View is immediately visible in the high streets. The economic downturn has worsened in the time between the photos being taken and appearing on the web. Google’s Britain is a brighter, nostalgic land with fewer boarded-up shopfronts, where Woolworths, MFI, Zavvi, and other chain stores are still in business.
Back in Australia, the emerging anomalies are more poignant. On the main street of the town of Marysville in Victoria, the season abruptly changes from summer to winter for a few metres; then just as suddenly, the sky clears, the ground dries up again, and the trees regain their leaves. Of course, neither version is true: we know the town was all but obliterated by fire last month.
(Crossposted at Sarsaparilla Lite.)
So Close, Yet So Far
Thursday 12 March 2009
I swore off making fun of newspaper columnists a long time ago, but this one’s too good to let pass by. Sue Sharp, head of Guide Dogs Public Policy and Campaigns, has an opinion piece in The Guardian decrying proposed changes to London’s pedestrian crossings (I’ve added my own emphasis):
… plans to introduce “speedy street crossings” in London to free up traffic will seriously undermine the mobility of blind and partially sighted pedestrians in London.Under these proposals, the amount of crossing time for pedestrians will be cut by up to six seconds, and there will be a reduced number of green man phases. As pedestrians walk at an average speed of 1.2m per second, such a reduction in crossing time could potentially leave them 7.2m short of the kerb when the light goes green to traffic, and more if they have a slower walking pace than the average.
If the metrics confuse you, here are some people under two metres tall walking at an average pace on a typical London street crossing:
Snow Day! Rothko post postponed.
Monday 2 February 2009
And it did end up snowing all night. Not having a job to go to anyway, I missed out on the thrill of being forced to skive off work because all the trains and buses were cancelled. I did get to spend the day at home with the girlfriend, however. Nice.
In any case, the girl was confined to quarters with a dud leg, so no skidding about on the snow outside for us. She contented herself videoing teenagers outside tobogganing down the street on a tea tray while I considered going out alone to take in the picturesque scene before deciding bugger it. I’m not getting cold and wet just for a few snapshots when thousands of much better views will be plastered all over Flickr by lunchtime.
Meanwhile, all across the island, Britons were rediscovering the innocent joys of a day (or evening) in the snow.
The Clichéd Study in Contrasts
Sunday 1 February 2009
Just spoke to my dad on the phone: he’s been telling me how hot it’s been the past week. Over a week of 40-plus temperatures, and nights which barely dip below 30 degrees. Everyone is feeling the strain.
Meanwhile, I got caught in the snow coming home this evening. It’s kept up all night, and I’ve been watching people trying to drive their cars slowly down the street, only to lose all traction on the small hill in front of my house and gracefully slide sideways down into the intersection below, gently crashing into the steadliy growing pile of grief-stricken vehicles scattered about. It all looks a little bit like this.
Guy Fawkes’ Month
Monday 27 October 2008
Out my window I can hear that it’s the time of year when fireworks start going off around the neighbourhood again.
“We stopped at the IKEA café, where the coffee was cheap and the service friendly, but we didn’t see anyone writing poetry”
Wednesday 6 August 2008
Having just remarked that Australia doesn’t get much attention in the British press, a few articles have just surfaced in the papers about Starbucks closing most of its Australian stores. I don’t know if anyone has bothered to point out that Australian Starbucks was at least one of the lesser failures to be associated with Natasha Stott Despoja’s political career, which coincidentally ended about the same time as the coffee chain’s attempt to dominate the Antipodean market.
There has been some tentative speculation about whether this business decision has more to do with the credit crunch, heroic localised resistance to encroaching globalisation, or just the realisation that Starbucks coffee isn’t very good. British chin-stroking on the subject has been clouded by the difficulty most Brits have in distinguishing a macchiato from Marmite.
It is a truism that the British don’t know how to make coffee – a defining cultural trait, centuries in the making, which still holds sway even in modern-day London. The symptom of this deficiency most immediately visible to the London visitor is the large number of Starbucks, all full to capacity, with queues to the counter sometimes stretching to 20 people. It is an eye-opening contrast to the typical Australian Starbucks experience of a faintly caffeinated morgue, empty save for a small scattering of listless tourists.
Worse still, the majority of British, virtually alone among the Europeans, think it’s what good coffee is supposed to taste like:
Like every other UK coffee geek I’ve conveniently airbrushed from my memory the debt I owe Starbucks; how, before they arrived, coffee was a throat-rasping, lip-puckering laxative tar dispensed in caffs that couldn’t give a toss; how we delighted in our first taste of a cafe culture and how we sucked down the enticing new mixtures.
Sadly, Starbucks was probably a true advancement for the British appreciation of coffee. For coffee lovers, London is a Bizarro city where the small, independent café will generally serve an inferior coffee to that offered by the multinational chains. On my way to work each morning I stop off at the nearby branch of a coffee franchise (not Starbucks) for my long black. Just up the street is a stylish independent café where the bright young things congregate. It has excellent pastries, and weak, milky coffee that costs half as much again, which is all too typical. The swill served at the (overrated) traditional “caffs” doesn’t bear thinking about.
If the girl behind the counter warns you it might be too strong, the coffee will be almost acceptable. After two years in London, my girlfriend made the mistake of ordering a “strong latte” out of habit on her first visit back home to Melbourne, and had the jitters for an hour afterwards.
The trouble in London is that Starbucks has set a standard of burnt, watery mediocrity to which many have risen, but so few aspire to exceed. We probably get the evil multinational conglomerates we deserve. Starbucks coffee may be bad, but badness hasn’t stopped other franchises from spreading around the world – look at McDonald’s. But then again, look at the local variations McDonald’s has made to its menu in Australia, and in other countries all around the world (British Maccas even serve porridge for breakfast). It seems that, when confronted with a particular café culture in Australia, Starbucks could not or would not adapt to survive in it.
Of course, our former colonial masters scoff good-naturedly at the idea of Australians being “too sophisticated” for Starbucks – this light-hearted derision coming from a country where packets of pasta are printed with recommended cooking times giving a minute or two leeway, and the baristas ask if you want ice in your long black. A country in blissful ignorance of an entire continent of excellent coffee that lies just across the Channel.
(Crossposted at Sarsaparilla.)
May as well punch Jamie Oliver
Sunday 3 August 2008
(A supermarket in London. The checkout kid is concentrating on an item of produce with furrowed brow and bemused demeanour. Eventually…)
CHECKOUT KID
What’s this?
ME
That’s garlic.
CHECKOUT KID
Oh.
(Without much further struggle he locates the right price code and proceeds. Two tins of tomatoes, one packet of spaghetti and a cheap hunk of parmesan later…)
CHECKOUT KID
(brow furrowed)
What’s this?
ME
That’s also garlic.
FINIS
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