The single reason why Communism failed

There are of course places in the world where communism survives. However, let's accept that in most former communist places in the world - the Soviet bloc and Balkans for example, Communism has been replaced by the most ruthless capitalism. Often because that's what the vast majority of people wanted it seems. Or perhaps not, you'll have to speak to some Chinese and South Americans to really get the facts because to be quite frank, despite my claims of being a wise knowing sorta fella, I don't know jack about the world. I kid you not.

Perhaps people said a cheerful goodbye and bid a sunny hello to capitalism, because the food was so shit. Russian food being a case in point, or at least most of it (Georgia and Armenia I know are a bit exceptional here, but then they were never "Russian" were they?) And what about China and its culinary delights. Maybe on a dodgy ground here?

A woman who lived through soviet style Communism, in former Yugoslavia, and sorry, for her name I have forgotten, once wrote, only semi-jokingly, in her excellent book "How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed" that communism failed because despite its lofty aims (some of which I'd even agree with myself) and high ideals, the Soviet version at least could not bring itself to admit that women exist. I'm not talking about equal pay and the right to be exploited by a particular boss - when it came to equality there, Communism was colour and sex blind - but that it couldn't even produce tampons that could be described remotely as on a regular basis. Such as, you know, the 28 day cycle, what most women go through for at least half their lives. Blood catchers. Sort of necessary wouldn't you think? And when the Yugoslavian state saw fir to bring them (more likely, when a shipment was sent in from which ever factory in Poland or Latvia produced them) they were spectacularly uncomfortable by her account. They were called 'Gull' I believe and had a wee bird as their mascot.

Her theory, interesting and left field as it is, is in fact wrong.

The reason communism failed was because of the quality of its biscuits. Take the packet below for example, which I bought in an Eastern European supermarket in North Woolwich expecting the kind of pleasant - or at the very least, interesting - surprise you get from eating, say Hungarian or Polish confectionery. I'm presuming these are an adaptation, though only in packaging, of a type made when Communism in Latvia was at its peak because there is no reason any sane person would want to eat them other than for nostalgia's sake in the same sense that Russians still eat Doctor's Sausage, a grim reminder of previous times and ate for the same reasons some old codgers here still like tripe and onion sandwiches. Back then, the packet might have contained the world "Biscuits" and the paper may have been bogroll, and that cute little doggy would have been in a commercial artist's baby dreams only. But what makes that biscuit what it is today, the essence of the biscuit, lives on in 2006.

These biscuits are awful. Mine were stale. While I agree that this is possibly because Latvia is a long way from Woolwich, it isn't that far. Its only a bit further than Finland, and the Finns make Fazer chocolate which is both fresh and tasty. The packaging on these biscuits is wimpy to say the least. Positively see-through in patches. I'm only kidding, but it is rather cruddy. Then there's the taste. Whereas a boring biscuit made in the UK, of which there are plenty, but let's say for example, a Rich tea biscuit, has a mildly satisfying taste of burnt vanilla, these taste of precisely nothing. A few people I tried it on said they could detect coconut, but i think they were only trying to wind me up. Coconut schmoconut. And there are the little gritty things which could easily be birdseed, bu minus the nutritional value. What are they? I don't know, I don't understand Latvian and there isn't an English translation on the packet. isn't this illegal?

I'm going to give these biccies zero out of ten. I can't think of one single reason why you'd eat them. Even if you were a desperately homesick Latvian I'd really rather eat dogshit than these. Then throw myself onto the M4 from a high bridge. And the cartoon dog on the pack, you may note, is in fact about to scoff one for himself and with those gritty bits riding down his alimentary canal at the speed of a French train, he should be producing some really fine shits soon afterwards. These should really be filed with the dog biscuits and passed as unfit for human consumption. Only thing is, dog food must be fit for human consumption and in my opinion, these aren't.

They are exactly how the packet describes them. Poopoo.

End of the line for North Woolwich NLL services

This will be blogged to high heaven by Railfans (when did word this replace the much greasier sounding 'trainspotter')?

Here's the small but meaningful Daggersdukc photo shrine to the end of the North London Line, which ceased operation between North Woolwich and Stratford stations on 9 December.

Mrs Daggersdukc and myself took ourselves over to Sugar Hill, as we've dubbed the area around the Tate and Lyle factory, a place, which I'm glad to say, is still operating, with all the whirs, clunks and unknown robot noises a factory should make. We discovered a rather fine Eastern European supermarket from which we bought Bigos (a kind of Polish stew) and goulash soup.

We said our goodbyes to the train service. Not one we've ever had cause to use much, but I lived next door to the NLL for 6 years and became almost comforted by the trains' noise. Any curtailment of this service is a sad thing in my opinion.

Here is the train at North Woolwich.


Here are a couple of signs...

And here are the distinct lamp-posts. Powered with high pressure sodiums - well,those which aren't busted - I bet these looked really eerie when they contained incandescent bulbs. I've had nightmares in which these creepy looking things feature, only in my dreams, they can move...

Christmas lights in Dagenham

What with Christmas (sorry, Winterval) coming ever closer, I have noticed that people round Dagenham haven't been half as self-indulgent this year with their Christmas decorations. Usually, the whole area glows like Las Vegas, with snowmen, twinkly trees and fairylights on full display. Maybe this can be explained by people going green and wishing to use less energy (as if anyone round gave a shite about the state of the planet). Maybe its the sheer cost of running such lighting (blame those Godless Russians and their energy greed). Maybe its because punters are seeing through over-commercialism.

Shame, because as I'm really no more than a working class git with a semi-functioning brain, I rather like the overkill of lighting up your house as it you were trying to compete with Piccadilly Circus. Once from Hayes, always from Hayes. That's the not-posh Hayes near Heathrow, not the leafy one in Kent.

Anyway, I was having a wander around Dagenham (OK, I was walking around London's only circular road, Valance Circle) and came across this wee baby. Not so much a house decoration, but Santa's main London grotto.

PHOTO TO BE ATTACHED

And up our street is this electric blue number. Its notoriously difficult taking good shots at night, especially with a camera phone, and even a relatively competent one like my Samsung D900 struggles here. I've put them through a photo enhancement program, but even so, the full scary blueness of this house window cannot be fully appreciated. You can see the thing reflected on the opposite house as you walk down our street, that's just how bloody bright it is. Lacks any aesthetic, for sure, but makes up for it in sheer power.

PHOTO TO BE ATTACHED

Christmas is later this year

Is it my imagination or have companies cottoned on to the notion that selling Christmas in late August does nothing but turn punters off. Oh the battle betwen faux festive "jollity" and the good old fashioned hard-sell, eh? Thank goodness we're not in America where Christmas starts before Thanksgiving and just goes on and on and on... Bit like their election campaigns really. Christmas will always come, the Republicans will always win...zzzz.

Sadly, very little Christmas schlock on the radio either. I am being mildly ironic, though I have to admit that I'm rarely bored of hearing Slade track. One of the best songssc about the British working class ever - I kid you not, check out the lyric:

'Are you sure you've got the room to spare inside?"

I, like millions of ordinary Brits, grew up in a small terrace house in the scumburbs and getting more than about 10 people into your living room was and is quite a feat (thought we've had 30 in our tiny house!) The middle class, those who aren't in tiny city centre flats anyway, don't have this problem. I could write a small disseration on that track. Nice one, boys from the Black Country for basically summing up my feelings towards Christmas before about the age of 14. I'm also quite fond of "I Believe in Father Christmas" for its downbeat theme but ever so cheerful, uplifting, dare I say, tune. Jona Lewie's Stop The Cavalry too isn't bad (and wasn't even supposed to be an Xmas track, either) and of course the bawlsome "Walking in the Air" by that rather decent chap Aled Jones. I don't mind the singing, but its that little orchestral descending bit after the first verse which rarely fails to bring a tear to my cynic's glazzo.

Perfect orange

In, I think, 1991, the UK government ran a series of anti-drug infomercials. One which jumped out was an themed on the dangers of aceeeed advert where a chap was standing on the roof of a high building. His mates were begging him to come down, but no, the fellow jumped. The last thing he said was the he was looking for the perfect blue. I've done a bit of LSD and have never had the sort of trips that lead to delusions of being able to fly or perform any other superhuman ways. But the idea of the perfect blue creeped me out then and it was four or five years later when I dropped my first acid, and say vein-coloured horses coming out of the walls and became obsessed with the hidden meaning behind particular words that I really got to know the full extent of the mental strageness that is your brain on a trip. I've mixed views on the various drugs I've tried, but in my case, thankfully, no regrets at all, and double-thankfully, during the 10 or so trips I've done, no bad ones either. Tripping does alter the way you think about the world, and in some ways, with a greater respect for your mental health as you realise its only a few molecules which are holding your sanity together. it still pisses me off that acid house music was never actually about the drug at all, which was even then pretty much a cult drug confined to festival-heads, old time hippies and a few e-heads who wanted something a bit more interesting, more intense.

If the government had done the tiniest bit of research, it would have discovered that the acid in "acid house" was a reference to the Roland TB-303's bass synth's squelchy "acid" noises used on a lot of the tracks of the time.

I digress though - my acid experiences and government inabilty to real cultural references weren't going to be the point of today's lecture :)

It was merely a run-up to the fact that on Wednesday evening, while Christmas shopping in Matalan, I found the perfect oranage. It was resplendent on some plasticware: the kind of thing you stick plates on to dry, and I fell in love with it instantly. My phone's camera makes it look a bit redder than it actulaly is, and even with a bit of colour tweaking, I can't get it quite right. But anyway, here it is.

Garden done

Thank goodness for small mercies. Garden paved, problem-free. Lee, you are a gentleman and a scholar.

This is of course, of interest to no-one.

Merely a diary note of a sort.

Still pleased though.

Review of...The Spitfire, Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith

Went with Corie and Gus to a Polish restaurant in Hammersmith, to celebrate Lynn's birthday.

LOCATION: 96 Fulham Palace Road, London W6.
A pain in the bum for East Londoners, but easy to find, just south of Hammersmith flyover on Fulham Palace Road. 5 mins walk from station.

AMBIANCE: (8/10) Local, relaxed, quiet.

SERVICE: (10/10) Lovely, friendly, family-centric. This reminds me a bit of my favourite restaurant, Boneparte in Hornchurch another fine restaurant in the most unlikely of areas. It feels family run, though who knows? Service actually was pretty close to perfect actually with no fuss about the two guide dogs we bought with us. On leaving, the maitre d', a wonderfully helpful lady, gave us a couple of bottles of beer to take home with us. Never have I been offered service like this.

THE GRUB: (10/10) Quite frankly, I can only find the tiniest quibble with the food here and that is that there wasn't enough of it. Far from being stingy, the problem I had was that I just wanted to unzip my stomach and start all over again. I had the Hunters Plate to start with - a combination of chopped smoked meats in a rich gravy, served with bread and butter. Main for me was lamb rolled in bacon and onion and served with saute potatoes, beetroot, sauerkraut and cooked cabbage. Divine. Dessert was warm pancakes filled with soft cheese, apple and sultanas. By the usual standards of grub, this was both unusual, filling and and well made food. Tiny it was not.

VERDICT: I don't want to tell people about this. If you find it, keep it to yourself as its one of London's best kept cullinary secrets, surely. We found a couple of similar restaurants in New York. Local, well-kept little places hiding in the back streets, frequented by those who know the deal and like what they get. Off the tourist trail and all the better for it.

£20 per head with beers.

9.5/10 and my Pick of the Year 2006

Yet another...

...another dead rat that is.

Our house is going to be full of dead rats.

Horrible, horrible, horrible.

At least the grey grey grass is now the grey grey stones of home. Looks like we're nearly finished. Photo to follow (when its light enough for anything to come out).

By the way and apropos bollocks-all, I heard the Beatles LOVE album on Saturday and the bits I've heard are brilliant.

Rat

Today my dad became an official hero. Since Wednesday, we've been smelling what can only be described as a shitty smell in our toilet. Now I know a toilet is occasionally meant to smell of shit. Maybe only the Queen's smells of roses all the time. For the rest of us great unwashed...

Anyway, on Thursday I remarked that our landscape gardener Lee must have dumped an enourmously stinking load because, I said, it whiffed like the portable khazis you find at festivals. On Friday, it had got worse. By the evening, when we returned from work, Mrs D/D noticed that the small had moved into the living room. Now, in east London, it seems the majority of bathroosms, like ours, are situated downstairs. Ours is no exception, and therefore, the back wall of the bathroom seperates the downstairs cupbarod in our house. Oh fuck, we both though as it dawned on us what it might be. Its dead rat.

And behold, that's what it was. We've have rats every year for five of the seven we've lived here - we've even named them. Rufus, Reinhardt, and ths year, Roland. We've laid various baits over the years and usually they just disappear and the munching rats die somewhere else. This year's monster has been quite troublesome though. First, it munched through the wiring in our central heating boiler, more-or-less maiming it at a cost of £217. Then it ate quite a lot fo food in the kitchen. Because we've got Nicki, the ratfood eating guide beast, we needed bait a dog could not feed on, so we took the normally reliable but loose Rentokil bait away this year and replaced it with solid bait in a plastic box, whose admittance holes are too small to allow a dog to investigate too closely. In the meantime, I'd bought a bottle of Bayer granules which i left under the kitchen sink for a rainy day. Well that bottle had been bitten into and most of the contents consumed. On the side of the bottle, it says in large friendly letters "kills up to 20 rats". And that, I think, is what killed ours.

For under the bath, large as death and twice as ugly was Roland. He was very smelly, and about a minute after being found, was also very cooked as our garden incinerator cremated him. Roland, RIP. Stinking bastard.

So my dad gets a huge thanks for finding him and disposing of the cunt.



Not Roland, but they all look the same, don't they?

Its good to touch, the grey grey grasss...of home

Just a wee picture for the future. A future when we have a garden and not some kind of Somme-like quaggy.

This is how our garden looked between being paved and being a weed-filled "lawn".

I only hope there is a patio there next Wednesday. If there is, I shall post a picture of it in its virginal glory.

If not, bring on the Seroxat. For it is going to be rather frigging expensive.

Some rules Nicki the New Guiding Beast needs to learn

Nicky needs to learn:

1. Leaving my bones all over the house, particularly in doorways, does not friends win.

2. One lick is as good as 2 million.

3. Sometimes wrestling is not on the cards, like it or not. When THE MAN wants to watch TV or just slob out, I must join him, or at least pretend to be joining in, even though in my head I'm actually killing Yorkshire Terriers with my FIERCE bite.

4. My bark is pretty impressive, yes, but I only need to convince you once. That's enough.

5. Turding is something I am told to do, and can't, unlike alpha humans, do it when I feel, where I feel. Pavement turds mean I sleep outside in the snow. When there is no snow, I sleep outside with two peed off cats. And THREE Yorkshire Terriers.

6. When the man wants to wrestle, I am not to curl up and pretend to be dead. He does not believe me and will only hate me for being lazy.

7. Older dogs may know more than me. I must learn from them.

8. Water can be drunk at a relaxed pace. I don't need to flood the kitchen floor to drink it and it won't disappear if I don't gulp it down as if I were living in sub-saharan Africa during a drought.

9. I am a guide dog, not a pet dog. This is something I need to remember unless I want to end up prematurely in the back of the Dog Van. NOBODY KNOWS what happens in the Dog Van.

Some pictures of Dagenham

Hardly on the tourist trail, but some nice pictures of Dagenham. Nice, that is, if you like pictures of new exciting housing developments...

....lopped trees in Pondfield Park (I thought the light was kind of sinister, matching the trees - you can almost hear those crows a-cawing....

.. and finally, an overbridge taking you from one side of the District Line to the ohter.

As I say, nice.

Your guide dog questions answered

Some frequently asked questions about my wife's guide dog and some answers. Those I'd LIKE to give, anyway. I tell you, people are frigging unoriginal and the boredom value in answering them is best alleviated with a seriously cruel dose of irony. Here's my attempt at it.

“What’s your dog’s name?”
Her full legal name (in the manner of naming racehorses) is “Walker’s Potato Crisps Have Sponsored This Dog for a Poor Socially Excluded Blind Victim”. Her “working” name is “Nikki” which is a “pet” version of Tuna Nicoise, a flavour Walkers Crisps tried out in the North-East ACORN region 32 then abandoned after poor focus group survey reports. Sadly, she wasn't renamed Nacho or the sweetie-cutsie "Pickle".

“Isn’t that a cute doggy”
Yes, its cute because Guide Dogs are now genetically modifying their dogs in order that they appeal to children and bears with very little brain. The GM trials were broadly successful, but various sceptical scientists have posited that there is a high probability that dogs’ lives are reduced by over two years compared to non-GM dogs. The cost of vanity, eh?

“Is he/she your best friend”
No. My best friend, Katie, tragically died in a car accident in 1994 when her guide dog Sally pulled her in front of a fast-moving truck. The lorry driver suffered months of stress. Oddly, Nicki seems to have acquired a psychic link with my deceased friend and now leads me to her graveside where I regularly mourn while Nicki howls her poor doggy heart out.

“Can your doggy play safely with children”?
In theory YES, though she hasn’t been licensed to without a muzzle, technically required under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1988*. She hasn’t injured anyone yet. Caveat emptor…

* Clarification – she’s not as you can see, actually “dangerous”. However, since she is a working dog, like police- or military-dogs, she’s technically NOT a pet, and therefore, she is automatically subject to much harsher licensing laws than ordinary pet dogs.

“Can your dog do your washing”?
Why, YES. One of the benefits of creating a genetically modified dog is that her saliva glands have been re-aligned so they also produce a perfect oxygen/enzyme mix required to clean all manner of common household dirt to be found on clothes. My dog really appreciates getting her tongue round my husband’s skiddy pants.

“Can your dog read to you”?
Guide Dogs are continually working on giving their dogs voices that can read back text messages and issue other short commands to blind people. However, although my dog can read, and perfectly understands SMS messages and other simple text material, at this time she cannot communicate back to me. Sad but (maybe) true.

“I bet she’s the most important person in your life”?
As you might care to observe, she’s not a “person” as such, but a mere dog. My daughter is the most important person in my life, and since her dog is the most important person in her life, following the argument through, her dog is in fact the most important thing – dog or human – in my life. This may seem confusing, but honestly, it makes perfect sense once you think on. I did say daughter, by the way. I know it’s maybe an oddity to your prejudices that a) blind people have sex and b) a quick shag with the milkman feels as good to me as it does anyone else. I had to pay Mr Express Dairy danger money for his services though since he thought he might “catch” blindness from me. He was right in a manner of speaking: I gave him a dose of the syph. He went blind. Ha ha.

“I used to have one of those dogs” or “I used to look after a retired guide dog/guide dog puppy” or “I raised £25,000,000 for those blind dogs once”
So has everyone else I’ve met. Why are there so few dogs around then? Why aren't more guide dogs than ordinary dogs on the street? In fact there should be more guide dogs than humans in the whole world!! The maths just doesn’t work. Oh yes, and think about the moniker you use to define my aid: a “blind dog” is not really useful to a blind person is it?

“Why don’t all blind people have dogs?”
Simply, only really bright blind people get them. A guide dog is a fantastic mobility tool but they cost thousands of pounds to train and need a lot of sighted help in their preparation. Blind people are not worth much to society, but it is agreed by many academics, albeit reluctantly, that even those who are free of sight have their uses. I’m a fully qualified comptometer programmer at the University of East Acton. I fulfil a vital role in the running of the Government’s research project into the settlement and rehousing of Homophobian refugees. You may have noticed that most blind people don’t have guide dogs. You can be assured that these people have a lower IQ than average and are thus, in the words of Bill and Ted “NOT WORTHY”. Please pity them, and give them any small change you have, as they will be in desperate financial need not having a job nor a cute little dog as a people-magnet.

“How can I raise money for Guide Dogs”?
As a trusted user, I am a therefore an agent for the UK Guide Dogs organisation. If you wish to give direct, then any money you pass to me will be paid straight into Guide Dogs’ account. Promise. Larger amounts can be transferred securely via Western Union to the Internet bank account at:

Funraiser419@lagos-bank.ng.com



If you have any further questions about my dog, or me please email me at

Compt_programmer@east-acton.ac.uk

Concrete Zeerust

Zeerust is a Liff word which means “the particular kind of datedness which afflicts things that were originally designed to look futuristic.”
These two concrete structures (which by the way I’m very fond of) are a great pictorial definition of this

Firstly we have the concrete lampposts of Hainault. These were obviously a 40s or 50s design. The modern pink bulbs on them are totally out of character. I remember when the fittings were of the standard tungsten type used in houses, giving out a sickly yellow light, and though the station is about 12 miles from Central London, these did, until the new fittings were added, give it an oddly rural feel – a lot of the outer stretches of the Underground felt rather countrified until maybe 10 years ago. The only rural –feeling section I can think of now is the Central Line’s Woodford-Hainault shuttle. The stations haven’t been modified that much since the late 19th century I’d guess (the underground came here in 1957 but the stations are much older) Those concrete posts shout at me “white heat of technology” (can a phrase be an example of Zeerust?) and yet like tower blocks and other concrete structures, they are unsuited to the British climate and have discoloured nicely. Long may they remain in their pre-cast, browning glory.

Another wonderful bit of concrete nonsense is the canopy at Newbury Park station. What inspired this overblown bus shelter is beyond me, though I know in the 40s and 50s you could take a number 30 bus to Putney from here (Putney is 20 miles south west of here). Thus I would assume it was a much busier place. Its not even used properly since all westbound buses go straight along Eastern Avenue. Only three local bus routes use it now. The structure looks wonderfully modernistic, but how pointless it has become– a folly dedicated to public transport if ever there was one and hence all the more reason to like it.

Too fat to fight

According to the Grauniad, two thirds of all UK teenagers are too fat to join the military.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,,1938440,00.html

Kiddies, a message from the dukc.

Keep eating.

Eat until you burst.

Not only will you enjoy the experience of shovelling huge quantities of blubber making goodness down your throats, but you'll also be prevented from whoring yourselves as cannon fodder later, in order to fight illegal, immoral wars. Not all wars are, of course, illegal or immoral. Its just that this government can't decide which ones are which. So until they can get their silly little heads around the idea of whether there not there are WMDs, huge amounts of oil etc to fight for (or against) its down to you to make sure that the only armed forces we have are a lean and fit bunch. So its your responsbility to make sure this pool of is an ever-diminishing one.

Eat and save your skin. You're worth it. And if you have to fight, stay safe. Remember, we should be heading towards a state of rationality. A French philosopher once wrote: "a rational army would see the opposition and run away". So prove to the world that you are not only able to eat more than men of old, but you have moved on to a new level of collective brain evolution demonstrated by your rationality.

The sea on C2C. Two news stories

Instruction to self; thou shalt not jump on train while parked at platform without first checking that the train is calling at where you want to gp tp. I ended up at the seaside last night because I didn’t. (Well, I know Benfleet is probably not quite “the seaside” but it is close enough to Leigh-on-Sea).

Two headlines in the papers, which grabbed my attention this morning.

1. The UK is the most surveyed society in the world. There are 4.2m CCTV cameras, both publicly and privately owned. That’s one for every 14 people.

2. British teenagers have the most fights, drink the most, and have the largest amount of unsafe sex in Europe.

Which leads to the conclusion: this government doesn’t trust us very much. And that if you treat people like stupid kids, rather than citizens, they’ll act like stupid kids. Even stupid kids take stupid kidism to new heights. Self-fulfilling prophecy, dahling.

Another pertinent point. More cameras, badder teenagers. Well that really works then.

Welcome to Studio S

I am mildly annoyed by those greengrocer’s apostrophe’s (sic) you see on signage. Cafés with large signs offering TEA’S, and of course greengrocers offering APPLES’ ORANGE’S and “NANA’S”. What I like about this sign is the obvious attempt at cleaning up the mal-placed apostrophe. I can imagine the argument between underling and manager at the estate agents’ office who placed this sign being one of the clabby, circular kind (see Meaning of Liff for definition of “Clabby”).

It looks like the rather bog standard flats for rent in Kings Cross this sign is trying to flog are now part of a funky, luxury, city-centre development – STUDIO S.

And on the other side of those railings, just to the right of this sign, is another, identically modified one. So good, they screwed it twice.

You're like Manchester, you've got Strangeways: Daggersdukc on tour

Now that the wife has gone – though admittedly, only to train with that wild, smiling beast Nicki, Mr DD has done a bit of travelling. As well as going to see a little bit of posh on Monday, Tuesday was taken with a trip to the North West, centred on Manchester. So here’s what I did.

Pendelino from Euston. Not been on one of these to date and many of my more travelled friends have complained about their uncomfortable journeys. Humbug! They are extremely pleasing trains with nice seats and a smooth, quiet ride. I don’t think anything can beat the old HST style coaches for comfort, but these are a good, modern effort towards that end.

Metrolink to Bury. I’ve done this journey a few times before and like it for its ‘London-ness’ in that it feels like a journey to Chingford. But with better connections at the other end. At Bowker Vale, some mong threw a firework into the nearly empty car. Driver unimpressed and he did call police, but what can you do about this? Similar happened on a school trip I took in 1984 to Paris (on Bastille Day). Note to Metrolink – sort out your bloody ticket machines. Some supercomputers need less effort to make them work.

Bury to Bolton. Bus round the long way to Bolton as I realised that I’d never seen the North country (as opposed to say, Liverpool or Manchester city) than by any means of transport than by train, and hadn’t a clue as to what the anonymous wee towns between the big ones are like. I almost went to Rawtenstall, but I noticed there was only one route there and back, whereas Bolton was nearer to Manchester (I aimed to be on the 1915 back to London) and there were about six routes. So it was a 480 Rossendale bus. What strikes me about this semi-urban-ness is how raw it still looks. The countryside between is nice, but the towns with their little red brick houses and tree-less roads bring to mind the feeling you get after an LSD trip or a really serious hangover when coming home blasted on a Sunday morning. Perhaps I’m just seeing it through Southern-wanker eyes, but there seems to be an ‘unfinished’ element about the urban North. Prescott would like to demolish all this. Why? Those houses would fetch a small fortune in the South, being described as “bijou” and “compact”. My earlier comment may sound like a bit of a sleight, but I rather like these places, and can see why southerners piss off from Fulham or Southend and the freaking mad rat-race we’ve got ourselves into down here. What’s needed in these small towns is more prettification: more trees, flowers etc, costing almost nothing. Then we need a rebalancing of the economy so that the South isn’t the centre of the universe and houses like ours, which are nothing special, and pretty damn poky, don’t go for the price of some African countries’ GDPs. Bolton could be the new Guildford, since the only difference lies in the preponderance of millionaires in Guildford.

The countryside round abouts, what little I saw of it, seemed much like countryside anywhere else – perhaps I imagined huge slag-heaps and infertile, blighted fields. I should laugh at my own ignorance, and my naivete proves, if nothing else, that I need to go out more.

The real jewel in the crown of my trip was Bolton. I’ve read that it contains the second most deprived ward in the UK and so imagined it to be like Deptford with all the good bits taken out. A sort of grey brutalist-Modernist pound-shop city with abandoned shopping centres and Morlock-esque people dressed in scuzzy, beer-stained trackies. The usual pound-shops there were, but the city centre is a gem of a place with a real sense of civic pride, a good collection of old (the refurb’d market hall) and the new. I was pleasantly amused by the stone baby heffalumps at the southern end of the town centre. I liked the Russian-sounding bell (perhaps emanating from the town hall, I only heard one chime). I like the size, which gives the sense of being a self-contained town, but near another larger one, so it has nearly everything you need within walking distance but without all the problems of scale you get living in a large city. .

Bolon Market Hall

I really, really like the singy songy accent, which lies somewhere between East Lancs and Manc-proper and easier on the lugs than rough Manchester. I’m not sure about job prospects here, whether the housing is any good, whether it’s a scarier place to be than Romford on a Saturday night, but in the daytime, in the centre, it’s a place I’d be very content to be. One of those places from which you expect little, and when your expectations are well exceeded, feels quite warmly towards afterwards. Nearly Guildford, then. As I would like Guildford too were it not full of pretentious bastards.

Bolton Town Centre

I’ll just mention briefly the train journey back to Mancunia. Behind me, on the Trans-Pennine Express, were two Indian lads with mongphones. Now, the public playing of MP3 phones on any form of public transport should be punishable by having one’s nether regions shaved with sandpaper impregnated with iron filings and hydrochloric acid, but these guys I had to admire – quietly - for their inventiveness. One fellow would fire up a Punjabi vocoder classic (does anyone actually sing any more? Pitch shifters are everywhere in music now!) Then his mate would play the same tune. They were obviously trying to synchronise tracks, but alas (and I’ve tried doing the same and thus realise how hard it is) couldn’t do it quite right. So the one version of the tune was about one quarter of a second behind the other, causing a Doppler-ish echo. One was waving his blower around his head, and although I’ll be a much happier man when someone invents a Bluetooth jamming device for these blots on humanity, I just had to grin.

The rest of the trip consisted of doing the various tram routes. I didn’t really have time for proper exploration, but I can say now that Altrincham and Eccles have been seen. I wish I had been given enough time to blunder round Eccles, which looked OK too, but alas, time was against me and after a whistle stop pick-up-some-food shopping at Morrisons, I took the tram back to Piccadilly, the Pendelino, and home.


Metrolink trams as the sun goes down

My overall impression is that Manchester, a city I haven’t been massively predisposed to, at least compared to its rival, Liverpool, is on the up and looking sharp, disposing with, at long last, its down-at-heel vibe which always seem to suggest barely suppressed violence and dysfunction lurking under the surface. I always had the impression that it was jealous of London. If city could claim to have a soul, well, at long last, this place has realised that it can do things differently and at least as equally well as the capital. Small things I noticed: pink bulbs have replaced the orange sodium streetlights in the centre. Big deal, you cry, but these orange babies do make a place look murky, even sinister, at night. I can’t imagine today the sense of brooding depression I might have felt a few years ago wandering just off Oxford Road with the somewhat austere buildings (which still are austere and long may they remain so) lit by a brown light-fog, rain tap-tap-tapping on your shoulder and a Smiths tune playing in your head. To me, the appearance of the place is as radical as the one, which changed the London docks during the late 80s. Redevelopment for its own sake can be a double-edged sword and as you can see by the diminishing quantity of East End locals (who have now moved to Essex and beyond), it’s sometimes done without any thought for the indigenous population. But central Manchester is looking well, content with itself, and is destined to rise even further. London and Manchester will always be friendly rivals, but there is something to be said for being a second city (remember the Avis rent-a-car advert’s slogan: “Avis – we try harder”. London may arrogantly think it has it all – and it is a world city there is no doubt – but that doesn’t mean its brasher Northern sister isn’t capable of knocking it down with a better way of doing things. One thing that Manchester has that London does not is city centre living. Now, if only London could pull that feat off, it would feel like an entirely different place. And its true: Mancs really are friendlier, with three people in a space of a few hours getting into conversation with me without my prompting. This happens extremely rarely in the South.

As John Shuttleworth says: Manchester – long may it rain.

A little bit of posh...

Lynn started training with NickiDogg yesterday, and having dumped her at Chelmsford, I wandered over to Burnham-on-Crouch.

Not a dire place in the manner of Tilbury, but I think that laying on the couch is about the only thing that Billericay Dickie could have done because there is sweet fanny-adams else to do. I think an hour between bus arriving and next bus leaving was all the time one needs to explore this wee town. There is quite a nice pub near the clock tower. Pricey though (£2.50 for a very small Woodpeckers).

Holidays, good news, glass ceiling for blindos

I am quite looking forward - no, very much looking forward - to not working this week. I am having a well-earned holiday. I still have 14 days left which is ridiculous since I have 27 days and they started in April. There are many reasons as to why, and they are all down to the pressures of work that me and Mrs Daggersdukc have experienced.

Bang went summer.

Carly's boyfriend was no help there either. Less said about *him* the better. It could get libellous.

The big news is this week is that Nicki the New Doggg will be arriving next weekend. Mrs DD trains with her this week in Chelmsford. The other bit of news is that Wifey the Wi-Fi whyphe has been offered a new higher paid, better job at the Snivil Service and so will most likely be moving leaving from her current employer, which is the same as mine so shan't be named. The cheeky little minxes offered her a new pay package as golden padlock. It was the same rate as the other programmers in the org. She wasn't aware that she wasn't already being paid the same rate as other programmers. Needless to say, she's kinda pissed off knowing this, and alas, won't be staying unless they can do significantly better than this - putting it mildly - insulting offer. Personally, I think she should play the blind card. Any other fuckwit would when confronted with what has obviously been a glass ceiling neither of us could have guessed existed.

Is it cos sheez is black? Nah, blind. We'll just have to set Nicki the wild beast of Ilford on to them.

The day my religion died

I just want to note that after two years of soul-searching I gave up any claim Christianity had over me yesterday and am, to all intents and purposes, an atheist.

I feel quite sad about that.

Its been my crutch since the age of 14 or so., a good 23 years. But since starting uni four years later, followed by some determinedly unanswered questions, a complete lack of tangible evidence of God's existence in *my* life - well you've got to stop believing in Santa Claus some time.

For all the good Christians out there- and believe me, there are plenty - but mainly my mum and dad who gave me a good example by which to live by, my ever-loving, Christian wife - my apologies for bailing out. Whatever I think about it, this will be a shock and will sadden these good people. But IF there is a God, and my belief is that there is not, , I would rather meet him knowing that I've thought about my belief, and not, like so many others, simply followed some doctrine, sheep-like, fearful, or just unthinking. I'd rather be a firm non-believer than a by-proxy believer.

I leave the fold with a sense of regret and mostly fondness for what it held. Despite what certain idiots would have you believe, Christians are not all moronic right-wing conservative stupidheads. Jesus was easily as radical as Marx, for sure. I'll defend their right to practice their faith as long as they allow me to not practice any.

So, with the utmost respect and ultimately, regret goodbye. The evidence just doesn't add up and I can no longer lie to myself.

Will "Living Science" kill real science?

I heard on Radio 4 earlier this week, various educationlists whining on about the new science examination called “Science for Living” or something similar. Science for a dumbed down generation! It will widen elitism since it is generally kids from the state school sector who are going to be taught it! Leaving the real science involving chemicals, expensive glassware and experiments involving mysterious dial-ridden boxes to the posh kids! The world will end! Britain needs more scientists, not less! And so the hyperbolic whine went on.

Now, I love cooking. I’m not great at it, and I don’t do it as much as I would choose. I don’t have the time or inclination. But I do have a natural kind of flair. I can usually second guess what ingredients work with others without needing a recipe book. My kitchen time management is pretty good and unlike most areas involving multiple activities that can lead to a daggersdukc panicfaff, the kitchen environment is somehow soothing. I am to the kitchen what my mum is to gardening. Seemingly with no effort at all, plants of all shapes and sizes flourish under her supervision – plants from spuds to exotic trees thrive under her Midas touch. It’s a wonderful thing, but she’s trained as a nurse, not a gardener or landscaper.

I started cooking at school. Our teacher, Mrs Johnson, was a strict taskmistress, and taught us well the fundamentals. But, seeing as this was ILEA in the 1980s there was never the opportunity posited in my direction to train more formally, for example, as a chef. And besides, it would never have crossed my mind to train further.

The new science curriculum focuses on areas of life which most inquisitive kids already have a basic knowledge or at least interest in GM foods, the changing environment, mobile phones and so on. If the facts behind these are used to illustrate the real dope strands of science – radio waves, chemistry, physics, meteorology to name but a few, then what it might achieve, far more than any dry and to a kid’s mind, irrelevant, experiments with Bunsen burners and pickled dogs*, is make the brain’s lightbulb go ‘ping’. I would love to do a course like this; I mean how damn fascinating. Real issues, real products, real science. Being a schoolboy would be so much fun doing courses like this.

I never took up cooking. BUT…what I obtained from the loudest Brummie in London, also known as Linda Johnson, was the confidence to make my own way around the kitchen, not be afraid of kitchen disasters (as with Sinatra’s regrets, there have been a few, but then again…). And many of the kids doing Science for Living won’t be interested in later years, in thermodynamics. Who cares? Science is an elite subject like maths or the Classics. That’s why it pays so well once you get past a certain level. Top scientists would be the first to moan should their professions become comodified like production line workers. And most kids who are forced into doing old-fashioned science won’t ever use these skills. Heck, I don’t use anything I learned while doing my degree, but I’m very glad I did it.

School, today, isn’t an education in the sense that it was 50 or even 20 years ago, but a springboard towards greater things. Look, 50 percent of kids now go on to higher ed and you need a degree to clean a Micky D’s floor. So if you’re going to get sprung towards a scientific vocation, it makes far more sense to go into real sciences – the hard slog - understanding complex theorems, mathematics, hypothesis, experimentation, more experimentation, review, conclusion – having some sense of the ends to which it can be used.

I bet you after a few years, universities will be complaining about the poor quality of undergrads. I also bet their will be many, many more of them. That’s when the real hard education begins – the way it should be.

Who’s first in the queue then?


* I only mention this poor beast as our school had a dog feotus suspended in alcohol in what Americans would call a Mason jar. No one ever took the lid off while I was there.

New Thames Gateway Key Worker Housing

For Sale

£10,000 ono. 2 bed flat, Charlton SE5
GCH (untested) with fresh-air ventilation. Single glazed, with open plan window framing in places. Bullet holes are a unique feature of this delightful residence near schools (Borstal High) and local facilities such as Emergency Room, mental asylum and abandoned glue factory opposite. Near North Greenwich tube station and 108, 472 and 161 bus routes are also close by for quick getaway.

Would suit professional couple.

I promise you, this wasn’t taken after a Sarejevo bombardment. It is indeed located in Charlton, SE London, just off the Thames path. Fancy moving there?

Grays and Tilbury - the visit

Went for a wander this afternoon to Grays and Tilbury in Essex.

It was a mixed bag of an area.

Grays: Not a bad High Street. Has a new-ish Mall, which considering Lakeside is just round the corner, is quite a brave thing for the council to have installed. There is a rather pleasant smell of fish and chips pervading the whole area. I know there are a lot of chippies around here, but why the whole area should resemble a seaside resort which has had its sea removed I don't quite know. You expect to hear caliope organs and people scoring heroin up side-alleys, the kind of thing British seaside resorts are best known for.

This should make the place appear jolly in a "we are at the seaside and so even though its freezing and my boxers are full of sand we WILL be jolly" sort of way. However, the area feels somehow incomplete. I can see why people might get depressed living there as it is so temptingly close to London and yet nothing like the big smoke. And despite its atempts to lie to you, the sea is another 15 miles further east at Leigh.

I am not saying that Grays is the grimmest area I've been to - far from it - but it does feel as if it was the centre of something great once - or perhaps something amazing was planned for it and never completed as it has an 'almost done but not quite' feel about it. Quite weird overall.

Tilbury. This really does feel like the last chance saloon of places in and around London. It has a totally dead atmosphere and even the laughably named 'Civic Square' whose name conjurs up images of office buildings, or at least a communist-style concrete shopping centre is nothing more than a parade of wanky, crap shops (not even a KFC, but Favorite Fried Chicken sort of parade). Maybe I missed the action: maybe nearby is a huge uber-mall which might explain the centre's complete deadness. When I say dead, I mean - where are the cars? Where are the passers--by? The words 'no hope' spring to mind. Its like a day when you wake up, scratch your arse then realise that the thumping of th dole cheque on the mat is the best thing that's going to happen to you this month. A truly dispiriting hole. Not grim in the same way that towns near nuclear reactors must be (they can at least be interestingly bleak, but just a dead, not-happening, hollow kinda town. I tell you, 20 minutes there and I was glad to be heading back on the C2C to Grays and on to Lakeside. And look, I'm from Dagenham and don't have much to write about favourably when it comes to associating 'interesting' and 'my own manor'. I'm just trying to put this review into context, yeah? I am not a fan of shopping centres as a whole for the reason most people who dislike them dislike them. When it comes to my reasons for disliking large shopping centres, I'm not an original thinker. However, arriving at Lakeside, I was truly RELIEVED to back out of the Twilight Zone that is Tilbury. You have been warned. You should only go to Tilbury if you're completely sure of your own sanity, because a few hours there will surely turn you into a paranoid depressive if you're nothing less than 70 percent normal in the first place.



And you call THIS a Civic Square?

A review of The Bermondsey Kitchen

Next time I post a restaurant review I'll get a phone included from my mobile. I hadn't thought of doing a review until today though.

This gastro-pub is situated on Bermondsey Street, about 10 minus walk from London Bridge station. I was there with 10 people from work at a post-meeting meal.

The interior is light and mainly consisting of pale woods and beiges which make it look fairly contemporary. It’s more ‘restaurant’ than ‘pub’ in my view.

First course: small, but tasty I had the mixed continental meat selection. There could have been a bit more meat, but what was there was more Borough Market than Borough High Street.

Second Course: Sweet potato, mozzarella, cous-cous and rocket, splashed with chilli oil. I’m a carnivore through and through and the only reason I ordered this dish was because everything else either came with tomatoes, which I can’t abide, or was offal. Which I can’t abide either. My veggie course therefore had an air of low expectation about it. Not justified fortunately as the meal was delicious – plenty of varying tastes and enough gear to keep my stomach happy.

Dessert: Yummy choices, I went for a dessert whose name I’ve forgotten, so let me describe instead. In the middle of he plate was a ball of the kind of ‘crème’ you get in crème brulee. Atop this sat a scrumptious almond and butter cookie. If I could make these I’d give up work and sell them to random people on the on the street who would instantly want more. Boy, I could make some ‘dough’ with these biccies. Around the side of the crème/biscuit tower were pieces of quince which I’ve never tried before and whose taste I was delighted by.

So: results time:

Cost was £27.50 per head, 3 stars
Value: starter 2/5 main 3/5 dessert 4/5

3.5 / 5 then. Not bad. I would say its quite a pricey meal considering the quantity you actually get, but the grub is suitably unusual enough without being over poncified so I’m giving it a rating of RECOMMENDED.

Fags

To paraphrase Daphne du Maurier:

"once again, I stopped smoking".

Actually it was two days ago, but I thiought it would be better to blog it two days late than not at all.

I can't breathe, and that's the only reason why. I'm pumping Ventolin into my lungs 3-5 times overnight. This is shit.

If Cameron's Tories were Microsoft

You’ve just bought a new operating system for your PC. Maybe you’ve read reviews that call it the next best things since Windows 2000 (an OS which in my opinion was the most stable, reliable Microsoft offering ever). Some reviewers complain that it is too much like the current version of XP, which has reigned supreme for the last three or four years. Some say its too radically different – the colours are too way out, the means of getting your word processor to fire up are convoluted. But you bite the bullet anyway. This OS is the future and you’re going to be stuck with it at some point in time anyway. Might as well enjoy.

So you install the software. It looks great. Bill Gates gives you a personalised tour of the bits you need. Bells ring, whistles blow. The installation ends.

Then you try to fire up Word. Instead, the computer grinds down about 50 gears, the monitor fizzles, then some green text on a black background is displayed. Up pops Wordstar 2.1. In a window which looks scarily like…shock, DOS! DOS! That’s going back to age of dinosaurs isn’t it?

Well yes. You hunt around for Word in the filing system. Gone. You go onto the Internet (this is now purely ASCII based by the way) and on Google you find a file search facility like Spotlightt or Google Desktop. You start looking for documents. Well, whew! They’re still intact, but where is your word processor? It really has disappeared. And what’s more Wordstar 2.1 won’t touch your Word documents. Too new and high fallutin, apparently.

So the next thing to do is phone the helpline. “Is the replacement of Word with Wordstar 2.0 some kind of retro-inspired joke?”. “No”, you are told, “if you read the small print…”.

Excel has been replaced by a Lotus 1-2-3 beta.
Where the hell is Access?
GIVE ME MY SOFTWARE BACK!!!

So that’s it. You’ve now gone back in time 20 years. And unlike some versions of an OS, which allow you to re-install the previous version, this one just petulantly throws out the Windows XP disk (that’s when the drive doesn’t lock up entirely). You are sad, you mourn of the loss of your hard work.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why the current Conservative Party can’t win the next election. Great front end. Ancient, knackered software which would have been ashamed to have been seen on an Amstrad 1640 from 1984. Sure, the leader has the charisma of Blair c 1997 but the power elite behind the scenes is markedly 8 bit.

Introducing Nicki

No, she's not my bit on the side, although she could prove to be a bed-mate at least, but Lynn's new guide dog who we were introduced to today. She's staying overnight in order to ascertain whether I'll be allergic to her hair or not.

She's a sweet little thing, happy and boisterous but good natured and willing to be told "no" when necessary.

This isn't the greatest picture in the world, but trying to get her to keep still for more than a few seconds is near nigh impossible.

A Londoner's guide to bad chicken restaurants

Have a look here for some of the slummiest, scuzziest chicken outlets in London. If KFC is the benchmark, then these show you how it goes downhill from there:

http://badgas.co.uk/chicken

Big Mac or Demoniak?

Although I've seen these 'Quick' restaurants scattered over Europe (Amsterdam, Brussels and now Lille) I hadn't really taken any notice of their menu. I wonder what the average hard-line Evangelical American would make of this burger? The one thing 'demon posssessed' about this cheeseburger was a tinsy winsy touch of paprika. For a Londoner bought up on good Indian fodder, this is positvely girly.

As burger chains go. this is pretty average, by which I mean there is nothing good or especially bad to say about it. Just acceptable.

Weekend in Lille

Just had a blast on the Eurostar to Lille, Northern France. Journey pleasant and so was the city, mainly.

So what is there to say about Lille? OK, a few thoughts:

Good

Great food, wonderful Normandy and Breton cider. I could get seriously addicted to it. People not half as stroppy as Parisians, though even New Yorkers with their rep for surliness lose out here. Paris has got to have some of the least tourist friendly bods around, although I admit, it is a beautiful city.

Lille's Metro (or VAL) is one of the best in the world. Small, regular trains which have two speeds. Stop or full speed. They are automatic and if only London Underground could invest in some of this technology the tube would be a much pleasanter way to travel. I was deeply impressed with Lille's metro system, although it is only two lines.

Some lovely central areas not blighted by tourism.

The mad, bad Sunday market. Highly recommended for its size and scale. Very popular with the locals - make sure you come armed with your London elbow since no-one will move for you. This isn't out of a sense of rudeness (in fact, Lillians - or whatever people from Lille call themselves: Lilloise??) don't have anywhere to move either. The number on 'pardonez-mois' and 'mercis' put us Londoners to shame. My parents love France and they always stress how polite the non-Parisian French are. True in this case. Its VERY cramped. A great vibe there there. Nice to hear the barkers hollering in French.

Our hotel was in a central, sleazy area in what passes for the red light district - its rather titchy. This means all night fast food joints, noise of people yelling and much ambient noise generally, and sadly this brings us to the bad point. I its the guy who wrote 'A Year in the Merde' who mentions the copious use of street cleaning machines in Paris. Well I can testify to the fact that there were at least two as possibly as many as four of them circulating round our part of town for most of the night. How to Parisians sleep through this racket? Do they wear earmuffs? Do the machines travel through the suburbs as well or just circulate in the centre? I really need to ask someone familiar with French city life this question because I know that it would drive me nuts, being the insomniac I am.

The other reason to avoid Lille, and I'd include the whole of France, is that Sundays and French tourism don't mix. The only shops open on a Sunday are restaurants (and I'm being kind to them by referring to them as 'shops') and station based newsagents/tobacconists etc. Even Paris was completely dead the Sunday we travelled to it four years ago, and we incorrectly assumed that this particular Sunday was some kind of public religious holiday. Nope, its always like that. So, like Germany, unless you've got family over there and therefore have someone interesting to talk to in their abode, then don't bother touring France on a Sunday because unless you enjoy engorging yourself on admittedly some of the finest food any nation can offer, all day mind, there really isn't much else to do.

Would I recommend it? Yes, its a more representative slice of real France. Just don't go on a Sunday and if you are there over a weekend, buy all the things you want to bring back with you - chocolates, cheese and northern French cider in our case - then get it on Saturday or not at all.

Don't go to Leyton if you ain't a Muslim

I used to live not so far from Leyton. I spent six happy years in Hackney and always thought Leyton to be one of those parts of London that had not been poncified by outsiders too much. It has rows of terraced houses and although the parades of shops are filled with kebaberies rather than chippies as would have been the case before the 70s, it was still, in my opinion, a bastion of real Londoners. Places where people like me, born here, could afford to set up home and intended to. Just the sort of place for me.




Oh darn, I should really consider converting before going here


Well, we missed the housing market boat too and moved out to Dagenham instead. Cheaper, but at least on the tube, and again, a London-y sort of place, even though some residents are proud of its ‘Essex’ identity. It didn’t get a London telephone prefix until the 60s. But back in Leyton, it seems I’d got it wrong all along – silly old me. Yes, as Abu Izzadeen reminded John Reid, Home Sec, that it is in a fact a “Muslim area”.

Oh yes, indeedy.

It wasn’t done with any sense of pride, or in the sense that a ‘Jamaican area’ might be blessed with white sands and aqua seas. No, it was in the Arnie sense of “get out, asshole”. His words to Reid were “"How dare you come to a Muslim area when over 1,000 Muslims have been arrested?" I’d forgotten that London was in fact an open city and as long as you keep to the law and remove yourself from trespassing on private property, you are basically free to travel anywhere you choose.

I was also reminded by the same person that "We believe Islam is superior, we believe Islam will be implemented one day. It is very rich for you to come here and say we need to monitor our children when your government is murdering people in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

A few reminders to this chap:

1. He is right, our beloved and oh-so-in-touch political elite has sent innocent soldiers to be butchered in a war that isn’t wanted by the majority of anyone and whose complexities are understood even less, Muslim or not. My sister’s boyfriend is one of those soldiers and deserves better, or at least potentially more random way of needlessly dying, say, by being hit but a drunk driver.

2. If Islam is truly superior, then let me declare now that I disagree. I, being a fat, ageing, grumpy fucker, think fat people who give copious grumpdom to the world, and who never receive any thanks for it, and who happen to be heading to towards their forties and all the sag that entails, are in fact the most superior people on earth. So naah naah na naah naaah to you, sonny Jimal.

3. If you really don’t even wish to start considering the possibility that even at its worst, a British (or at least Western) way of life is better the hell-hole you left to come and incite your racist, anti-democratic shit, then (expletive deleted) off, for the good of all of us. If Afghanistan is the logical conclusion of what happens when Islam is “implemented” (I still can’t get my head around what this might mean) then give me a Godless Sodom on speed every time.

And then politicians scratch their poor overworked heads when the BNP are gaining council seats You heard it from me first, or maybe not, but I’m very much afraid the only thing which will be “implemented” is the growth in support of the BNP, who are getting rather canny at picking off not only the usual suspect underclass white voter (my fellow Dagenham citizens being a case in point – and I don’t use the word ‘underclass’ in a derogatory sense, because I suspect I’m one of them, at least in the eyes of tosspots like Izzadeen). Even those whose families came from overseas in the 50s, 60s and 70s are allegedly joining. Those who have chosen to try and fit in with a society which is slowly acknowledging their vital necessity, and in the case of ex-commonwealth nations, their every damned right to be here. It hasn’t been an easy ride for them or us Anglos, but at least both sides, on the whole, have felt a need for friendship rather than race-hatred. Not a perfect ride, but a slowly moving truck in the right direction. I think Izzy would be happiest watching the attempts of his moderate brethren’s attempts to engage in dialogue jack-knife at high speed.

Mobile phone jihad

Here’s an example of how to sell an idea. Honestly, it really works.

1) First, take a pop at the opposition who has made a careless, and that’s being kind, speech. We’ll use X-Mobile versus 03 as an instance. X-Mobile has just “dissed” 03, saying that 03’s is a heartless company who exploit children and their phones kill people by irradiating their heads.

2) 03 refute this. They say that X-Mobile have caused them grief, hurt, have been slanderous &c &c.

3) There is no independent evidence to prove that what X-Mobile says is true. But on the other hand, there is no evidence to prove that X-Mobiile don’t share similar shady business ethics since all the company records are stored in locked cupboards guarded by Steve Irwin-slaying stingrays and black African boomslangs. Amusingly, the stringray with the longest tail and the sharpest sting is called “Allah”. But hey, it’s a free country isn’t it? And you can say what you like unless what you say is obviously slanderous. Of course, 03 say that it is, but don’t do anything about it, such as take X-Mobile to court or launch a counter-attack of any meaning, pith or logic. They just publicly whinge loudly about how hard-done they’ve been by X-Mobile.

4) Instead, just to prove how kid-loving their company is and how well they treat children, 03 then launch a campaign of killing kiddies who use X-Mobile handsets and setting black African boomslangs on their parents. Just for fun, they also have the odd pop at an innocent bystander or two. Voddy-fone and Banana’s customers occasionally find themselves being executed on the street while telling their ‘birds’ they’ll be 10 minutes late or travelling through Liverpool Street, Edgware Road or being unfortunate enough to be on the no. 30 bus. 3 ½ ‘s customers don’t stand a chance as they are allied to the ‘evil empire’ of X-Mobile by dint of sharing the same network when roaming in the Ukraine. They just get shot at.

If you think this is stupid, then this is what I think of the recent outburst by the Pope and the reaction to it by Islamists who claim to be peaceful individuals whilst happily shooting nuns.

Like I said, this really works and I intend to fly over to my nearest X-Mobile mosque on the way home from work to sign a 24-month, aherm, no, year, contract.

Iraq was and is crap and wrong, and fuelled on rather transparent lies. Even Americans know that now. Bush and Blair are really not popular guys at the moment. The Pope was probably not so well advised when he said what he said. But the reaction to it does NOT justifying killing anyone. If being a “peaceful” Muslim means killing everyone who isn’t, then I’m a peace-lovin' Hindu, baby.

Maybe I’m just a frigging infidel. Or maybe whenever I hear about Muslims kicking off once more I think about how I nearly lost my wife who was on the train behind the one that got blown on during 7/7. A train which came in from East London and therefore had a high probably of being packed with, guess who? Fellow “peaceful” Muslims. If the 9/11 and 7/7 murderers don’t have the care to give a shite about their brothers in arms, then really, they were a lost cause anyway. At least the IRA, until Omagh, had the decency to discriminate as to who was the enemy.

Having near-death of spouse rammed in your face – well, it kind of affects one, you know. I really don't want to dislike the whole damn tribe of Islam - its the ole racist cop-out I know, but my best childhood friend, for nearly 15 yeasrs was a Muslim, and like American, I don't have much of an axe to grind with those who I've met in the course of my life. But some of the loudest, bitter ones; the kind with the "I'm more victim than you'll ever be" mentality REALLY PISS ME OFF.

Bletchley Park and 70s TV games

Mrs DD, myself and a few mates went to Bletchley Park on Sunday, home of the Enigma codebreaking facility. The people there did a lot more than this or course, it also housed for a while Britain and world’s uber-geek, Mr Alan Turing, a pioneer if ever there was one. Like the Kelvedon “Secret” * Nuclear Bunker, it was a place that wouldn’t necessary jump out on anyone’s ‘must-see’ agenda, but I’d recommend a trip up there just to sample the atmosphere alone. You don’t have to be a code or WW2 junkie to enjoy it, although if you are either, there’s even more a chance that you will.

The most enjoyable part of the trip was spent about 2 minutes before the place closed at 5, however. In Block B, one of the main exhibition spaces was a selection of very old computers indeed, including my first real computer, an Amstrad PCW8512. Yes, I said . It wasn’t a Speccy anyhow, and did “real” work, like get me through my A levels, and a good chunk of my degree. ‘Twas sad to see the back of it, though given a race between the spellchecker and a three legged, drunken tortoise, the jury would be out as to who would cross the finishing post.

Nestling innocently amongst the 80s behemoths, including the first IBM PC, Amstrad PCs (I failed my A level business studies exam on one of these as hard drive corrupted all my work before getting to print, leaving nothing but random crap and a befuddled PC support guy), a BBC Model B, VIC 20 and C64, was a silver coloured box. I stared at it. It stared at me. I questioned it as to where the hell I’d seen its brother before.

Then…

EUREKA. The orange label read ‘SPORTEL’. My childhood friend Andrew, the kind of person for whom ‘My Perfect Cousin’ was written about, only he wasn’t my cousin, owned one of these. We’d spent hours playing Pong-like games on it, huddled around the telly at his parents’ house in Greenford. Bloody hell, nostalgia struck me with the impact of a class 375 Electrostar as it reaches warp speed between West Horndon and Basildump.



Those TV games, the ones that go bip-bip-bip-BIP as you paddle a couple of over-large pixels into a “goal”. Who needs Fifa 2006 World Cup Stimulator when your ‘players’ could consist of two long lines and a variable angle? For that, ladies and gentlemen, bought up on the X-box, was how they did it in 1977.

These Pong games may have had the brain of a mongol child, (well actually their “brain” was a General Instruments 8700 chip, mostly) but boy, were they fun if you were of a certain age (under ten I suppose would is about the right level of maturity that best suited).

The model pictured above, nicked from www.old-computers.com, wasn’t the machine I had, which was a Grandstand ten-gamer, but it was that my neighbours owned, and one that I deeply, deeply coveted in ways which only an eight year old boy sans cash, can. It was available at the Southall branch of Woolies for about £16. It came with a riffle. You’d aim it at the telly and try to knock out a flying ball (a bigger square of pixels this time). I still haven’t a clue how the technology works – magic I reckon - but if you managed to get your sights lined up the ball and fired just the right time, it would disappear and your score would go up by 1. I think 15 was the max you could get.

The end of summer, energy and the North-South divide

Last week, apart from being the usual hectic chasing-of-tail dance-e-tron at work, appears to be the last unofficial week of summer, with campsites being booked to capacity, parks full of evening picnickers, as was indeed the hardly beautiful Mile End Park on Thursday when we sat by bank of the Regents Canal eating kebabs. It seems that collectively society senses that if it is to indulge in summery things, this is the last opportunity we'll have this year.

I was cleaning up the living room earlier on, an onerous task, and my attempt at Spring cleaning, only 4 months too late this year. When I ventured out for some lunchtime rolls, the air contained a slight, but distinct winter chill. Between now and the time just before we return to Greenwich Mean Time and the need for the SAD light becomes a reality, is my favourite time of year weather-wise: the temperature is perfect for doing all those things you really ought to do in the summer, but for which activities its just too darn hot to accomplish. As summers go, its been a mixed bag in Britain this year. A promising start in March with clear days and reasonable temps, then one month of rain. The a heatwave lasting a fortnight, ending with hot, cloudy days. I think days like these, with temps at 15-17C, clear skies and no rain are about as good as they get. I'm not a heat freak, but the old current bun doing what it does best in the sky doesn't half elevate my mood.

Farewell summer. Hello autumn. And may winter be cold and crisp the way it should.

Only thing is - crisp and cold winter means a good excuse for the Russians to hike our gas bills and for the New Tories, the arrogant fools, to pretend to us that there is nothing they can do about it. And for us, John and Jane Q Public, to pay the expenses of these halfwit politicians who become less and less attached to the society we pay them to govern while they care less and less about our concerns, while spinning the bullshit that of course they do care, and they are listening like billy-o (Blair whittering on about this very same concern this morning made by blood boil - sorry pal, but your chance for listening was three years ago and you patently failed to do so). Our gas bill has doubled since we moved to Daggers six years ago. If anything, we use energy than we did then. I'm just so glad we're not into the fuel poverty zone. I don't think it can be long before the average earner, and not just the financially hard-up who will be struggling to pay for the lecky.

Earlier this week, a writer's comment in the Grauniad's Comment Is Free section shrieked out at me: presumably she was from the north, and she was complaining that Nu Labour were a London-centric conspiracy and had lost any support and any connection to the people of the north. England should be politically divided with a north-south barrier, she suggested. I'm going to have to correct her: I was born and raised in London and I reckon I have more in common with any brother and sister from the north than with the Notting Hillbillies in Government. Sorry love, but there are two, perhaps three Londons. Super-rich London and Rich London has as much contempt for those way out East where I am, as they they do for anyone from Yorkshire, Lancashire or Northumberland. And what about Cheshire, the Surrey of the North? - shouldn't the citizenry there be considered token Southerners? I understand her point though. Its just that just as some Londoners reckon that the M25 is the border at which it all ends, Northerners are just as guilty at assuming that because you're a southerner, you have a certain level of wealth and a fixed mindset. Can we get back to reality and substitute North/South with rich/average-to-poor? In which case, I'm a Yorkshireman through and through (actually, my surname appears to be most concentrated around East Lancs/Pennines so I may be a northerner by bloodline in reality anyway. Find out about your name at:

http://www.spatial-literacy.org/UCLnames/Surnames.aspx

Her point was she was pissed off at being governed from a mentally distant London-based bureacracy with little connection to where she lives and the kind of society in which she finds herself. Our house is 24 tube stops east of Westminster, but it might as well be 300 miles up the GNER for all the impact the kind of people who live here have on the ruling political class. These idiots seemed generally surprised that 11 BNP counsellors were elected in my borough last may. I'm not. I can put my hand on my heart and say that I don't believe this has anything to do with racism. The opposition where I live was non-existent. When all the bosses look and smell the same and you want a change, then anyone offering an alternative wins. There wasn't a Green or freak party candidate in sight to register a protest vote. So guess what....?

From this day forward, and just to make things straight, I declare that Dagenham is now a suburb of Manchester, in fact, the whole of southern Essex is coming your way, oh land of pigeon fancier and betrousered ferret. Its a reluctant move we make, for the simple reason that pie and mash doesn't sit easily on the northern stomach and so, as a kindness, we'll keep the consumption of such regional food to an absolute min and only after the 'bab shop closes. In order to show solidarity to real people, the removal men have been phoned and are coming soon.

Ee up lad.

Travelling to Harlow

Me and Mrs Daggerdukc travelled out to Harlow in Essex, a new town I used to work in during my twenties - Piers Morgan and i apparently frequented the same college, though I was a teacher of sorts. Anyway, while I worked there, I kind acquired a liking for the place and every now and then I've been bored, I've visited it just to see what new thing are going down. I'm particularly taken with the layout devise for it by Frederick Gibberd (sorry if I've spelt his name wrong, I'm feeling too lazy to crossref). I like the sense of green space all around the centre, and, although it is unashamedly car-centric, out of the all the new towns I've visited, this one seems to be built on a human scale. Though it has its fair share of blight and decay, it has stood well the test of time by comparison with say, Craigavon, where Mrs D'D originates from. Of all the planned-for utopias our governments have indulged themselves with creating for us proles, Harlow seems to have come out of the potential for dystopia rather well and old Gibberd can congratulate himself for having the foresight to plan the spaces so well, in harmony with the countryside around it and for refusing compromise when the government was urging new towns to cram as many citizens in as they could.

So - things to like about Harlow:

The sense of space.

The contrast between the green landscape and planned city feel - eg, the tower blocks planted in the middle of town which look out over green hills. The Lawns, built in 1951, is Britain's first tower block and now a grade II listed built, deservedly so.

It feels like a proper community has grown up. This is perhaps because the original settlers were picked from the North London boroughs of Islington, Edmonton and Harringey. Peterborough never felt like much a community when I spent a good deal of time up there.

The way it has had good times, bad times, but never so bad that it has tarnished the residents' in the same way that happened in Corby.

The fact that it has some great civic architecture without allowing middle class artists' indulgences to get the better of it. The Passmore pavilion in Peterlee, Co Durham, for example, is a building I rather like, but it was plonked into a working class district, probably in a well meaning gesture to 'better' the lives of the scum who live there (I'm not saying that Peterlee residents are scum, but they, like 99 percent of the rest of us, are seen as such by the great 'n' good. Harlow experienced nothing in a way of vanity art, but it did get a massive and very gorgeous town park which really does feel like the grounds of a manor house and must be considered one of the most well laid-out in Britain.

The fact that it is a town. With boundaries, which end. So all the sprawl is planned for sprawl - it hasn't just drifted outwards and outwards, being filled in with execu-homes when and where the big building companies decree that they'll spill them there.

Bad things about Harlow:

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE WATER GARDENS AT THE SIDE OF THE HARVEY CENTRE? Could a Harlolw resident please answer me this question? This was my favourite bit of civic architecture OF ALL TIME and now the pisswits have killed them. Twunts. I almost cried when i saw the oh-so-average flats that now occupy the space. City centre flats are great and all that, but not at the expense this beauty.

The quite awful transport excuse-for-a-system. Not so much the transport links actually, which are up the crapola standard of any given provincial town in the South East, but the almost complete lack of information available. Like timetables on bus stops, you know. And the fact that its so close to London, but so inhabits a different world transport wise. My thanks must go to the chap(ess) who maintains the saucily named but essential www.harlowride.co.uk website. Despite it sounding like the punchline to an Essex girl joke, without the information which he or she must glean from thin air from what I can tell from looking around, a public transport user is screwed. Too many companies - no link, co-ordination or indeed anything between them. Typical mentally impaired Tory transport policies still in action. Kenny Livingstone, for making London's buses sane, for that in itself, I salute you.

In praise of Deptford - and Cuisine a la Leke

Mini plug for an area and a restaurant. A few weeks ago we went to a wonderful African restaurant in Deptford, SE8, called Cuisine a la Leke. Yep, ‘African’ is a bit generic but that’s how it describes itself so who am I to disagree. No dog trouble that is always a good start. Then after sipping some large bottles of Afro-beer, the food arrived. It was spicy (watch out for the ‘chilli gravy’), well cooked and came with a ‘rice cocktalk’ including joloff beans, peas and that brown rice beloved of Nigerian restaurants everywhere in London. Happy, smiley, genuinely NICE service. A restaurant I’d be happy to recommend to anyone. Go there and thank me later. Its at the top of Deptford High Street which has been voted the ‘UK’s most diverse High Street’ (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4292533.stm) and really does have a great atmosphere, a fantastic range of shops, and houses some of the finest urban eateries in the whole of London. Special mention must be made of the Orient Chinese, which I would happily vote as London’s best, certainly within its price bracket, which is budget-budget – and I’d say that even some posh restaurants would struggle to match the quality of the food here.

Take it from a Londoner – yes, one who admittedly spent three happy years living here as a student of nearby Goldsmiths’, but don’t let my bias put you off. An area for real Londoners, whose businesses are run by real Londoners. Long may it remain the scuzzy, colourful, delightful, diverse, dirty place that it always has been. Forget the touristy East End, take the train to Greenwich instead, but get off one stop too early. Then enjoy the exuberant, clotted heart of the real capital where clone-brand shops fear to tread. My only gripe? Where have all the pubs gone. The Noah’s Ark – RIP. The Scent of Urine (Centurion) – RIP. I recommend the Deptford Arms on the High Street, and also the White Swan, formerly Mamie O’Leary’s (which serves Thai food at the back). The Bird’s Nest in nearby Church Street isn’t a bad watering hole either. But it’s a far cry from its heyday when there were around ten pubs on the High Street alone. Still, much to recommend it.

Dagenham's new low point

If Croydon is hovering around the Man U/Arsenal area of the Premiership, Dagenham must surely now be in the Sunday league of chav towns.

When the local paaaaahnd shop is forced to close then you know a community is facing hard times. I took this while on my way home from work.

I like the rather optimistic message implying that this would be summer clearance. Oh yeah, right? That's why its truly closed.

Hot phone sex

Lest to so foolish as to believe the the office toy porn was a mere one-off, then how wrong can you be? This tasty clip shows who you are dealing with when you call one of those expensive 0906 numbers promising a good time. Be told, oh optimistic user, that are you not getting an overexcited student babe who needs to top up her grant. You aren’t even getting a grandma in Bangalore. No, you are getting this fella. There’s nothing he likes more than to give pleasure over the phone. And pleasure is what he’s experiencing to the max in this photo. Just remember him, next time you fancy a quick monkey thrash, and use the good old internet or a paper-based product from the Paul Raymond empire. Cos he’s never been on ANY guy’s mind.

Shankill Mural

What I understand about Northern Irish politics you could write on a postage stamp. My views, such as they are, are obviously informed by having in-laws with deeply held proddy beliefs. I was, however, quite pleased to be driver up the Shankill by my sister in law. I like Belfast - its a city I think could live in, anyhow, and it has all the features required by a London exile apart from maybe the tubes, the manic crowds and so forth. Socially, when compared to London, my wife's family's best estimate though is that NI society is about 20 years behind that of England; which can be a good and bad thing depending on how you look at it. Society there is pretty traditional, and there hasn't been the same level of immigration as say, to Dublin. But all this is changing fast and with the huge mostly untapped potential of the province up for grabs, I suspect that NI society is going to change faster than just about any other in the UK. Give it five years and Belfast will be the new Dublin. House prices have risen 25 percent in the last year alone, while the rest of UK's only managed eight. Investment for meaning projects would be a great benefit to the place and to the UK as a whole.

The future's bright...though not necessarily orange.

Fantasy babes

Anyone who knows me also knows that I'm into fat girls - I married one didn't I? No complaints, in fact, the bigger (and preferably taller) the better. On Channel 4 this eve, at 9pm, there is a fat girls' beauty pageant. I have high hoopes for this programme, and in the spirit of semi-pornographic beauty shows all over the world, here's my contribution - a description of my fantasy candidate:

"Deirdre is 34 and lives in Cheltenham with her parents after splitting up with her stupid, thin Peruvian boyfriend Zanaxxio. She has a 44 inch waist, 50 inch hips, weighs in at approximately 20 stone and 3 pounds and stands at 5 foot 11 inches. Dee has a delightful complexion of pale pink with freckles, large, green eyes. She sports russet brown hair cut short to her shoulders and is wearing the Stella McCartney tank-style bathing costume in powder blue, which reveals the ripples on her thighs to perfection. Deirdre works as a dinner lady in a local primary school, and performs stand-up comedy part-time, and her two wishes would be to alleviate child poverty in Africa and increase the size of her double-pneu."

PS, the programme was a pile of shite. Lots of shouting from a Northern Irish chick and not much else.

Harmondsworth - traffic hotspot

Harmondsworth is a village to the west of London near to where I used to live. I travelled over there to take a picture of the Hillingdon Hospital wall, a cacophony 1960s stained glass madness which captured my imagination as a very small child during a period where I seemed to be spending most of my days. The wall, as feared, has been PFI'd out of existence and its replacement is a rather miserable affair which I shan't dwell on. I'll try and get an old picture of the old Hillingdon Hospital wal though, it really is gorgeous.

But never mind - I trekked off to Harmondsworth on a 223 bus for a walk along the back roads to Harlington, a place where I once lived and enjoyed a great deal. Harlington, Sipson and Harmondsworth are places that time has left alone since the 70s and are all the better for this.

I like the picture - well not so much the quality of the snap, taken on my Nokia 7610,, cos its crap. This was taken on Harmondsworth Lane, not a spit away from Heathrow Airport. Its a quiet, almost country backwater. And yet, half way along it, are these set of traffic lights, which appear to be a fully configured set in that there is potential to control traffic both east-west ad north-south. But why? Firstly, the road going across the road leads to nowhere, unless you count a cornfield as a destination you'd be likely to visit.

Even better is that the traffic lights are turned OFF. The scene reminds me of the Depeche Mode album cover for Music for the Masses which feature red-painted air-raid sirens up the sides of mountains. Not as sinister I guess, but kinda nicely surreal.