I'd just finished a show. Not great, not bad, nothing to write home about - just another day at the office. I'm packing away my props when a friendly-faced man bounds up to me, family in tow. As I turn around to him, he thrusts a door key card into my hand and says "I think you must have dropped your card". "Oh..", I say, assuming it must have slipped out of my back pocket during the show at some point. I'm about to thank him when I look down at the card he has given me. It has my name on. More specifically, my stage name, Mat Ricardo. Well, not quite. It actually says Matthew Ricardo. Which is weird because my room card has my real name on, which isn't Mat Ricardo.
My mind, in it's typically post-show woozy state, crashes for a second. As it slowly re-boots, I realise what's going on. I look back up to the man, who is grinning excitedly. "This", I splutter slowly, "is your name?"
"Yes!", he says, and throws his hand out to shake mine, "Been trying to catch you all week"
We both stand there and giggle for a while, and I do admit that it's not my real name, but has been my primary name of use for 20+ years. We agree, it still counts.
We shake hands again and say how nice it was to meet Mat Ricardo, and say goodbye, and I go back up to my room giggling like a drunk, my mind boggled.
Friday, 18 April 2008
Sunday, 13 April 2008
Walcott
Image: Google Maps
This one's for Vena.
When I was young, every so often, usually during a non-summer school holiday, we would go to Norfolk to visit George and Vena, my grandparents. During much of my childhood they lived in a bungalow in a small coastal village called Walcott. My parents didn't have a car at the time, so we'd take the train to Norwich, then a smaller train to somewhere a little nearer, and then my Grandad would pick us up in his fudge coloured car, pipe in mouth, and drive us back to Walcott. It would always seem very late when we arrived but it probably wasn't, and we'd come through the back door to find my grandma making crab sandwiches on the little kitchen table with the shiny vinyl tablecloth on it. She'd give me lemon squash, always made too weak. I didn't want to sound greedy by asking for it to be stronger, but when she wasn't looking I'd pour in a little more from the bottle.
Scientifically speaking, a bungalow should be much easier to navigate than a house with more than one floor, but if there's a house in my childhood that I got lost in the most, this would be it. All the rooms opened out of one long, crooked, winding corridor, which gave the illusion of simplicity. One of my strongest memories of these holidays, though, is the regularity in which I'd go to my bedroom, only to find I'd walked into the bathroom by mistake before backing out slowly muttering to myself. Once I even remember asking my grandad if they'd moved the rooms around since I was there last, which was met with a confused and stern denial.
Once I'd found my bedroom though, there was the cupboard. In the cupboard was a small treasure chest of stuff that I was continually reminded HAD TO STAY IN WALCOTT AND COULD NOT COME HOME. A half size football. Two boxes of fuzzy felt. A small stack of Marvel comics - The Mighty Thor and Captain Britain. The football was great as I could kick it at the low garden wall and let it bounce back. Fuzzy felt was a rainy day toy, to be played in the conservatory while listening to the rain peppering the glass roof with heavy taps. As for the comics, well, although I was (and continue to be) a Marvel comics fan, nobody could say that these were the A-list titles. Thor never really did much for me - all he had in terms of super-powers was a hammer, which you can buy. Also he was a god of some kind, which was a little too much like school for my liking. Captain Britain, I think, lasted not very many issues and was clearly a transparent attempt to create a hero for the UK market. As I remember, he was a superman rip-off, meaning only the most generic powers (flight, strength etc), the only distinguishing feature being that the top of his head, above the eyebrows, was a flame. I'm not sure why they thought this was either a good idea, or particularly British, which might all be reasons why we're not seeing Ewan Macgregor in the big-screen adaptation. Something to be thankful for.
What was good about the cupboard was that our visits had enough time in between them that without fail I would forget about the cupboard and then rediscover it, as if for the first time, on every visit. I must have read those Captain Britain comics over and over, the story seeming fresh every time.
Once I'd read the comics and lost most of the pieces of fuzzy felt, there was still much to do in the bungalow. It was full of fascinating objects, things interesting to my young eyes just because they were different. In the front room there was a large wooden stereo, as big as a sideboard almost, with a heavy lid that you lifted up to expose the turntable and a storage box built in to it for all the records. And a radio that, when the big push button was pressed, lit up the long wide yellow band that had weird, nonsensical words like "Luxembourg" hidden amongst it's numbers. This was something I was allowed to look at but MUST BE VERY CAREFUL WITH. As I knelt in front of it, the speaker grill right in front of me, I'd spin the radio dial and occasionally hit upon someone talking, whose voice I'd feel against my chest.
On the mantlepiece was a gold clock in a glass dome, kept ticking by a propeller-shaped thing hanging under the clock face, which would rotate one way, winding up slowly, slower and slower until stopping, pausing motionless for a moment, then unwinding the other way. Over and over. I had no idea, as a child, how this movement made time, but I knew it did. And I knew that if, when nobody was around, I picked up the clock, I could feel the movement in my hand. And if I gently tipped it, it would slow or shudder the motion of the propeller-shaped thing, and make the second hand slow or stop for a tiny instant, at which point I'd get a little scared, put the clock back, and go back to looking through the records.
On the many little tables nestled in various corners were a zoo-full of glass animals. Coloured glass stretched and poured while hot liquid to form the long necks of swans or the legs of giraffes, then dotted with colour for eyes. I wasn't allowed to touch these just in case I broke them, which I'm sure I would have done, and possibly did. I remember being proud of myself knowing how they were made, knowing that when you heat something up it gets softer, like the way my dad made sword pommels in an old saucepan on the kitchen cooker. Science.
When it wasn't raining, we'd start each day by going out for a walk along the sea front, which wasn't much of anything although it did have a strange diagonal sea wall which sloped down to the beach and on which I could run up and down and pretend to be Spiderman, walking up walls. Then we'd go to the single shop that Walcott boasted, a Wavy Line store. All things to all men, the Wavy Line. Post office, newsagent, bakers, grocers, record store, toy shop. It did all these things, but just not to any great degree, although my uncle David did once buy a Dr.Hook album there, on a crazy whim. My dad would get a paper, and perhaps some pasties to eat for lunch. I have vivid memories of buying a chocolate covered toffee ring about the size of a wagon wheel but with no centre, called a Stopgap. A confection that I had only ever seen in Walcott, which is probably for the best. Also "Snaps" which were like crisps but somehow thinner and were represented, packaging-wise, by a cartoon dragon. Something tells me that they might even still exist. I must find some. Tomato sauce flavour.
We'd often go for longer walks. Big on walks, my parents were, and I thank them for that as these days, on my travels, the first thing I always do is start walking and see what I find. We'd walk down the coast to Bacton, the next village along, past some kind of big electrical generating plant, which would look like something from the future with all it's pylons, coils, tanks, blinking lights and long shadows. It would hum quietly as we'd walk past it. Unlike the glass animals, I had no idea what this was for, but I didn't like it.
My memories of these holidays veer wildly. There are times when much fun was to be had, playing on the beach and watching uncle David attempt and spectacularly fail to ride the little wooden surfboard thing we bought, or playing badminton with grandma in the garden. Also, strangely, the plague of greenfly that happened out of nowhere one year. Suddenly, one morning, the air was thick with greenfly, and I mean thick. You couldn't go outside for fear of them going in your mouth, in your hair and up your nose. If that happened now, there's a fair chance it would freak me out royally, but back then all I remember was being indoors and looking out the window at the zillions of little green bugs and being so excited at something crazy happening. The next day, they were gone and badminton recommenced.
Sometimes, however, as is often the case with children on family holidays, I was deathly bored. My interests at that time involved computers and, well, pretty much just computers. It didn't take long before I started getting withdrawals. Which is why, a few years into our visits, when the little holiday park opened 10 minutes walk up the coast, I was a happy bunny. My grandma would tell me how none of the locals liked the new holiday park, and how it brought down the quiet tone of the village. It was something new, though, so as soon as I could I went up to take a look. Maybe it would have shop or something equally exciting. The place itself was nothing to write home about, just a collection of new redbrick holiday homes in a little complex. It didn't have a shop. It had something much better. It had an amusement arcade. Oh yes. A building the size of a small kitchen, but lining the walls were the things that would make every subsequent holiday so much more fun. Phoenix, Bump 'N' Jump, and Astro Blaster. Now I had something here that was all mine. When I was bored, or various members of the family were arguing (or worse - reading quietly), I could jog up the road with a track suit pocket full of 10p coins and hit high score after high score. Astro Blaster was by far the lesser of the games, but did have a neat little feature: An sensor hidden on the front of the cabinet that detected when someone walked past it and triggered a loud American voice to suggest that you "PLAYYYY ASTRO BLASSTERRRR!", which at the time was incredibly exciting.
If there's one thing that the men in my family are known for, it's stubbornness, so as you might imagine, having three generations of them in one bungalow often resulted in fireworks. I submit the Hawaii-Five-0 incident. I had seen a trailer on TV telling me that Hawaii-five-0 was on later that day, so I asked if I could watch it (I was young and bored). No, said my Grandad, as he looked in the TV Times, it's not on today, so I couldn't watch it. But I saw an advert for it, I protested. Tempers started to get frayed, the TV Times was thrashed about and stabbed with angry grandad fingers. Voices were raised. I was branded a stupid boy. I ran away to my room, which I found on the third try. Later on most of the family came and quietly told me that Grandad had been looking at last weeks TV Times, and it was on, and of course I could watch it, and would I like some lemon squash.
I don't want to give the impression that Grandad was a bad person, he was just as quick to find the opposing side of the argument as all men in my family are. Except me, of course. I'm fair minded 24/7. Yes I bloody am.
We'd sometimes go for little drives, my Grandad driving, my dad in the front passenger seat, and my mum, Grandma and me in the back sucking on barley sugars and giggling every few seconds when Grandma would be spooked my something road-related that nobody else could see and would grab my Grandad's shoulder from behind as he drove and blurt "George!", then quieter, "careful George". My Grandad would tolerate this for half the journey then he'd start muttering, "Bloody woman", and we'd all giggle quietly.
Easy alarmed, is my Grandma. When she'd come to visit us in London, we'd sit in the front room and whenever a car when past outside, she'd straighten up like a meerkat and peer towards the window saying "Ooh. Car". When served any amount of food at any meal any time ever, she will deliver the exact same speech: "Oooh no that's too much I can't eat that not at my age that's too much for me ooh no too much you shouldn't oh dear".Then she'll put away 5 peas, a forkful of chicken, and five pints of sherry. Once, and I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this, at Christmas, she farted while playing charades. It was possibly the funniest thing in the history of the World and I remember us laughing about it continuously until new year.
She is currently somewhere in the region of three hundred and six years old and lives in Yorkshire, and when I visit her (which I do not nearly enough), she will do the same three things: (1) Show me the "little bit of fish" she will be having for tea later. (b) Furnish me with twelve biscuits and worry about me when I only have eleven, and (c) Ask me if there's anything in her house I want when she's gone because I might as well take it now. On the other hand when you call her on the phone (something I also do not nearly enough) she will run down the almost endless list of physical ailments when plague her, but do so in such a witty way that you know that the one part of her that isn't showing her age is her brain. She's sharp as a tack, and still has the potential to say something silly and collapse into peals of breathy giggles. She'll readily admit that she's "Ready to go", something that boggles my little mind. Speaking as someone who's scared to death of, well, death, this kind of acceptance fills me with a confused awe. Although I'm sure it's born as much from zen-like mastery of the journey of life as it is from the daily pains and unpleasantnesses that age brings, I still hope that by the time I get to her age (and for a start lets hope I do get to her age), I can have such a relaxed relationship with the frighteningly inevitable. I am convinced that she'll outlive us all, as her body falls to pieces she'll end up just a giggling head in a jar of brine watching TV through the glass and complaining that we've sprinkled too much food into her water. My wife always tells me that I get a lot of my funny from her, I hope I've soaked up more of her qualities than that. I have a feeling they'll be useful.
When I was young, every so often, usually during a non-summer school holiday, we would go to Norfolk to visit George and Vena, my grandparents. During much of my childhood they lived in a bungalow in a small coastal village called Walcott. My parents didn't have a car at the time, so we'd take the train to Norwich, then a smaller train to somewhere a little nearer, and then my Grandad would pick us up in his fudge coloured car, pipe in mouth, and drive us back to Walcott. It would always seem very late when we arrived but it probably wasn't, and we'd come through the back door to find my grandma making crab sandwiches on the little kitchen table with the shiny vinyl tablecloth on it. She'd give me lemon squash, always made too weak. I didn't want to sound greedy by asking for it to be stronger, but when she wasn't looking I'd pour in a little more from the bottle.
Scientifically speaking, a bungalow should be much easier to navigate than a house with more than one floor, but if there's a house in my childhood that I got lost in the most, this would be it. All the rooms opened out of one long, crooked, winding corridor, which gave the illusion of simplicity. One of my strongest memories of these holidays, though, is the regularity in which I'd go to my bedroom, only to find I'd walked into the bathroom by mistake before backing out slowly muttering to myself. Once I even remember asking my grandad if they'd moved the rooms around since I was there last, which was met with a confused and stern denial.
Once I'd found my bedroom though, there was the cupboard. In the cupboard was a small treasure chest of stuff that I was continually reminded HAD TO STAY IN WALCOTT AND COULD NOT COME HOME. A half size football. Two boxes of fuzzy felt. A small stack of Marvel comics - The Mighty Thor and Captain Britain. The football was great as I could kick it at the low garden wall and let it bounce back. Fuzzy felt was a rainy day toy, to be played in the conservatory while listening to the rain peppering the glass roof with heavy taps. As for the comics, well, although I was (and continue to be) a Marvel comics fan, nobody could say that these were the A-list titles. Thor never really did much for me - all he had in terms of super-powers was a hammer, which you can buy. Also he was a god of some kind, which was a little too much like school for my liking. Captain Britain, I think, lasted not very many issues and was clearly a transparent attempt to create a hero for the UK market. As I remember, he was a superman rip-off, meaning only the most generic powers (flight, strength etc), the only distinguishing feature being that the top of his head, above the eyebrows, was a flame. I'm not sure why they thought this was either a good idea, or particularly British, which might all be reasons why we're not seeing Ewan Macgregor in the big-screen adaptation. Something to be thankful for.
What was good about the cupboard was that our visits had enough time in between them that without fail I would forget about the cupboard and then rediscover it, as if for the first time, on every visit. I must have read those Captain Britain comics over and over, the story seeming fresh every time.
Once I'd read the comics and lost most of the pieces of fuzzy felt, there was still much to do in the bungalow. It was full of fascinating objects, things interesting to my young eyes just because they were different. In the front room there was a large wooden stereo, as big as a sideboard almost, with a heavy lid that you lifted up to expose the turntable and a storage box built in to it for all the records. And a radio that, when the big push button was pressed, lit up the long wide yellow band that had weird, nonsensical words like "Luxembourg" hidden amongst it's numbers. This was something I was allowed to look at but MUST BE VERY CAREFUL WITH. As I knelt in front of it, the speaker grill right in front of me, I'd spin the radio dial and occasionally hit upon someone talking, whose voice I'd feel against my chest.
On the mantlepiece was a gold clock in a glass dome, kept ticking by a propeller-shaped thing hanging under the clock face, which would rotate one way, winding up slowly, slower and slower until stopping, pausing motionless for a moment, then unwinding the other way. Over and over. I had no idea, as a child, how this movement made time, but I knew it did. And I knew that if, when nobody was around, I picked up the clock, I could feel the movement in my hand. And if I gently tipped it, it would slow or shudder the motion of the propeller-shaped thing, and make the second hand slow or stop for a tiny instant, at which point I'd get a little scared, put the clock back, and go back to looking through the records.
On the many little tables nestled in various corners were a zoo-full of glass animals. Coloured glass stretched and poured while hot liquid to form the long necks of swans or the legs of giraffes, then dotted with colour for eyes. I wasn't allowed to touch these just in case I broke them, which I'm sure I would have done, and possibly did. I remember being proud of myself knowing how they were made, knowing that when you heat something up it gets softer, like the way my dad made sword pommels in an old saucepan on the kitchen cooker. Science.
When it wasn't raining, we'd start each day by going out for a walk along the sea front, which wasn't much of anything although it did have a strange diagonal sea wall which sloped down to the beach and on which I could run up and down and pretend to be Spiderman, walking up walls. Then we'd go to the single shop that Walcott boasted, a Wavy Line store. All things to all men, the Wavy Line. Post office, newsagent, bakers, grocers, record store, toy shop. It did all these things, but just not to any great degree, although my uncle David did once buy a Dr.Hook album there, on a crazy whim. My dad would get a paper, and perhaps some pasties to eat for lunch. I have vivid memories of buying a chocolate covered toffee ring about the size of a wagon wheel but with no centre, called a Stopgap. A confection that I had only ever seen in Walcott, which is probably for the best. Also "Snaps" which were like crisps but somehow thinner and were represented, packaging-wise, by a cartoon dragon. Something tells me that they might even still exist. I must find some. Tomato sauce flavour.
We'd often go for longer walks. Big on walks, my parents were, and I thank them for that as these days, on my travels, the first thing I always do is start walking and see what I find. We'd walk down the coast to Bacton, the next village along, past some kind of big electrical generating plant, which would look like something from the future with all it's pylons, coils, tanks, blinking lights and long shadows. It would hum quietly as we'd walk past it. Unlike the glass animals, I had no idea what this was for, but I didn't like it.
My memories of these holidays veer wildly. There are times when much fun was to be had, playing on the beach and watching uncle David attempt and spectacularly fail to ride the little wooden surfboard thing we bought, or playing badminton with grandma in the garden. Also, strangely, the plague of greenfly that happened out of nowhere one year. Suddenly, one morning, the air was thick with greenfly, and I mean thick. You couldn't go outside for fear of them going in your mouth, in your hair and up your nose. If that happened now, there's a fair chance it would freak me out royally, but back then all I remember was being indoors and looking out the window at the zillions of little green bugs and being so excited at something crazy happening. The next day, they were gone and badminton recommenced.
Sometimes, however, as is often the case with children on family holidays, I was deathly bored. My interests at that time involved computers and, well, pretty much just computers. It didn't take long before I started getting withdrawals. Which is why, a few years into our visits, when the little holiday park opened 10 minutes walk up the coast, I was a happy bunny. My grandma would tell me how none of the locals liked the new holiday park, and how it brought down the quiet tone of the village. It was something new, though, so as soon as I could I went up to take a look. Maybe it would have shop or something equally exciting. The place itself was nothing to write home about, just a collection of new redbrick holiday homes in a little complex. It didn't have a shop. It had something much better. It had an amusement arcade. Oh yes. A building the size of a small kitchen, but lining the walls were the things that would make every subsequent holiday so much more fun. Phoenix, Bump 'N' Jump, and Astro Blaster. Now I had something here that was all mine. When I was bored, or various members of the family were arguing (or worse - reading quietly), I could jog up the road with a track suit pocket full of 10p coins and hit high score after high score. Astro Blaster was by far the lesser of the games, but did have a neat little feature: An sensor hidden on the front of the cabinet that detected when someone walked past it and triggered a loud American voice to suggest that you "PLAYYYY ASTRO BLASSTERRRR!", which at the time was incredibly exciting.
If there's one thing that the men in my family are known for, it's stubbornness, so as you might imagine, having three generations of them in one bungalow often resulted in fireworks. I submit the Hawaii-Five-0 incident. I had seen a trailer on TV telling me that Hawaii-five-0 was on later that day, so I asked if I could watch it (I was young and bored). No, said my Grandad, as he looked in the TV Times, it's not on today, so I couldn't watch it. But I saw an advert for it, I protested. Tempers started to get frayed, the TV Times was thrashed about and stabbed with angry grandad fingers. Voices were raised. I was branded a stupid boy. I ran away to my room, which I found on the third try. Later on most of the family came and quietly told me that Grandad had been looking at last weeks TV Times, and it was on, and of course I could watch it, and would I like some lemon squash.
I don't want to give the impression that Grandad was a bad person, he was just as quick to find the opposing side of the argument as all men in my family are. Except me, of course. I'm fair minded 24/7. Yes I bloody am.
We'd sometimes go for little drives, my Grandad driving, my dad in the front passenger seat, and my mum, Grandma and me in the back sucking on barley sugars and giggling every few seconds when Grandma would be spooked my something road-related that nobody else could see and would grab my Grandad's shoulder from behind as he drove and blurt "George!", then quieter, "careful George". My Grandad would tolerate this for half the journey then he'd start muttering, "Bloody woman", and we'd all giggle quietly.
Easy alarmed, is my Grandma. When she'd come to visit us in London, we'd sit in the front room and whenever a car when past outside, she'd straighten up like a meerkat and peer towards the window saying "Ooh. Car". When served any amount of food at any meal any time ever, she will deliver the exact same speech: "Oooh no that's too much I can't eat that not at my age that's too much for me ooh no too much you shouldn't oh dear".Then she'll put away 5 peas, a forkful of chicken, and five pints of sherry. Once, and I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this, at Christmas, she farted while playing charades. It was possibly the funniest thing in the history of the World and I remember us laughing about it continuously until new year.
She is currently somewhere in the region of three hundred and six years old and lives in Yorkshire, and when I visit her (which I do not nearly enough), she will do the same three things: (1) Show me the "little bit of fish" she will be having for tea later. (b) Furnish me with twelve biscuits and worry about me when I only have eleven, and (c) Ask me if there's anything in her house I want when she's gone because I might as well take it now. On the other hand when you call her on the phone (something I also do not nearly enough) she will run down the almost endless list of physical ailments when plague her, but do so in such a witty way that you know that the one part of her that isn't showing her age is her brain. She's sharp as a tack, and still has the potential to say something silly and collapse into peals of breathy giggles. She'll readily admit that she's "Ready to go", something that boggles my little mind. Speaking as someone who's scared to death of, well, death, this kind of acceptance fills me with a confused awe. Although I'm sure it's born as much from zen-like mastery of the journey of life as it is from the daily pains and unpleasantnesses that age brings, I still hope that by the time I get to her age (and for a start lets hope I do get to her age), I can have such a relaxed relationship with the frighteningly inevitable. I am convinced that she'll outlive us all, as her body falls to pieces she'll end up just a giggling head in a jar of brine watching TV through the glass and complaining that we've sprinkled too much food into her water. My wife always tells me that I get a lot of my funny from her, I hope I've soaked up more of her qualities than that. I have a feeling they'll be useful.
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
Jet Lag and lost bags made flesh
Robe - stolen from Crown Princess Spa.
Sunglasses - bought in Miami in an attempt to emulate the great Horatio Cane.
Luggage tag - model's own.
In the last 24 hours I have been to Aruba and Miami and San Juan and St. Lucia and am now en route to Antigua. I have had three pizzas (1 room service and 2 airport) and slept 3 hours. This is simultaneously wheeeeeeeeee and ick.
Also, to add to the crazy, American Airlines thought it'd be a hoot to leave my luggage in San Juan, while I flew on to St. Lucia. They were mistaken in this. Luckily, and thanks to a plucky and heavily motivated and medicated taxi driver, my bags arrived by at the cruise ship literally five minutes before we were due to set sail.
Then, as soon as I got on board the ship, I had to do two shows. I have been up since 2am and flown through more time zones than Superman when he reverses time to save Lois. The shows were fine, but everything's a little blurred and shiny through my eyes.
Wheeeeee. Ick.
Monday, 31 March 2008
Formative travel experience #1
In a quiet moment a couple of years ago, and after a couple of glasses of wine on her part, my mother looked me in the eye and said "We were good parents though, weren't we?".
This is quite the heavyweight question. Even though the obvious, and completely honest answer would be yes, I don't think that was what she was looking for. I think, on reflection, that she wanted me to bring up examples - happy memories of things that helped mould me into the man I am and perhaps taught me valuable lessons about how to live with honour, and not drop litter and stuff. At the time I was a little bamboozled by the sudden serious turn the conversation had seemingly taken, and was unable to provide her with a neat little list of bullet-pointed times in which good parenting stopped me from becoming a serial killer who wears the arses of his victims as hats.
Now, however, with the benefit of time and distance, I could list a few dozen vivid and happily-held childhood memories that definitely, without question, made me who and what I am, whatever that is. Regular trips with mum to the museums every half term. Being woken up at the crack of dawn to go and hang out while dad and his friends shoot a low budget movie (with swordfighting! and horses!). Being allowed to stay up late to watch Monty Python and Spike Milligan, but not Chris Tarrant. All things that I am consciously aware helped shape parts of me, and I could go on listing this stuff all day but I won't.
Just one more:
I was about ten years old. Coming to the end of my time at Trinity Street school and about to make the quantum leap to Enfield Grammar School, or Big School as it was known by boys of my age. Every year, my parents would take me on holiday to somewhere in England (Or once, Wales, where the place we stayed had a games room which turned out to be a barn with an old pool table in which lived a large rat). In my younger days we spent many holidays in Norfork, and in more recent years Yorkshire, where, in the near future I was to see street performers for the first time and have the course of my life changed irrevocably, but that's another story. This year, however, things were going to be different. This year, we could afford a few days in Paris. This was very, very exciting. France was a whole different country (and I believe still is), which meant going on a plane, which I had never done.
Ask my parents these days about that trip and they'll say "Oh god, you were a brat the whole time" and change the subject - I know this because I have tried. So they might be surprised at the number of memories I have of the trip and that they are all good ones.
My memory is patchy, so here's what I can recall:
Like many middle class curly haired moppets of the 70's, I liked collecting postcards of places I had been to. My collection mainly consisted of postcards depicting suits of armour, swords, dinosaurs or zebras from the various museums that I had visited, but at the airport I got a postcard of the exact same model of airplane that I would be travelling on. Things were getting exciting.
I don't remember much about the actual flight except the feeling of the jets on takeoff. The feeling that we're going pretty fast and then suddenly, with a grinding roar, going five times as fast and faster and faster and then it's all calm and smooth and the ground is leaving us and it's scary and amazing in equal measure.
Our hotel was wonderful. We all shared one room and the windows opened onto a tiny balcony on which you could stand and look down over the real genuine Parisian street below. For some reason I seem to recall it was on the fifth floor, and to get to it you could take the stairs or travel up in the beautiful old clanky cast iron elevator - the kind with the folding lattice gate you have to pull across yourself. I had never encountered one of these before and loved it because you could see the floors of the hotel go by as you went up and down. For years afterwards I thought that's what all French elevators were like, and although I know a little better now, I still think of them as French.
The day we arrived it was raining heavily all day and all night and my parents were in horrid moods - maybe I was already being a brat. I remember us all taking refuge under the awnings of book shops before running across shiny dark streets while my mum worried about the crazy French drivers running us down.
Just a few doors down from out hotel, on the corner, was a bistro. We went there every night on the way home from sightseeing and my parents would have coffee and I would have a big cup of hot chocolate. And I would play their Defender machine. Oh yes. The first time I ever touched this game was in that cafe in Paris and I shall never forget it. It was in the far left corner by the window, and occasionally the headlights of passing cars would come through the window and glare across the screen. As a fledgling videogame geek, I had already read about the game in copies of the American magazine JoyStik that I had found imported in a comic book shop off Charing Cross road that I had made my mum take me to. But I had never played it. If you know what Defender is, then most likely you know what it means, and you're grinning right now. If you don't know what Defender is.. how can I explain..? It's one of the best videogames ever written. Simple as that. It was beautiful to look at, explosions like throbbing multicoloured fireworks in the none-more-black background. It sounded awesome - put a coin in, press start and you don't get a cheery little jingle, oh no, you get one long wierdly hypnotic low drone. It's telling you that it's different. Even approaching it for the first time was scary - in a time when most games either had a single joystick like Pacman, or at best were left-right-fire like the gorgeous Galaxians, Defender had seven controls. Seven. Up, down, thrust, fire, reverse, smart bomb and hyperspace. You had to know what you were doing before you even started playing it. But once you could play it, it was beautiful. Fluid, fast, noisy, pyrotechnic, it was everything an arcade game should be. You never felt it was treating you unfairly, even when you were losing, and when you were doing well, it really let you know- filling the screen with the cycling hue of your laser fire and the fading exploded parts of dead aliens. Mastering those seven controls was like learning an instrument, once you put in the hours practising, once you could play, and improvise, then you could make it look so easy and so good. Eugene Jarvis, who wrote it, said that the only test of a good arcade game was if it made your hands sweat after 5 minutes. Good god did it. If Defender isn't the best arcade game ever, then Robotron probably is, and Eugene wrote that one as well.
So the ending part of each day was lovely, but as for the events that made up the daytimes - I can't remember much. I do know that I developed quite the affection for Orangina, which was new to me. I learnt how to order one in French and thought myself quite the sophisticate. The following year Orangina entered the UK market and suddenly my cool favourite drink that you can't get here lost it's coolness.
I remember the smell of the Metro. Almost like burning rubber and chocolate. Something to do, I think, with the wheels or the way it's powered. I've been back several times in adult life and always want it to smell as interesting as I remember it smelling, but it never does of course. But it's still as clean and lovely as it was back then, and still with as many sunglasses and lighters on sale on little tables in the stations manned by interesting-looking people from far-flung lands, often, at least in my childhood memory, with gold teeth in their smile.
I'm imagining my parents reading this (never a good move) and being annoyed that in a piece about my memories of a family trip to Paris I have spent the majority of the time talking about old video games and Orangina, but that's kinda the point I'm trying to make.
I'm sure that the plan to take me to Paris was at least in part to prepare me for learning the language at big school, and to, I guess, give me experience of another culture. And it completely did, just not in the way my parents perhaps wanted. The thing about taking someone (no matter how young and/or bratty) to somewhere interesting and foreign is that they'll never see it through your eyes and you'll never see it through theirs. But they'll still see it.
That holiday is the first time I had ever been to another country, and as my tattered passport will show, I got the bug. Going on that trip showed me that when you travel, and if you look, you see interesting stuff. You see things that are the same as home, and also completely not. That's it. Simple, but I think a lot of people never quite get to that stage, for whatever reason they'd rather not travel, and keep looking at the stuff they know. There's a space for that sure, but the more stuff you see, the more stuff becomes stuff you know. Is this making any kind of sense?
All the things I saw on that trip are now forever cemented in my head to that trip. Whenever I play Defender, I remember that cafe. Whenever I have a hot chocolate, I remember the big wide heavy white cup that needed two hands to hold. Whenever I see the Eiffel Tower on TV, I remember the little red, white and blue souvenir cap that I bought at the little shop at the top. Whenever I have Orangina (which I very occasionally still do), I remember my parents helping me order it in French and the waiter putting the bottle between his legs as if uncorking a wine bottle, when he unscrewed the cap).
Whenever I go to Paris, I remember the first time I went. I remember being a scared child on a new adventure with people who knew the way. Now I'm the person who knows the way, and I'm always ready for an adventure somewhere new. As I write this I can look out of my window and see something the ten year old me would never thought I'd see. The Bahamas. Honest to god desert islands, palm trees, the whole shebang. Maybe I might not be here if I hadn't been to Paris first. I'm not sure I'm any less of a brat these days though.
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
Trouble in St.Thomas
I'm killing time staring out the window at the planes dawdling around the tarmac. I snap a couple of photographs through the glass wall at a deserted set of airplane steps which look good against the clear blue sky, when I hear a couple of angry voices shouting. Then I realise that they're shouting at me.
"You can't take photographs here!"
"Oh, OK. Why?"
"Because they'll take your camera."
"But why?"
"Because you can't take pictures here."
"I get that, but why?"
"They'll take your camera"
"Yes, but I'm asking.."
"Stop taking pictures!"
I smile winningly, and move a little closer to the departure gate staff who have chosen to bawl at me. I speak in my softest, most friendly way:
"Here's the thing", I say, "Them taking my camera is the punishment for breaking the rule. The rule is that I can't take photographs. I'm just interested in knowing the reason for that rule."
They look at each other with incredulity. Like I haven't been listening.
"No pictures. They'll take your camera."
I point my finger at them, just like Spenser does in the books, and say "Gotcha" and wander away. To the other side of the lounge where I arrive just in time to see three large men in dark blue combat trousers tucked into very big stompy boots, baseball caps, mirrored shades and t-shirts with the catchy slogan "CBP FEDERAL" on the back in big yellow letters, oh, and guns - they're all wearing automatics, batons and mace on their belts. They're talking to a man who is sitting in one of the moulded plastic chairs with everyone else. No. They're not talking to him, they're talking at him. They're voices get louder and one points his finger in the mans face while the other two shift their weight and position a little in a way that old martial arts geeks like me know as taking a subtle combat stance. The man, still sitting down, shrugs.
By the time I have angled myself into a slightly better position from which to observe this, he's pushed up against one of the gate desks and is being handcuffed. Now he's being marched away, as the three men literally yell "RELAX, SIR" at him, while pushing him along and making him fall over his feet, their hands shoving him by the small of his back. Clearly well trained in the ways of being dickish.
There is a girl standing next to me watching. She giggles nervously. Me, not so much.
"You can't take photographs here!"
"Oh, OK. Why?"
"Because they'll take your camera."
"But why?"
"Because you can't take pictures here."
"I get that, but why?"
"They'll take your camera"
"Yes, but I'm asking.."
"Stop taking pictures!"
I smile winningly, and move a little closer to the departure gate staff who have chosen to bawl at me. I speak in my softest, most friendly way:
"Here's the thing", I say, "Them taking my camera is the punishment for breaking the rule. The rule is that I can't take photographs. I'm just interested in knowing the reason for that rule."
They look at each other with incredulity. Like I haven't been listening.
"No pictures. They'll take your camera."
I point my finger at them, just like Spenser does in the books, and say "Gotcha" and wander away. To the other side of the lounge where I arrive just in time to see three large men in dark blue combat trousers tucked into very big stompy boots, baseball caps, mirrored shades and t-shirts with the catchy slogan "CBP FEDERAL" on the back in big yellow letters, oh, and guns - they're all wearing automatics, batons and mace on their belts. They're talking to a man who is sitting in one of the moulded plastic chairs with everyone else. No. They're not talking to him, they're talking at him. They're voices get louder and one points his finger in the mans face while the other two shift their weight and position a little in a way that old martial arts geeks like me know as taking a subtle combat stance. The man, still sitting down, shrugs.
By the time I have angled myself into a slightly better position from which to observe this, he's pushed up against one of the gate desks and is being handcuffed. Now he's being marched away, as the three men literally yell "RELAX, SIR" at him, while pushing him along and making him fall over his feet, their hands shoving him by the small of his back. Clearly well trained in the ways of being dickish.
There is a girl standing next to me watching. She giggles nervously. Me, not so much.
Thursday, 6 March 2008
Pictures from the Popcorn Club
Ursula Martinez, Chris Lynam and Kate Short at Chris & Kates Popcorn Club. Big fun.
Sunday, 2 March 2008
All That Jazz
Worked for the lovely Paul L Martin last night at the Soho revue bar, with a collection of delightfully strange and glamorous people...
Saturday, 23 February 2008
Good evening, Newark
I'm at Newark airport, which is my current favourite airport in the world, not counting Tokyo Narita which wins by default as it resides in my beloved Japan. Newark is good though, there are, even for an American airport, lots of shops. On top of the predictable newsagents, there are some great oddities - the Smithsonian museum shop, a couple of killer gadget shops, the "America" shop, which sells white house and FBI merchandise, and at which I bought a Barack Obama bumper sticker which felt somehow much more exciting than it probably was. Best of all, though, is the Maui Taco place. Five bucks gets you a frighteningly huge bean burrito and chips served by sassy, giggling and slightly scary New Jersey girls. There is no better way to wait for your connecting flight home.
I flew in from St.Thomas a couple of hours ago, have had my spectacular burrito, and now board the plane back to Gatwick, which is so much my home these days that I might as well rent out a shop unit and just move in. I take my seat on the plane, and become aware that the safety announcement is playing on the tannoy, but skipping and looping. Literally: "The oxygen mask will drop from the..oxygen mask will drop from the..oxygen mask will dr..oxygen mask will.." over and over. I think little of it, and arrange my water, magazines and playstation in the seat pocket in front of me with artfulness and precision, and I wait for take off.
Twenty minutes later and nothing has happened. Nothing, that is, except a man in blue overalls has boarded the plane and is talking to the cabin crew. Then an announcement tells us that there is an electrical fault and it will take around fifteen minutes to fix, during which time all the electrical systems will have to be disabled, so they won't be able to make any more announcements. An hour passes, during which the lights occasionally go out and come back on again, but nothing else works. The air in the plane becomes warm and stale. One becomes aware that much of it, to paraphrase an old Ardal O'Hanlan bit, has been in other peoples mouths, and some of it, in other peoples bottoms. It doesn't help that I'm seated between a single parent and his screaming young child and, honest to god, a teenage wannabe latino rap group who don't stop singing. I know the rap group sound like fun - and I do love me some rap, but trust me, they're about as pleasant to listen to as a group of college girls from the valley visiting a slaughterhouse while being told they're having their allowances cut. You know. Shrill.
Finally the power comes back on and the air starts to become breathable again. And another announcement. We're close to finding out what's wrong with the power, and will know in the next few minutes, we're told. The bad news is that either it's just a problem with the in flight entertainment system, in which case no movies today, or it's a big electrical problem, in which case no plane today. Another twenty minutes pass. The cabin crew give out free glasses of water. Seriously. For free. First class probably got lapdances.
Then a new voice makes an announcement. The captain. And this is what he says:
"Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is the Captain. We hope you enjoyed these fun-filled one and a half hours sitting here on the tarmac at beautiful Newark airport and that you appreciated the view we gave you of the working planes taking off and landing. The good news is that the problem with the electronic systems has been resolved, and although there will be no in-flight entertainment during your journey, we are now cleared for take-off. Because of the electronic issues, the safety video cannot be displayed, so as a special treat, you'll have the pleasure of watching our talented cabin crew perform the safety demo unplugged and acoustically.
Also, there is no food on this flight.
I'm joking.
We're aware that we're leaving Newark an hour and a half behind schedule, so we're going to try to make up the time for you by flying extra fast, in fact, I'm going to turn on both engines instead of the usual one. Thanks for flying with us."
That is one witty pilot.
I flew in from St.Thomas a couple of hours ago, have had my spectacular burrito, and now board the plane back to Gatwick, which is so much my home these days that I might as well rent out a shop unit and just move in. I take my seat on the plane, and become aware that the safety announcement is playing on the tannoy, but skipping and looping. Literally: "The oxygen mask will drop from the..oxygen mask will drop from the..oxygen mask will dr..oxygen mask will.." over and over. I think little of it, and arrange my water, magazines and playstation in the seat pocket in front of me with artfulness and precision, and I wait for take off.
Twenty minutes later and nothing has happened. Nothing, that is, except a man in blue overalls has boarded the plane and is talking to the cabin crew. Then an announcement tells us that there is an electrical fault and it will take around fifteen minutes to fix, during which time all the electrical systems will have to be disabled, so they won't be able to make any more announcements. An hour passes, during which the lights occasionally go out and come back on again, but nothing else works. The air in the plane becomes warm and stale. One becomes aware that much of it, to paraphrase an old Ardal O'Hanlan bit, has been in other peoples mouths, and some of it, in other peoples bottoms. It doesn't help that I'm seated between a single parent and his screaming young child and, honest to god, a teenage wannabe latino rap group who don't stop singing. I know the rap group sound like fun - and I do love me some rap, but trust me, they're about as pleasant to listen to as a group of college girls from the valley visiting a slaughterhouse while being told they're having their allowances cut. You know. Shrill.
Finally the power comes back on and the air starts to become breathable again. And another announcement. We're close to finding out what's wrong with the power, and will know in the next few minutes, we're told. The bad news is that either it's just a problem with the in flight entertainment system, in which case no movies today, or it's a big electrical problem, in which case no plane today. Another twenty minutes pass. The cabin crew give out free glasses of water. Seriously. For free. First class probably got lapdances.
Then a new voice makes an announcement. The captain. And this is what he says:
"Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is the Captain. We hope you enjoyed these fun-filled one and a half hours sitting here on the tarmac at beautiful Newark airport and that you appreciated the view we gave you of the working planes taking off and landing. The good news is that the problem with the electronic systems has been resolved, and although there will be no in-flight entertainment during your journey, we are now cleared for take-off. Because of the electronic issues, the safety video cannot be displayed, so as a special treat, you'll have the pleasure of watching our talented cabin crew perform the safety demo unplugged and acoustically.
Also, there is no food on this flight.
I'm joking.
We're aware that we're leaving Newark an hour and a half behind schedule, so we're going to try to make up the time for you by flying extra fast, in fact, I'm going to turn on both engines instead of the usual one. Thanks for flying with us."
That is one witty pilot.
Thursday, 21 February 2008
Florida's largest mall, in three chapters
This all actually happened a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't get around to posting it until now..
Chapter 1
Shopping!
I'm sitting in the food court of Sawgrass Mills - Florida's largest outlet mall. When you have a day off, and the dollar is being reamed by the pound this comprehensively, it's only good sense to go shopping.
The shops themselves haven't quite opened as I arrive, so I wander around a bit, take in the satisfyingly American enormity, and navigate in the general direction of the food court, while grinning at the Segway-riding security guards. Long ago my wife instilled in me the rule that before a big shopping day, one must eat, or one will get grumpy and not like anything enough to buy it, which in a mall of such gargantuan proportions as this one, would be a sin.
So I currently wait for the shops to open, while eating the best breakfast I could find, which consists of has browns (small circles of deep fried potato), cheesy tots (small circles of deep fried cheese) and french toast sticks (which look exactly like fish fingers but are in fact, sweet. And deep fried). I feel no remorse for sucking down such suicidally unhealthy food - I've been shopping with me before, so I know I'll work it off patrolling these marble-floored boulevards of impulse purchase.
All the "food" I'm enjoying came from Burger King - the only place open thus far - but I am very excited to see a Taco Bell next door to it, gearing up for the day. Although I've been to this fine and bizarre country many times, I have never visited a Taco Bell. They never, to my knowledge, opened in the UK, so it's as close to fast food forbidden fruit as you can get, which is, in turn about as close to real fruit as you'll find in the Sawgrass Mills food court. So I have a plan - load up on fried carbs now, go shopping and wreck the US economy, then have Taco Bell.
Chapter 2
Uh-Oh
Well, the good news is that I'm back at the food court now awaiting delivery of my taco bell extravaganza. The bad news is that in between this paragraph and the previous one, it all kinda went to shit.
I was in such a fine, happy-go-lucky mood. Strolling around window shopping with a nice little mental list of things I needed that I knew I could get cheaper here. delightful. It all started once I'd found my first purchase, a pair of shorts. Card declined. And again. Weird, says the clerk, your pin is ok, but it's saying that the card isn't authorised to be used here. Luckily there's a cashpoint just outside, so out I go to the cashpoint. Card declined. To another cashpoint. Same again.This could be a problem. I call Lesley and get her to email me my bank's phone number and wait on hold for 10 minutes. From Florida. On a UK cellphone. Finally I get through and explain the situation. "Let me just see check that out for you", says the Alliance & Leicester drone, "No, there's no problem with the card". "That's all very well for you to say", I reply, "But you're not stuck in the middle of Florida without enough money for a taxi back". He says he understands and will try to find out what's going on, puts me on hold, and then hangs up. My temper isn't getting calmer. I call back, wait another 10 minutes on hold and get through to another Alliance & Leicester goon. I explain the situation, explain that I was just hung up on, explain that I'm calling from fucking Florida and am very very annoyed. No apology, that'd be asking too much. She checks things out and eventually has an answer for me. "Sometimes a card will be blocked, for security reasons". I splutter incredulously. "What does that mean", I ask. "Security reasons", she repeats. "Yes", I say, "I heard you, but what does that mean?", "Well", she says, "imagine if someone had stolen your card details..", "But that's not the case", I'm trying to see the funny side of this, "Because you're talking to me, and I'm here, in Florida, with the card you gave me so I could access my funds, and you're not letting me do that, and it's screwing with me."
I have two options, she advises me. I can try to get a much smaller amount out of the cashpoint, or I can find a bank. If I find a bank, any bank, and show them my visa card and passport, I'll be able to get as much money as I like. A few minutes of being told there's no way I can talk to a superior and I realise that I've got all I'm going to get out of her, so I say, sweetly, "I'm going to say thank you and hang up now, I obviously don't mean it, but only a foul git would just hang up, so thank you", and I hang up.
To the customer service desk, then, to find out where the nearest bank is. My enquiry is met with a vacant puzzled stare. There's no bank in the mall. Biggest mall in Florida and no banks. Peachy. I get directions to the nearest bank, which I am assured is within walking distance, and I set out, following the directions given to me carefully. This leads me through a car park, along a freeway and finally to a home furnishings warehouse, where I seek further instruction. The rotund, shiny sofa salesmen gives me simple directions - right out of the shop, right at the lazy boy shop, then right at the freeway and keep going until the crossroads and there it is. I set off again. It's getting hot, but I'm wearing sunblock and keep myself happy by singing Stevie Wonder songs to myself. I feel positive about this - clear directions to the bank, use my Hugh Grant-eque English charm to explain my predicament, then I'll get my money, then shopping, then Taco Bell. I turn right at the Lazy Boy shop. Feeling good about this. Ten minutes down the road and turn right at the freeway. Just like he said. There's the crossroads. Then, with a mental thud I realise that I'm right at the back entrance to the same home furnishings warehouse I started from. I stand there for a good twenty seconds unsure if I should laugh or just close my eyes and walk into the traffic.
Fine, I think. I'll just got back to the mall and try my luck getting smaller amounts of money from the cashpoint. As I walk back I realise that I've been swearing, quietly and - it has to be said - creatively, under my breath. Also occasionally muttering things like "I want to kill you all. WITH MY HANDS". Sensing that this might not be a good mental state to be in, I go back to singing Stevie. nobody can be psychotic while singing Stevie Wonder, it's just not possible.
I get back to the mall and approach a cashpoint. Let's be conservative. please can I have $100. No deal. Card rejected. Ok, let's try again. $80? Nope, get along now, limey. Last chance, $60. There it is, the satisfying mechanical churn of the cash-counting machinery and I have $60. Pushing my luck, I try to do the same again and get another $60. No dice. Well, at least I have enough for a taxi back now.
I walk back to the food court. If I use all the change in my pocket, I can get some Taco Bell, and dammit, that's what I came here for. So here I sit, in the food court, chewing on a bean burrito, which, it has to be said, is delicious, and was brought to my table by a very cool female security guard who is apparently friends with the taco Bell lady. It may not have been the best of days, but it's ending wasn't bad at all.
It was such a tease being in such a huge mall, but without the means with which to use it as it should be used. but the fact is that I'll be back here in a couple of weeks, so I'll make sure I come prepared. This isn't over. I'm coming back, and I'm going to go shopping.
Chapter 3
Post script
When I got back to England, I called my bank to see what the problem was. Apparently, they told me, there are some places that have a particularly high instance of credit card fraud, so rather than attempt to tackle that problem, my bank just bans all it's customers from using cards there. At all. For ever. I argued that this is the biggest mall in Florida, so statistically, there is going to be a higher instance of credit card fraud there, as there is a higher instance of credit card use there, but they didn't quite follow my logic. I asked if I could tell them when I'd be there so they could lift the ban for my card. They said no. I asked if I could be told in advance where in Florida I can go shopping and where I can't, and they said no. So if I want to go shopping in Florida, it's a complete gamble. Not really what I pay a bank for. This is, obviously, completely ridiculous - banning all credit cards just because some people steal them is as mad as banning all money because some people steal it, or as banning all liquids going onto a plane because once we thought someone might have made a liquid bomb, even though they actually never did and we were completely wrong. The dumbest and most shoot-yourself-in-the-foot reaction to a bad yet completely predictable situation.
I mentioned this while on the phone to someone who happens to work for another, larger bank, who told me that basically the Alliance & Leicester say they're a bank, but technically, aren't. How is that even allowed? Can I say I'm a bank then? I'll give you a card you can't use anywhere because once, at school, Steven Evans stole my rubber, but I'll keep hold of your cash for you. And spend it in Florida.
The moral of this story is that I am closing my account with Alliance and Leicester and going with a real bank. Partly because of all of the previously noted mullarkey, partly because of other previous problems I've had with them, but honestly - mainly because they have never apologised once, and with staff training that bad, no wonder they can't handle the complexities of finance, they can't even handle manners.
I am looking forward to doing this. I'm not a real financial adviser, in the same way that they're not a real bank, but I advise you to do the same.
Chapter 1
Shopping!
I'm sitting in the food court of Sawgrass Mills - Florida's largest outlet mall. When you have a day off, and the dollar is being reamed by the pound this comprehensively, it's only good sense to go shopping.
The shops themselves haven't quite opened as I arrive, so I wander around a bit, take in the satisfyingly American enormity, and navigate in the general direction of the food court, while grinning at the Segway-riding security guards. Long ago my wife instilled in me the rule that before a big shopping day, one must eat, or one will get grumpy and not like anything enough to buy it, which in a mall of such gargantuan proportions as this one, would be a sin.
So I currently wait for the shops to open, while eating the best breakfast I could find, which consists of has browns (small circles of deep fried potato), cheesy tots (small circles of deep fried cheese) and french toast sticks (which look exactly like fish fingers but are in fact, sweet. And deep fried). I feel no remorse for sucking down such suicidally unhealthy food - I've been shopping with me before, so I know I'll work it off patrolling these marble-floored boulevards of impulse purchase.
All the "food" I'm enjoying came from Burger King - the only place open thus far - but I am very excited to see a Taco Bell next door to it, gearing up for the day. Although I've been to this fine and bizarre country many times, I have never visited a Taco Bell. They never, to my knowledge, opened in the UK, so it's as close to fast food forbidden fruit as you can get, which is, in turn about as close to real fruit as you'll find in the Sawgrass Mills food court. So I have a plan - load up on fried carbs now, go shopping and wreck the US economy, then have Taco Bell.
Chapter 2
Uh-Oh
Well, the good news is that I'm back at the food court now awaiting delivery of my taco bell extravaganza. The bad news is that in between this paragraph and the previous one, it all kinda went to shit.
I was in such a fine, happy-go-lucky mood. Strolling around window shopping with a nice little mental list of things I needed that I knew I could get cheaper here. delightful. It all started once I'd found my first purchase, a pair of shorts. Card declined. And again. Weird, says the clerk, your pin is ok, but it's saying that the card isn't authorised to be used here. Luckily there's a cashpoint just outside, so out I go to the cashpoint. Card declined. To another cashpoint. Same again.This could be a problem. I call Lesley and get her to email me my bank's phone number and wait on hold for 10 minutes. From Florida. On a UK cellphone. Finally I get through and explain the situation. "Let me just see check that out for you", says the Alliance & Leicester drone, "No, there's no problem with the card". "That's all very well for you to say", I reply, "But you're not stuck in the middle of Florida without enough money for a taxi back". He says he understands and will try to find out what's going on, puts me on hold, and then hangs up. My temper isn't getting calmer. I call back, wait another 10 minutes on hold and get through to another Alliance & Leicester goon. I explain the situation, explain that I was just hung up on, explain that I'm calling from fucking Florida and am very very annoyed. No apology, that'd be asking too much. She checks things out and eventually has an answer for me. "Sometimes a card will be blocked, for security reasons". I splutter incredulously. "What does that mean", I ask. "Security reasons", she repeats. "Yes", I say, "I heard you, but what does that mean?", "Well", she says, "imagine if someone had stolen your card details..", "But that's not the case", I'm trying to see the funny side of this, "Because you're talking to me, and I'm here, in Florida, with the card you gave me so I could access my funds, and you're not letting me do that, and it's screwing with me."
I have two options, she advises me. I can try to get a much smaller amount out of the cashpoint, or I can find a bank. If I find a bank, any bank, and show them my visa card and passport, I'll be able to get as much money as I like. A few minutes of being told there's no way I can talk to a superior and I realise that I've got all I'm going to get out of her, so I say, sweetly, "I'm going to say thank you and hang up now, I obviously don't mean it, but only a foul git would just hang up, so thank you", and I hang up.
To the customer service desk, then, to find out where the nearest bank is. My enquiry is met with a vacant puzzled stare. There's no bank in the mall. Biggest mall in Florida and no banks. Peachy. I get directions to the nearest bank, which I am assured is within walking distance, and I set out, following the directions given to me carefully. This leads me through a car park, along a freeway and finally to a home furnishings warehouse, where I seek further instruction. The rotund, shiny sofa salesmen gives me simple directions - right out of the shop, right at the lazy boy shop, then right at the freeway and keep going until the crossroads and there it is. I set off again. It's getting hot, but I'm wearing sunblock and keep myself happy by singing Stevie Wonder songs to myself. I feel positive about this - clear directions to the bank, use my Hugh Grant-eque English charm to explain my predicament, then I'll get my money, then shopping, then Taco Bell. I turn right at the Lazy Boy shop. Feeling good about this. Ten minutes down the road and turn right at the freeway. Just like he said. There's the crossroads. Then, with a mental thud I realise that I'm right at the back entrance to the same home furnishings warehouse I started from. I stand there for a good twenty seconds unsure if I should laugh or just close my eyes and walk into the traffic.
Fine, I think. I'll just got back to the mall and try my luck getting smaller amounts of money from the cashpoint. As I walk back I realise that I've been swearing, quietly and - it has to be said - creatively, under my breath. Also occasionally muttering things like "I want to kill you all. WITH MY HANDS". Sensing that this might not be a good mental state to be in, I go back to singing Stevie. nobody can be psychotic while singing Stevie Wonder, it's just not possible.
I get back to the mall and approach a cashpoint. Let's be conservative. please can I have $100. No deal. Card rejected. Ok, let's try again. $80? Nope, get along now, limey. Last chance, $60. There it is, the satisfying mechanical churn of the cash-counting machinery and I have $60. Pushing my luck, I try to do the same again and get another $60. No dice. Well, at least I have enough for a taxi back now.
I walk back to the food court. If I use all the change in my pocket, I can get some Taco Bell, and dammit, that's what I came here for. So here I sit, in the food court, chewing on a bean burrito, which, it has to be said, is delicious, and was brought to my table by a very cool female security guard who is apparently friends with the taco Bell lady. It may not have been the best of days, but it's ending wasn't bad at all.
It was such a tease being in such a huge mall, but without the means with which to use it as it should be used. but the fact is that I'll be back here in a couple of weeks, so I'll make sure I come prepared. This isn't over. I'm coming back, and I'm going to go shopping.
Chapter 3
Post script
When I got back to England, I called my bank to see what the problem was. Apparently, they told me, there are some places that have a particularly high instance of credit card fraud, so rather than attempt to tackle that problem, my bank just bans all it's customers from using cards there. At all. For ever. I argued that this is the biggest mall in Florida, so statistically, there is going to be a higher instance of credit card fraud there, as there is a higher instance of credit card use there, but they didn't quite follow my logic. I asked if I could tell them when I'd be there so they could lift the ban for my card. They said no. I asked if I could be told in advance where in Florida I can go shopping and where I can't, and they said no. So if I want to go shopping in Florida, it's a complete gamble. Not really what I pay a bank for. This is, obviously, completely ridiculous - banning all credit cards just because some people steal them is as mad as banning all money because some people steal it, or as banning all liquids going onto a plane because once we thought someone might have made a liquid bomb, even though they actually never did and we were completely wrong. The dumbest and most shoot-yourself-in-the-foot reaction to a bad yet completely predictable situation.
I mentioned this while on the phone to someone who happens to work for another, larger bank, who told me that basically the Alliance & Leicester say they're a bank, but technically, aren't. How is that even allowed? Can I say I'm a bank then? I'll give you a card you can't use anywhere because once, at school, Steven Evans stole my rubber, but I'll keep hold of your cash for you. And spend it in Florida.
The moral of this story is that I am closing my account with Alliance and Leicester and going with a real bank. Partly because of all of the previously noted mullarkey, partly because of other previous problems I've had with them, but honestly - mainly because they have never apologised once, and with staff training that bad, no wonder they can't handle the complexities of finance, they can't even handle manners.
I am looking forward to doing this. I'm not a real financial adviser, in the same way that they're not a real bank, but I advise you to do the same.
Friday, 1 February 2008
Ups and downs in St Lucia
By the time I finally get ashore at St Lucia I'm not in the best of moods.The route to get from the dockside to the town is designed to you absolutely have to go through a small, twisty-turny shopping mall of tourist crap, a common and dirt-cheap tactic I've seen before. So having pushed my way patiently through hordes of tourists who simultaneously whine about the slow-moving queue while contributing to it by slowing to gawp at shop windows (and there's your parable for western civilisation right there), I finally make it out to the main street. And what a street it is. Horrible. Literally every step I take a different tour guide (i.e. taxi driver with a self-esteem issues and an old map) asks me if I want to go on a tour - "Four hours, all the beaches, special places". I run out of ways to say no and cross the noisy road just in time to find myself knee deep in people selling authentic Island souvenirs, which seems to mean Tupac T-Shirts, Marijuana leaf bandanas and baseballs caps bearing the slogan "It's always 4'o clock somewhere", accompanied by a picture of a cocktail. There's nothing like experiencing the culture first hand.
I am, of course, well used to this rubbish. There's a little busy wasps nest of it surrounding every stop on a cruise ships itinerary and, frankly, you can't blame people for wanting to make a living out of the influx of pasty tourists that the motherships bring, but when you're in a crappy mood, it can't help but depress you. I find the first road into town and away from the main street, "Always get away from the beaten path" I remind myself. And I do. Just a couple of blocks away I emerge from a little side street into what is obviously the real main street. A wide road with a park at one end and a church in the middle, full of people, but none of them selling anything, with the exception of the little smiling girl selling candy from a blanket on the corner. Best of all, it's quiet. There's just as many people but they all seem to be just hanging out, or having gentle friendly conversations. I walk on and find myself in a large town square lined with beautifully wonky wooden shops and houses, each one in a different pastel colour. Gentle pinks, light greens and candy blues contrast with the deep lush greens of the park that the square wraps around. A taxi driver stops his car and winds down his window just to tell the woman walking next to me how much he likes her hairdo. It makes her day, and very nearly makes mine too. And my bad mood has gone, just like that. I take a deep breath of the warm air heavy with the scent of freshly mown grass and keep walking.
I walk out of the town a little, up a steep winding road at the end of which, I surmise, might well be a nice view out over the harbour when someone that I can only accurately describe as a mad-eyes rasta, clambers out of a big bush that forms part of the undergrowth runs along one side of the street. Shirtless, wearing only a ragged pair of jean shorts he glares at me as I pass him. I avoid eye contact, thinking it's just the often-seen look that a tourist not in the tourist part of town gets. Then something hits me, or more specifically, hits my shoulder bag, hard. I turn around and see a brick by my feet. Looking up, I quickly deduce that it's not only the rasta's eyes that are mad, it would seem all of him is - he just threw a brick at me as hard as he could. And now those mad eyes are staring at me. I am, it would seem, for whatever reason, not his friend. Then I see the big stick in his hand and he starts to walk towards me. How wonderful.
I throw out a low, not particularly pretty crescent kick and knock the stick from his hand. If I'm being honest, I'd admit that I only planned to knock his arm out of the way so I could close the distance and twist the stick out of his grip, but it seems he wasn't holding onto it as tightly as he should have been, so I'm happy to let him believe I'm Jackie Chan. He is momentarily suprised by my fairly audacious counter-attack and looks at me angrily confused. I take a controlled step back, adopt a loose fighting stance and give him The Eyes (tm). What seems like 3 minutes but is probably more like 5 seconds passes and neither of us do anything. Then, suddenly, as if obeying a cue only he could hear, he dives back into the undergrowth from whence he came. I straighten up, feeling pretty good about myself, safe in the knowledge that I scared him off.Breathing out slowly, I glance around and see a few passers-by looking concerned and waving me away furiously, and it dawns on me. I didn't scare him off at all, he's just gone to get more sticks and bricks. Shit. Time to go. I leave, not running, but walking a little faster than usual, hearing myself say, over and over, "What the fuck?", while checking over my shoulder at regular intervals.
I get myself back to the town square and walk around a bit to let my heart rate slow back to normal. My first thought is to go back to the ship and never go ashore again because the Caribbean is clearly full of crazy people, but after a while I relax and am able to think more clearly. Then I'm at the far end of the tourist-hell street and from where I stand I can see both parts of town, and that's when I start to wonder. Is it one or the other? Either you just do the tourist stuff and have a mostly predictable time with the tiny chance that you might meet someone interesting or do something unplanned and cool, or you get as far from the tourists stuff as possible and just go for a walk and have a mostly adventurous and unpredictable time with the tiny chance you might meet someone crazy or do something unplanned and not cool? There might be some truth to that, I think, and anyway, now I can add St.Lucia to the growing list of countries in which I've nearly had the crap kicked out of me. Yay.
I am, of course, well used to this rubbish. There's a little busy wasps nest of it surrounding every stop on a cruise ships itinerary and, frankly, you can't blame people for wanting to make a living out of the influx of pasty tourists that the motherships bring, but when you're in a crappy mood, it can't help but depress you. I find the first road into town and away from the main street, "Always get away from the beaten path" I remind myself. And I do. Just a couple of blocks away I emerge from a little side street into what is obviously the real main street. A wide road with a park at one end and a church in the middle, full of people, but none of them selling anything, with the exception of the little smiling girl selling candy from a blanket on the corner. Best of all, it's quiet. There's just as many people but they all seem to be just hanging out, or having gentle friendly conversations. I walk on and find myself in a large town square lined with beautifully wonky wooden shops and houses, each one in a different pastel colour. Gentle pinks, light greens and candy blues contrast with the deep lush greens of the park that the square wraps around. A taxi driver stops his car and winds down his window just to tell the woman walking next to me how much he likes her hairdo. It makes her day, and very nearly makes mine too. And my bad mood has gone, just like that. I take a deep breath of the warm air heavy with the scent of freshly mown grass and keep walking.
I walk out of the town a little, up a steep winding road at the end of which, I surmise, might well be a nice view out over the harbour when someone that I can only accurately describe as a mad-eyes rasta, clambers out of a big bush that forms part of the undergrowth runs along one side of the street. Shirtless, wearing only a ragged pair of jean shorts he glares at me as I pass him. I avoid eye contact, thinking it's just the often-seen look that a tourist not in the tourist part of town gets. Then something hits me, or more specifically, hits my shoulder bag, hard. I turn around and see a brick by my feet. Looking up, I quickly deduce that it's not only the rasta's eyes that are mad, it would seem all of him is - he just threw a brick at me as hard as he could. And now those mad eyes are staring at me. I am, it would seem, for whatever reason, not his friend. Then I see the big stick in his hand and he starts to walk towards me. How wonderful.
I throw out a low, not particularly pretty crescent kick and knock the stick from his hand. If I'm being honest, I'd admit that I only planned to knock his arm out of the way so I could close the distance and twist the stick out of his grip, but it seems he wasn't holding onto it as tightly as he should have been, so I'm happy to let him believe I'm Jackie Chan. He is momentarily suprised by my fairly audacious counter-attack and looks at me angrily confused. I take a controlled step back, adopt a loose fighting stance and give him The Eyes (tm). What seems like 3 minutes but is probably more like 5 seconds passes and neither of us do anything. Then, suddenly, as if obeying a cue only he could hear, he dives back into the undergrowth from whence he came. I straighten up, feeling pretty good about myself, safe in the knowledge that I scared him off.Breathing out slowly, I glance around and see a few passers-by looking concerned and waving me away furiously, and it dawns on me. I didn't scare him off at all, he's just gone to get more sticks and bricks. Shit. Time to go. I leave, not running, but walking a little faster than usual, hearing myself say, over and over, "What the fuck?", while checking over my shoulder at regular intervals.
I get myself back to the town square and walk around a bit to let my heart rate slow back to normal. My first thought is to go back to the ship and never go ashore again because the Caribbean is clearly full of crazy people, but after a while I relax and am able to think more clearly. Then I'm at the far end of the tourist-hell street and from where I stand I can see both parts of town, and that's when I start to wonder. Is it one or the other? Either you just do the tourist stuff and have a mostly predictable time with the tiny chance that you might meet someone interesting or do something unplanned and cool, or you get as far from the tourists stuff as possible and just go for a walk and have a mostly adventurous and unpredictable time with the tiny chance you might meet someone crazy or do something unplanned and not cool? There might be some truth to that, I think, and anyway, now I can add St.Lucia to the growing list of countries in which I've nearly had the crap kicked out of me. Yay.
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Yes, it's his real name
Richard Quest works for CNN. He fronts two shows - The self-titled and gloriously vague "Quest", in which he travels somewhere to meet someone and ..um..talks to them. Seriously, I've tried to find a deeper thematic element to the series and come up blank. His other show - and the one that, many years ago, brought him to my attention, is the risible "Business Traveller", which is kind of porn for travelling salesmen without being, you know, actually porn for travelling salesmen. It concerns itself with how best to be a high-flying, globe-trotting, modern-world-bestriding business titan. Once a month, Richard advises us on which Japanese airports serve the best sushi in massage chairs, which brand new platinum plated ultra-portable laptop computer is the most essential for slicked-suited office mavericks like you to play minesweeper on, and what you should do to unwind once you've closed that huge deal in Macau. It is, in other words, 98% fantasy for fantasists, and I think it knows it.
Richard Quest is tall, bespectacled, English, very English, and enthusiastic to the point of spontaneous human combustion. He leans towards the camera and shouts at you as though no electronic technology were required for you to hear his urgent report from a Tokyo mobile phone superstore. He does that thing with his hand that Tony Blair started doing when his advisers noticed that Bill Clinton started doing it. You know, that gesture where you make a little fist and then point with the first knuckle of your forefinger, jutting out slightly. I remember reading about this a few years ago. Image consultants had decided that it was a way to emphasise a point without actually pointing your finger, which could, apparently, be taken as overly aggressive. I think that may have been the moment that believeable party politics actually keeled over and died. Anyway, back to dear old Richard. He puts all THE emphasis ON all THE wrong words. Best of all he concludes each episode of "Business Traveller" with the frankly lucifer-summoning catch-phrase "Wherever your travels take you - I hope it's profitable". All these are reasons to hate him. All good reasons for me to fill the next few paragraphs with anger. But I won't. For the truth is I love this man deeply.
Having researched his career a little I know that he worked his way through the ranks of the BBC over the course of many years, and has ended up at that bastion of bluster and manufactured panic, CNN. A long career in that famously cynical industry could make even the most idealistic man jaded. But not Richard. His genius is in his enthusiasm. It's real. When he reports about artificially intelligent toilets at Tokyo's Narita airport (as he recently did), he's genuinely as interested as when he talked about not leaving your laptop turned on and unattended in a cheap hotel room when you go out (as he also did). He virtually glows and shakes as he revels in the simple joy of telling you stuff. His appearance helps, undeniably. Appearance-wise, he is half the Muppets' Guy Smiley made flesh, and half the kid that Boris Johnson would have paid a gardener in toffees and copies of Razzle to beat up and lock in the shed at prep school. He is still that kid, except that now he is paid what I'm assuming is a generous salary to fly around the world, business class, to tell you where to find wifi in Brussels, or how nice it is to spend an afternoon on a boat in the Seychelles.
Like any great clown, the joy isn't so much in what he's going to do, but simply what circumstance his producer has decided to put him in today. And like any great clown, he always wears the same motley. Tailored suit - usually dark blue - from Hong Kong, white shirt, cheap tie from an airport, glasses, shiny shoes. The opening shot of the show will have him walking towards camera, gesturing wildly with an unhinged grin on his face - same every episode. Only the background changes- one month it's Dubai airport, the next he's in the desert with pyramids behind him, or in Paris trying to look casual sitting outside a cafe, or in the USA walking around the world's biggest lost luggage warehouse. I once saw him doing a piece to camera while striding down the middle of a 747, in flight, halfway through a long-haul flight, talking in HIS characteristic WAY much too LOUDLY. The great part was that as he bounced down the plane, gesticulating wildly and bellowing at the camera, the poor passengers, one by one - almost without exception - jerked awake with a start as he passed them . In the centre of the frame was his grinning, happy face, blissfully unaware that he's framed each side by exhausted passengers glaring at him with thoughts of presentercide in their minds.
But to hell with them. They should have realised that they were in the presence of greatness and bought the man a drink. For Richard Quest may be the last non-ironic, non-self-effacing, non-post modern presenter on television. I saw him on two consecutive days last month. On the first day he was interviewing Santa Claus at the South Pole. The following night he was chairing an industry summit on global warming. "That", my wife offered, "Isn't right". And if it were anyone else, she'd be dead right. Anyone else caught doing a stupid Christmas fluff piece would be laughed at if they then tried to do a heavyweight global warming thing the next day. But for Richard it works, because he gives the exact same amount of gravitas to Father Christmas as he does to global warming, either that or he treats them with the same amount of passive-aggressive contempt. I'm not sure. Either way it works.
Wherever I am in the World, there's usually CNN, and I always - always - flick it on in the hope of finding Richard bouncing around some far-flung city scaring the locals. I've been in the depths of depression and loneliness, only to be giggled out of it by the vision of Richard walking towards the camera, all elbows and knees akimbo, proudly saying where he is in the world, and what he's going to tell us about. Still need a reason to love him? Consider this: A couple of years ago Al Jazeera TV were pouring lots of money into setting up an American version of their channel and were poaching some big names with some even bigger pay cheques (all of which, hilariously, two years later, have started bouncing). They approached Richard and asked him if he'd like to work for them, and his reply, reportedly, was that he was "a little too Jewish and a little too gay".
I mean, someday, to buy the man dinner.
Friday, 11 January 2008
Bubble Wrap
Waiting in line in the check-in queue at glamorous Gatwick airport, I am engaged in conversation by an old-ish gentleman wearing the interesting combination of a tweed suit, flat cap and tracksuit top. He questions me gently but thoroughly about the auto check in machines that we have all had to use and which are new to him. We agree that they clearly don't make check-in any quicker but just break one large queue up into two large queues with a lot of confused old people, while saving money on staff. "You'd be in trouble if you couldn't read or write", he offers, which is true, although if you're resourceful enough to have booked a ticket, then I'm sure you'd find a way to overcome this little hurdle. We continue chatting and he tells me that he came from the Caribbean a long time ago and has now retired back there, which sounds like a good plan if ever I heard one. He asks me what I do, so with my usual slightly cautious chuckle, I tell him. "Wowee", he says carefully, "A juggler. Wowee".
At that moment, we hear raised voices over by one of the check-in desks and we all glance over to see a middle aged man sweating and flushed in his blue suit, shouting at a resolutely calm and curly-permed check-in girl. He has been told that he's only allowed to check in one suitcase. He has two. "How long has there been this stupid rule?", he bellows without looking at the girl behind the desk. "More than a year, sir", she smiles back. "Where does it say that on the ticket? It should say it on the ticket. It doesn't say it anywhere on the ticket", now he's looking at her, which is great as it means he sees her hold up his ticket and point with a long perfectly manicured pink nail to exactly where it say it on the ticket. Then he whirls around to face the queue, sees me with my two big suitcases and points angrily, "What about him, he has two cases". I respond with my most winning-est grin, safe in the knowledge that as someone working on a cruise ship I have a special sea-mans exemption and can carry twice the amount of luggage that you plebs are allowed. I am special. The man next to me in the line that I was talking to giggles.
"Fine", says the angry man, "FINE", and starts to unzip one of his suitcases. Now pretty much the whole queue is looking. There is little more intoxicating than the opportunity to see inside someone else's suitcase. We all peer at it as inconspicuously as possible, which isn't very. Then he opens it. It's full of bubble wrap. Completely full. There is nothing else in the case at all. Just bubble wrap. He starts to unload it. Dumping armfuls of it onto the floor by the counter, it's unfolding and unrolling as he unpacks it, so that the pile on the floor next to him is much bigger that the size of the suitcase it came from. Finally he's done, the zips the full suitcase inside the now empty one and throws it onto the conveyor belt. "OK?", he snaps. He gets given his boarding card and storms away. We all mutter amusedly to ourselves and continue to gawp at the huge pile of bubble wrap, which must be at least three feet wide by two feet tall. A little bubble-wrap mountain. Mount Pop. Now the check-in girl is peering over the front of her counter and looking at it too. She ponders for a second, picks up her phone, says a few words, smiles and hangs up. Within a couple of minutes a particularly large member of the airport staff has frog-marched the now very angry man back to the counter, dragged a trash can over to him and now stands over him as the furious man realises what he has to do and starts to put all the bubble wrap in the trash. Now my part of the line are laughing openly, and the check-in girl smiles sweetly at us while we all watch the man clear up his mess and slink away, completely defeated. "Wowee", says the man next to me, between little wheezy laughs.
The rest of my flight is uneventful and fairly pleasant, until I reach Barbados, my destination. There's some problem with immigration - they need to know what hotel I'm staying at, but I have no idea as I just get picked up at the airport and taken there. Clearly this means that I'm attempting to stay in Barbados illegally, or forever, or I'm a terrorist, or something. Either way I get lead to a little office and told to wait while they make some phone calls. I lean on the side of a desk and immediately get told off and told that chairs are for sitting. I giggle and mumble "Settle down Beavis" under my breath and sit in one of the blue plastic school chairs. There's a TV in the corner of the room showing "The High Chapparal" and above it, on the wall, a notice that says "All human interactions are an opportunity to learn or teach". I wonder which one is being done here. I take out my phone to make a note of the the sign, a move which attracts the response "No phones". I guess the assumption is that I've had enough and have decided to call in an air-strike or something. If I had the power to call in air-strikes I would have used it a long time ago and not on somewhere as gorgeous as Barbados. Are you listening Stevenage, Swindon and Peterborough? Anyway, they confirm that I am not a danger to the Barbadian way of life, but I am, in fact, just a snarky juggler, so the let me go.
By the time I get to my hotel I'm starving. Having been to this hotel before, I recall that the vegetarian food wasn't much of anything, so I set off up the road to investigate the pizza place I saw from the taxi window on the drive it. There it is, in the middle of a bunch of pre-fab shops and pastel coloured bungalows, "Mamma Mia's Authentic Italian Deli and Pizzeria". Looks like it could be promising. On entering, I realise that it's more than promising, it's great. Full of cocky Italian folk ("Do you take visa cards? Yes. Do you do take out? Yes. Can I have a large Aosta pizza? No. I JOKE!"), it's actually like being in Italy. Shelves full of big sausages, cheeses, wines, breads, lots of good-looking little snacks wrapped in twists of paper and stored in big jars. And Chinnoto, my favourite non-Coca Cola fizzy drink. Back in my hotel room I sit on the bed, open the pizza box, flick on the TV and take my first bite. "Wowee", I say to myself, "Wowee".
Friday, 4 January 2008
End of year mullarkey
It's been quite the year.
Started it by closing up "The Impossibles" at Croydon, a show I was very proud of, with a lovely cast, which played to tiny audiences thanks to the theatre's..um..shall we say "creative" approach to marketing. Still, one London newspaper reviewed us and Jack Black on the same page and we got more stars than the overrated fat boy, so that's something.
Then the travelling began. Dubai first, then the Caribbean, then a few months of Greece, Turkey and Italy with a cruise ship. Then Hannover to play in the gardens. Then Toronto to play in the streets. Then Hannover again, this time to play on the same stage that Josephine Baker and Bob Bramson worked. Then back to the Caribbean. Then the big finish - Deptford - for a show with swearing, sleaze and decent audiences! And currently a cosy front room in chilly London.
Met lots of new friends, got closer to some old ones, and lost one of my best.
An amazing, tiring, beautiful, rewarding, and completely heartbreaking year.
Started it by closing up "The Impossibles" at Croydon, a show I was very proud of, with a lovely cast, which played to tiny audiences thanks to the theatre's..um..shall we say "creative" approach to marketing. Still, one London newspaper reviewed us and Jack Black on the same page and we got more stars than the overrated fat boy, so that's something.
Then the travelling began. Dubai first, then the Caribbean, then a few months of Greece, Turkey and Italy with a cruise ship. Then Hannover to play in the gardens. Then Toronto to play in the streets. Then Hannover again, this time to play on the same stage that Josephine Baker and Bob Bramson worked. Then back to the Caribbean. Then the big finish - Deptford - for a show with swearing, sleaze and decent audiences! And currently a cosy front room in chilly London.
Met lots of new friends, got closer to some old ones, and lost one of my best.
An amazing, tiring, beautiful, rewarding, and completely heartbreaking year.
End of the year photo mullarkey
Thought I'd post a few of my favourite photographs from the last few months. All the above people are fine, wonderful and as off-kilter as you could wish for. Happy to know them all, I am.
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
I'm on BoingBoing!
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/19/old-table-cloth-tric.html
Giddy with childish glee.
I've been reading BoingBoing for years now - it's pretty much my first morning stop on the web after checking email and (obviously) the wrestling news. Well today they mentioned me, so I believe the correct form of celebratory noise would be "W00t!"
In other news, the theatre show is going well, selling more tickets than we did last year, which is a good thing, and people seem to be enjoying it, which is kinda the point.
Last night tonight then we're off to Barbados for Christmas. We flee the cold.
Giddy with childish glee.
I've been reading BoingBoing for years now - it's pretty much my first morning stop on the web after checking email and (obviously) the wrestling news. Well today they mentioned me, so I believe the correct form of celebratory noise would be "W00t!"
In other news, the theatre show is going well, selling more tickets than we did last year, which is a good thing, and people seem to be enjoying it, which is kinda the point
Last night tonight then we're off to Barbados for Christmas. We flee the cold.
Wednesday, 5 December 2007
Come see me in the theatre!
I wouldn't normally use the blog for such a mercenary tactic,but what the hell...
Come and see my show!
Albany theatre, deptford. Strictly limited season.
13th-19th december.
Late night. Adults only.
It'll rock. Guaran-damn-teed.
more info at www.TheImpossibles.co.uk
Thursday, 22 November 2007
Gike!
Waiting at Aruba airport on my way home from 10 days in the Caribbean on a big white imperial destroyer of a ship, much of it between ports on "sea days". A sea day is when you're at sea all day. I know. self-explanatory. We had two sets of two sea days this trip. These are the days you become aware that you're within reach of losing it. You can't get off the ship. I can't over-stress this point. You're trapped. And all of the little places on the ship that you have discovered, that you think nobody else knows about? They're all full of passengers. The sanctuary pool? Full of blokes snogging their girlfriends in the deep end. The gym? Wall to wall old ladies going 6 steps a minute on the treadmills and their husbands reliving younger days by doing bicep curls with 2kg weights in US Navy baseball caps. Even the basketball court, tucked away high up at the back of the ship, where I sometimes go to practice my juggling - full of chefs shooting hoops. In full chef whites. Honestly, I didn't mind this last one. I'm as big a fan of a surreal image as the next pelican.
Normally I spend a good deal of my time on board these ships hiding away in my room watching TV shows and movies on my laptop while grazing the food I have scavenged from the "Horizon court" buffet. (Oh the cheese pie. That's what'll kill me, for sure). But this trip I had nice people to play with. Rupert and Danielle are lovely English folk in the early 20's who do what they describe as "Special effects puppetry". What this means to you and me, is that they play characters who walk around and interact in a charming and hilarious way with members of the public. The characters, though, are only about two feet tall, and are carrying huge backpacks in which hide - yes - Rupert and Danielle. There's actually no decent way of describing what they do, other than to say that it's completely excellent. There are a lot of what we call "walk about" acts these days, and 98.7% of them are god awful. I mean really bad. (May I just digress for a second here and say that many performers learn a skill but not how to perform, or learn how to perform but never have a skill to go with it, but walking on stilts is really, honestly, not much of a skill, so if you don't have a crapload of creative genius to add to it, then you have nothing. NOTHING. You're just a twit with wood strapped to your legs. A TALL TWIT). Anyway, the point I'm making is this: Rupert and Danielle are bloody brilliant, and as talented at performing the characters as they are at designing and making the props - which is to say, very. The characters are so good, and so unlike anything anyone will have seen previously, that they always carry in their check-in luggage a photograph of the characters posing with a real dog ("for scale", Rupert points out) with the word "PUPPETS" written in large orange pen on the back, so as to answer any questions anyone might have.
The kids, as I decide to patronisingly refer to Rupert and Danielle for the entire cruise (and something that, to their credit, they don't complain about), are very friendly and pleasantly geeky, (You gotta love a girl who brings Daredevil comics on a cruise with her) so we end up hanging out a lot together, going for meals at the posh restaurants, and sitting at the back of the big song and dance shows and giggling like children. Rupert doesn't drink alcohol, opting instead for various creative combinations of various juices and sodas. Danielle more than makes up for this, and will love me for bringing this up, I'm sure. I teach them how to play poker, and Danielle quickly shows a frightening natural talent for the game, winning over and over while cheerfully muttering "I am loving this game", at least until real money becomes involved, by which time her streak leaves her and attaches itself to Rupert and me. I can only hope that they were as grateful of the company as I was, because I really was - to the point of starting to become paranoid that I was being annoying and clingy, but that's probably more my issue than theirs. As I write this, and unless they have backed out, they are on a guided tour of an Ostrich farm. People who work on the ship, like us, get to go on the tours free if there are any spaces left after everyone else has had the chance to sign up. They put themselves on the list for Scuba diving, and Horse riding, and they got Ostrich farm, which is hilarious.
I have just noticed that the bottled water I am drinking as I write this, ("Tropical AWA Aruba water") has a large gold medal on the label which proudly proclaims that it was the "Grand quality award winner in Brussels, 2004". Clearly they mention this to impress me, but all I can think of is why it didn't win subsequent years. Did the quality of the water fall that dramatically? In which case, since I am drinking this water in 2007, what's the point in telling me how good it used to be. "Oh man, you should have been drinking this water a couple of years back, it was the cats meow. These days, meh..". Or maybe the quality of the competing brands jumped up suddenly from 2005 onwards, leaving Aruba water behind, in which case perhaps I shouldn't be buying this water since it's clearly not trying as hard as it used to. Maybe I'm going into this too deeply, it just seems like the more you examine it, the more putting the big gold medal on the bottle is lose-lose.
Normally I spend a good deal of my time on board these ships hiding away in my room watching TV shows and movies on my laptop while grazing the food I have scavenged from the "Horizon court" buffet. (Oh the cheese pie. That's what'll kill me, for sure). But this trip I had nice people to play with. Rupert and Danielle are lovely English folk in the early 20's who do what they describe as "Special effects puppetry". What this means to you and me, is that they play characters who walk around and interact in a charming and hilarious way with members of the public. The characters, though, are only about two feet tall, and are carrying huge backpacks in which hide - yes - Rupert and Danielle. There's actually no decent way of describing what they do, other than to say that it's completely excellent. There are a lot of what we call "walk about" acts these days, and 98.7% of them are god awful. I mean really bad. (May I just digress for a second here and say that many performers learn a skill but not how to perform, or learn how to perform but never have a skill to go with it, but walking on stilts is really, honestly, not much of a skill, so if you don't have a crapload of creative genius to add to it, then you have nothing. NOTHING. You're just a twit with wood strapped to your legs. A TALL TWIT). Anyway, the point I'm making is this: Rupert and Danielle are bloody brilliant, and as talented at performing the characters as they are at designing and making the props - which is to say, very. The characters are so good, and so unlike anything anyone will have seen previously, that they always carry in their check-in luggage a photograph of the characters posing with a real dog ("for scale", Rupert points out) with the word "PUPPETS" written in large orange pen on the back, so as to answer any questions anyone might have.
The kids, as I decide to patronisingly refer to Rupert and Danielle for the entire cruise (and something that, to their credit, they don't complain about), are very friendly and pleasantly geeky, (You gotta love a girl who brings Daredevil comics on a cruise with her) so we end up hanging out a lot together, going for meals at the posh restaurants, and sitting at the back of the big song and dance shows and giggling like children. Rupert doesn't drink alcohol, opting instead for various creative combinations of various juices and sodas. Danielle more than makes up for this, and will love me for bringing this up, I'm sure. I teach them how to play poker, and Danielle quickly shows a frightening natural talent for the game, winning over and over while cheerfully muttering "I am loving this game", at least until real money becomes involved, by which time her streak leaves her and attaches itself to Rupert and me. I can only hope that they were as grateful of the company as I was, because I really was - to the point of starting to become paranoid that I was being annoying and clingy, but that's probably more my issue than theirs. As I write this, and unless they have backed out, they are on a guided tour of an Ostrich farm. People who work on the ship, like us, get to go on the tours free if there are any spaces left after everyone else has had the chance to sign up. They put themselves on the list for Scuba diving, and Horse riding, and they got Ostrich farm, which is hilarious.
I have just noticed that the bottled water I am drinking as I write this, ("Tropical AWA Aruba water") has a large gold medal on the label which proudly proclaims that it was the "Grand quality award winner in Brussels, 2004". Clearly they mention this to impress me, but all I can think of is why it didn't win subsequent years. Did the quality of the water fall that dramatically? In which case, since I am drinking this water in 2007, what's the point in telling me how good it used to be. "Oh man, you should have been drinking this water a couple of years back, it was the cats meow. These days, meh..". Or maybe the quality of the competing brands jumped up suddenly from 2005 onwards, leaving Aruba water behind, in which case perhaps I shouldn't be buying this water since it's clearly not trying as hard as it used to. Maybe I'm going into this too deeply, it just seems like the more you examine it, the more putting the big gold medal on the bottle is lose-lose.
Sunday, 4 November 2007
Accident
Every night, here at the GOP variety theatre in beautiful rainy Hannover, in the middle of the big finale bows, we do a sequence that is apparently traditional in European variety - "the gimmicks". Big bouncy music starts, and we all take it in turns to run centre stage and do one more encore trick. Something a bit silly to get one more cheer out of the crowd and send 'em home happy. Often some of the acts do something together, as is the case with Sven, Roma and Ekaterina. During rehearsals they put together a trick where Roma sits on Svens shoulders, leans right back and Ekaterina hooks Roma's feet under her armpits. Sven then picks them both up and spins around like a lunatic while they both hang out flat each side like a fairground ride made out of circus people. It's cool.
Last night, we were at the end of the show, playing to a lovely crowd, and they were doing it. Spinning around fast, Roma's pink costume and Ekaterina's gold bikini a blur.
Then it all came apart in mid air.
Ekaterina has slipped out and is flying through the air, her body completely horizontal, still spinning, still a blur.
Time slows and all seems to go quiet, then it suddenly speeds up again like an old VHS player catching up with itself after grinding through a patch of crumpled tape.
She hit the hard scuffed black stage, knocking herself out. No sickening thud, she's too light, her body clears 20 feet in half a second like a stone skimming on water. Then she bounces at least a full foot and a half back up into the air, clearing the footlights and landing in the laps of the front row before slipping awkwardly to the floor.
Roma falls backwards to the floor, the weight of Sven partly on top of her. She somehow crawls the few feet right past me into the wings and out of view of the audience, only then seemingly allowing herself to be completely knocked out.
Time gets back to normal speed. The audience is frozen. We are frozen. It hits me that the stupid high energy music that accompanies the finale is still playing, suddenly so unsuitable. Then some of us are shooting offstage for help, others of us are running to the front to check Ekaterina who lays crumpled and unmoving in shadows on the floor. Audience members shuffle in their chairs back or get up to give us me space. Furniture gets moved back. The houselights come on.
Lutz gets on the mic and asks if there is a doctor in the house - something that would strike me as an almost comical theatrical cliche if it wasn't under such serious circumstances, and in German. He's too late though, 4 separate people have already made their way to Ekatrina and announced themselves as doctors or nurses. One of them even speaks Russian which is useful as Ekatrina is from Moscow. I look over the lip of the stage. Ekaterina is still not moving. Her eyes are closed. People are taking her pulse and talking frantically in languages I don't understand. I feel a cold sweat shiver over me, and then a thought strikes me - I realise that nobody is attending to Roma, and run back to see she is still laying motionless in the wings, so I get Sven, her performing partner to help her. Now she's moving, slowly, talking with Sven through half-closed eyes, her usually strong voice croaking and thin.
The ambulance has been called, and the audience has mainly left now - fifty percent of them, we later learn, not paying their bill - a fault of the shock of the event rather than opportunistic theivery, one would hope.
I go back to check on Ekateria, and she's conscious , eyes open, talking to her friend Natalia, who is on the floor with her, holding her hand, Faces close together, cheek pressed against cheek. Just keep talking. Ekaterina is obviously on the verge of freaking out, the meaning and possible consequences of what has just happened slowly sinking it. She tries to move but as soon as she does is restrained gently by everyone and told not to. This scares her, and were it not for Natalya's gentle calming whispers, looks like she might have lost it. But she doesn't.
Then the ambulance men arrive and with them, a policeman who asks me where Sven is. When I go to get him, the cop starts to question him as if an assault has taken place. A crime of some sort. This is, it is explained to us, normal routine, although it seems very uncomfortable to all of us, and certainly is for Sven, who would much rather be tending to his injured partner and co-worker.
Ekaterina is taken out on a stretcher, and then Roma goes past me on stage again, this time in the other direction, from the wings, being helped to walk by two medic and limping badly. Still looking groggy, trying to protest weakly but losing the battle and being taken to hospital.
Frankie the barman gets us all drinks, he knows all our usuals now, and gives me a Jack and Coke that is more than half Jack. It's needed. We all raise a glass to those that are on their way to hospital.
Ekaterina was released from hospital in the early hours of the morning and is staying with Natalia, who lives upstairs from us. We go and see her, she's in bed, smiling through glazed eyes, clearly still a little concussed. She remembers very little about what happened and all we tell her is that she bounced and it was spectacular. Good, she says. We bring her a plate of cheese, which, in a private moment the previous week she had admitted to us was "My eat". Amazingly, she's going to be ok. Looks like her tiny weight and incredible flexibility saved her. not to mention luck - a few feet to the side and she would have hit a concrete pillar, and few inches to the other side and she would have landed in a table full of glass. There are worse places to land than the nice soft audience. I joke that if I ever get taken to hospital unconscious, I want to be wearing a gold bikini as well.
Obviously she's not working tonight, but Roma, we learn when we arrive at the theatre, is. She's bumped and bruised, but nothing worse. "I must work tonight", she tells us, "Because it's what I am. I need to make sure it still is". Tough crazy circus chick.
Me and Dave go on right after Roma every night, and don't usually bother to watch the act. Tonight though, we do. And after she has finished her perfect routine, grinning as she takes her final bow with clenched fists and a little "yeah!", we both turn, wipe tears from out eyes, giggle at being such suckers for circus shit like this, and make our way to the stage,
Last night, we were at the end of the show, playing to a lovely crowd, and they were doing it. Spinning around fast, Roma's pink costume and Ekaterina's gold bikini a blur.
Then it all came apart in mid air.
Ekaterina has slipped out and is flying through the air, her body completely horizontal, still spinning, still a blur.
Time slows and all seems to go quiet, then it suddenly speeds up again like an old VHS player catching up with itself after grinding through a patch of crumpled tape.
She hit the hard scuffed black stage, knocking herself out. No sickening thud, she's too light, her body clears 20 feet in half a second like a stone skimming on water. Then she bounces at least a full foot and a half back up into the air, clearing the footlights and landing in the laps of the front row before slipping awkwardly to the floor.
Roma falls backwards to the floor, the weight of Sven partly on top of her. She somehow crawls the few feet right past me into the wings and out of view of the audience, only then seemingly allowing herself to be completely knocked out.
Time gets back to normal speed. The audience is frozen. We are frozen. It hits me that the stupid high energy music that accompanies the finale is still playing, suddenly so unsuitable. Then some of us are shooting offstage for help, others of us are running to the front to check Ekaterina who lays crumpled and unmoving in shadows on the floor. Audience members shuffle in their chairs back or get up to give us me space. Furniture gets moved back. The houselights come on.
Lutz gets on the mic and asks if there is a doctor in the house - something that would strike me as an almost comical theatrical cliche if it wasn't under such serious circumstances, and in German. He's too late though, 4 separate people have already made their way to Ekatrina and announced themselves as doctors or nurses. One of them even speaks Russian which is useful as Ekatrina is from Moscow. I look over the lip of the stage. Ekaterina is still not moving. Her eyes are closed. People are taking her pulse and talking frantically in languages I don't understand. I feel a cold sweat shiver over me, and then a thought strikes me - I realise that nobody is attending to Roma, and run back to see she is still laying motionless in the wings, so I get Sven, her performing partner to help her. Now she's moving, slowly, talking with Sven through half-closed eyes, her usually strong voice croaking and thin.
The ambulance has been called, and the audience has mainly left now - fifty percent of them, we later learn, not paying their bill - a fault of the shock of the event rather than opportunistic theivery, one would hope.
I go back to check on Ekateria, and she's conscious , eyes open, talking to her friend Natalia, who is on the floor with her, holding her hand, Faces close together, cheek pressed against cheek. Just keep talking. Ekaterina is obviously on the verge of freaking out, the meaning and possible consequences of what has just happened slowly sinking it. She tries to move but as soon as she does is restrained gently by everyone and told not to. This scares her, and were it not for Natalya's gentle calming whispers, looks like she might have lost it. But she doesn't.
Then the ambulance men arrive and with them, a policeman who asks me where Sven is. When I go to get him, the cop starts to question him as if an assault has taken place. A crime of some sort. This is, it is explained to us, normal routine, although it seems very uncomfortable to all of us, and certainly is for Sven, who would much rather be tending to his injured partner and co-worker.
Ekaterina is taken out on a stretcher, and then Roma goes past me on stage again, this time in the other direction, from the wings, being helped to walk by two medic and limping badly. Still looking groggy, trying to protest weakly but losing the battle and being taken to hospital.
Frankie the barman gets us all drinks, he knows all our usuals now, and gives me a Jack and Coke that is more than half Jack. It's needed. We all raise a glass to those that are on their way to hospital.
Ekaterina was released from hospital in the early hours of the morning and is staying with Natalia, who lives upstairs from us. We go and see her, she's in bed, smiling through glazed eyes, clearly still a little concussed. She remembers very little about what happened and all we tell her is that she bounced and it was spectacular. Good, she says. We bring her a plate of cheese, which, in a private moment the previous week she had admitted to us was "My eat". Amazingly, she's going to be ok. Looks like her tiny weight and incredible flexibility saved her. not to mention luck - a few feet to the side and she would have hit a concrete pillar, and few inches to the other side and she would have landed in a table full of glass. There are worse places to land than the nice soft audience. I joke that if I ever get taken to hospital unconscious, I want to be wearing a gold bikini as well.
Obviously she's not working tonight, but Roma, we learn when we arrive at the theatre, is. She's bumped and bruised, but nothing worse. "I must work tonight", she tells us, "Because it's what I am. I need to make sure it still is". Tough crazy circus chick.
Me and Dave go on right after Roma every night, and don't usually bother to watch the act. Tonight though, we do. And after she has finished her perfect routine, grinning as she takes her final bow with clenched fists and a little "yeah!", we both turn, wipe tears from out eyes, giggle at being such suckers for circus shit like this, and make our way to the stage,
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)