Three Joy Reports in one - and a word on orange

Oh gosh, I’m stumped. Joy reports are joyous. There weren’t any problems on Thursday, yesterday or today, and on Friday I worked from home. Perhaps District Line chief executives are prowling the line this week.

Has anyone noticed just how bloody cold the refurb’d trains are on this line by the way? Don’t get me wrong, I generally approve of the redesigned carriages, especially the less harsh on the eyes internal lighting. The un-refurb’d trains went from having pinky coloured tubes, chosen when the trains were new in 1979, making them seem rather warm and inviting, to a rather harsh blue shade meant, I think, to emulate daylight, or at least the grey British version of daylight, placed there, virtually overnight and with no prior warning, in 2002 or so. They are actually the same colour as the tubes used in an S. A. D. lamp I have at home. Maybe TfL were doing their bit to combat passengers’ winter blues. When they were first installed, I felt rather nauseous, especially as the internal panels of the trains, and seat coverings, were a rather delicious orange. The two colours didn’t mix well though. Unhappily, the nice orange panels have been replaced with a bland grey. I’m sure this makes the trains harder to vandalise, and I guess they don’t show up dirt so well, but I liked the orange, and salute the genius who chose the colour, and double-salute the person who signed it off for the contract. I reckon I might be in a minority though. Remember the glory of 70s kitchen appliances and you’ll know the kind of orange we’re dealing with. Orange Smartie orange. Scrumptious. Heck, once I can make my camera produce the colour properly I’ll bung a picture of a door panel in so you can see that I’m truly not getting over-excited about it.

The refurbs’ lights are more a neutral yellow colour. But alas, the heat seems to have been turned to half power on these trains. Not quite the refrigerated meat lorries that are the C stock Hammersmith & City/Circle line trains, but a good attempt.

The light fantastic

We went to see the Dan Flavin retrospective at the Hayward Gallery yesterday.

I think this is the first time the exhibition has been shown to such an extent in the UK - there were 90 pieces there yesterday, including his line drawings and ideas for future sculptures.

Dan Flavin was a New Yorker who designed sculptures made of commercially available neon tubes, and some of them are plain beautiful, as well as being stark, fluorescent light never being that flattering a media. The first exhibit you see when entering is a grid of about 200 squares made up of bright green neon tubes. Others are smaller. One I liked particularly was made up abou 120 circular flouresecent tubes, the kind you used to find regularly in 70s designed kitchens.

Apparently many of the bulbs are hard to pick up now as fashions have changed and gases and gone up on value. Apparently, some of the rarer Philips tubes have had to be scoured from various old warehouse stock. I would hate to have to be the person to turn them on each morning - I'd dread the sound of a now-valuable tube popping.

Worth a visit, and look out for the array of 18 bright green tubes laid vertically to form an eight foot high wall. Its like the gateway to heaven. In fact, there is a yellow version too, but the green one seems far more dramatic to my eyeballs.

Despite being given a ticking off from one of the Hayward's staff, here is a rather bad picture I took with my mobile phone which sort of gives you an idea of what to expect. The picture is rather blue, where the real sculpture was actually made of multi-coloured tubes and is far more stunning and gorgeous than my poor old Motorola can deal with.

Mood: Bit bored, but in an OK way
Book: The Lost Cosmonaut - Daniel Kalder
Music: 6Music's "Freak Zone"

Joy Report

Left home: 8.40
Tube arrived: 8.48
Arrived at work: 10.05

The exception which proves the rule. Problem free – but how long can it last?

Not doing much today. Mick is over for the week as his flat is be redec'd.

Ate a nice lump of duck and apple pate for lunch. Hmm, maybe a lunchtime snack breakdown report is also required until the daggersdukc newsworld becomes populated with, er, news. Oh bugger it, here goes then.

STOP PRESS: THE DAGGERSDUKC LUNCH REPORT

Pot Asda duck and apple pate (9/10)
"Pick up a pie" pie from London Bridge station. Variety: Lamb and rosemary. 8/10 (not enough meat, otherwise, perfect)
Pack Golden Wonder cheese puffs (8/10)
Pack Doritos (Cool Cheese variaty)
Cadbury's Bourneville (small)

I'm not going to rate the common foods out of 10 - why bother? Most have tried them and will have their own grading. Sadly, I've eaten this healthy repast. Tomorrow, if you are lucky, I'll post a picture of my lunch in its full, uneaten glory.

Mood: Evil in humour
Book: Women in Love - DH Lawrence (audio on iPod)
Music: Various shuffled selection on 'pod

Tube Joy Report

In the light of not having much to write about – or at least not wishing to write about much at the moment – I’m going to post the time it took me to get to work on a daily basis. This will be for my own amusement, so don’t expect a giggle-fest.

Numero uno: I swear my journey times are getting longer. This will prove this to be the case, or otherwise.

Numero duo: I want to point out all the faults and tribulations. Many of these are unannounced by the Chief Disseminator of Information employed by the Transport for London Politburo, and so, being a public spirited chap, I want to put the record straight and possibly present this diary to said politburo chief.

For a while after Tim O’Toole took over and put up a ‘how we’re running’ board at each station, the information was clear, as well as spread far and wide by driver and tannoy alike. But they are slipping back to their wicked ways. I’m sure they don’t tell us in order to un-exist the problem, making their stats look better. Well, I for one, am not convinced. In a world full of Animal Farm style crows, let me tell you that Sugar Candy Mountain does not exist. So when we are told, sheeplike, that the service has improved by 3.3756 percent, don’t believe the hype. In fact, don’t believe anything these arseholes say, because it was all written on the back of a fag packet while the chief mechanic was being shagged by a sheep half way down the Old Kent Road on a 453 bendybus.

Today’s journey Joy Report

Left home 7.33. 6 minute walk to tube station
Train arrived 7.44 (good)
Delays on Hammersmith and City Line (reported on tannoys)
Very slow service from Whitechapel to Baker Street. Lots of pauses. No Met Line running Aldgate-Baker St, so slow, crap change required.
Arrived to work at 9.38 (38 minutes late)

Limp wrist action

I have a secret collection. My wife knows about it, but I doubt many, if any, of my friends have noticed. It’s nothing pervy or offensive, but I am partial to collecting the odd watch or three. Lynn collects clocks, and has a noisy, rather obnoxious cuckoo clock which stutters the hours and half-hours whilst ticking somewhat inefficiently. The last time we did a count, she had 58 clocks, including a caseful of miniatures and a clock made of industrial tools bolted together.

I only have eight watches, which admittedly, is pretty pesky for someone who calls themselves a collector. An automatic, a conventional windup, an extremely ugly LCD, which is my most worn watch due to its indestructibility, and several analogue quartz watches. I’m not much taken with fashion or price (one of my favourite, sadly deceased watches was a purple dialled baby I bought in Spandau Market, Berlin, last year. That only lasted 3 months, but it looked fantastic – cost was 5 Euro).

I had been looking for an LED watch – one of those watches whose numbers glows ruby-red when a button is pressed. These are relics of the seventies and I fondly remember my “BIONIC MAN” WITH SIX FUNCTIONS (!!) LED watch. Presumably the Far Eastern licensee was not wealthy enough to pay for proper Six Million Dollar Man branding or the watches they made were too crap for the holder to associate themselves with the manufacturer. It was cheap and generic, and didn’t last long. But this toy fascinated my eight-year-old self. About a year ago I started to look for one which used the same time delivery technology as my BIONIC wonder. There seemed to be plenty of old ones around for sale, including some wonderful Pulsars, but to be honest

1) they were bloody pricey for an old watch, and more importantly

2) I like to wear my watches and the technology was pretty flaky in the 70s. I wasn’t sure how well any item I bought would stand up to the rigour of actually being worn. After realising I’d be out of pocket, I gave up and forgot about it until a few weeks ago.

Then I found a site which sold watches with that same 70s design, but which were new and contained updated 00s LED technology and power management (the 70s originals ate batteries like sharks eat fish). And here it is on my rather hairy arm. If you are interested, some better pictures can been at www.led-watch.com. You can buy one as well – mine is the TX5.

Baby, you can drive my car

Lynn puts her foot down



Yesterday, Mick, Krissy, myself and Lynn took our first driving lesson - remember, we are all blind and partially sighted, so for us, all in our 30s and 40s, this was a very big deal.

The lesson took place at an airfield somewhere in Northamptonshire, a place called Brackley, and run by a company called Driving Ambition (www.driving-ambition.info). We divvied ourselves into two dual control cars. Mine and Lynn's driver was Ian, and with Lynn behind the wheel, they set off learning the gears, clutch and steering. They then moved on to slow practice runs around the airfield and the last half hour was spent riding around the perimeter, getting up to speeds of 50mph. Lynn had a massive smile on her face throughout, and was a careful, methodical driver. Ian guided her steering vocally and, despite her lack of sight, I didn't feel as if we were in dangerous hands once. Given a full deck of sight, I'm sure we be driving carefully and safely all over the place.

Whereas I just wanted to do a Schumacher. We got up to speeds of 60mph. While I was happy to get as much speed out of the car as I could given the pot-holey state of the road. Our instructor would, I think, have preferred me to have taken things more relaxed, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I wasn't going to waste it on the niceties of polite, considerate driving when the chance tot take the Playstation rally game into a real car (a nice little Honda).

This is an experience I would recommend to any blindo who hasn't driven, and isn't likely to, legally anyway.

Another experience I would recommend is a trip to the Great Nepalese restaurant, at the side of Euston Station, which is where we rounded off our very tiring and exhilarating day.

A fantastic way for Michael to celebrate his 40th.

Mood: Chipper
Book: Saturday - Ian McEwan
Music: Sparks - Hello Young Lovers