Yellow jersey vs black cabs?

Was reading in the paper that Paris is having a biking renaissance at present. Of course, any city where the public transport grinds to a halt every time some onion-eating type takes all his mates out on strike in order to have a long weekend is bound to provoke a strong inclination to independent transport, but it's good to see that Parisians are turning to two wheels, rather than four.

Paris is operating a variation of a scheme that has existed in Holland for years, with their famous 'white bikes'. The idea is that there are designated bike racks all round the city. You put in your token, a bike is released and you peddle to point B, park it in another rack and wander off. The bikes are all owned by the city and you have to be a registered user of the scheme in order to have access to the bikes.

Surely such a scheme would be just the job for London. Indeed, I have devised a way to enhance it. Instead of the traditional bike as used by the French, which no doubt comes ready-fitted with a strand of onions over the handlebars, the London bikes could be those ones that can be peddled to build up a charge in their small electric motor, then ridden like a moped when you're feeling lazy.

You could have two different charges, one for people that peddle, and one for people with enormous arses that want to use the charge built up by hideously fit lance Armstrong in a suit types. Or if you were the boss, you could have the office junior peddle round the block a few times to build up enough charge to get you to your club.

There's no doubt that there are enough lazy people in the city who would jump (well, stroll) at the chance of a motor assisted jaunt on a bike, and there's no doubt either that there are enough masochists out there willing to peddle and charge up the engine for them.

How to pay for the scheme? Jack up the congestion charge to a tenner!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1547661,00.html

Easy Left, Hard Right, Tree!

On Sunday, stomach was still in a mess but felt strong enough to fire up playstation. Wandered down to second hand games place and picked up the excellent Colin MacCray Rally 2.0 for a bargain three quid! It's absolutely excellent! The co-driver is imperturbable, he just calmly calls out 'thirty yards, hard right' and so on, as you careen around the track, scattering foliage, goats and spectators! Top fun. Obviously, I have it set at 'novice' level. Looking forward to the night stages through Welsh forests, as rumour has it that you can see, illuminated briefly in the headlights, locals s*agging sheep! 'Easy left, hard right, sheep! Agggggggggggh!'.

Real Culture

Much more enjoyable was renting 'State of Play' from the library on Saturday. Don't know if you saw it when it was on telly, I didn't, but it's basically a six part political thriller. Not as good as 'Tinker Tailor', but what is?

Rented it, returned home and fired up video machine. Then spent most of Saturday night with arse firmly welded to sofa watching quality telly. Excellent stuff. Now that's what I call culture. In an effort to duplicate that 'going out' feel, I even set out interval drinks on the table and made sure that they were nearly, but not quite, what was on the order slip!

Cheesy Theatre

Off to the Old Vic (que endless mental repitition of punk classic 'is Vic there' in head all day) to see 'the Philidelphia Story'. Not, as Lou thought when she bought the tickets, the story of popular swing band leader Glen Miller or even a story about soft cheese, but the play based on the film based on the play (well, a play then, that was made into a film), about a society wedding.

The play was filmed and made famous with Cary Grant playing CK Dexter haven 'You had no understanding of my deep and holy thirst', Jimmy Stewart 'With the rich and powerful, always a little patience' and Katherine Hepburn 'Dexter, don't tell me you've forsaken your beloved whisky and whisky?'.

This play had Kevin Spacey in it. Always interesting to see a movie star on stage. The other actors were good, but he just illuminated the stage. It may have had something, in fact it may have had quite a LOT to do with his costume being several shades brighter than every other bloke's, as they were mostly in evening dress and indistinguishable from one another.

This issue of being indistinguishable was partly due to location. Seeing live performances in Edinburgh, you're normally in a venue that, for the rest of the year, is a broom cupboard and so are close enough to the actors to smell the naked stage-fright. In a London theatre, in the circle, you need the Hubble telescope just to see them.

Not that the people in the expensive seats were having a better time of it. Apparently every time the actors moved to the back of the stage, they were lost to sight to the people in the front row!

It was an interesting crowd. The usual set of people out for an evening, a sprinkling of people that go to the theatre the same way we go to bars and a lot of tourists.

There is a rumour that the Old Vic is close to closing and that Kevin Spacey stepped in as artistic director to extend its life. But it's old, and tired, and the seats are too small. Maybe it's just had its day.

The play itself was okay, but not as good as the film. My enjoyment was tempered by my feeling like hell. A rogue sandwich or bad pint had seen me locked in the loo for most of the afternoon and, while I as feeling better in the evening, my body decided that this was a good time to sweat, a lot. Naturally this was eased by being in the circle seats of a hot theatre. I clung on to my little bottle of water and hoped like hell that my bottom would behave itself. Nothing quite like a cataclysmic attack of something that feels like amoebic dysentery to kick off the weekend.

There were mutterings that perhaps the state of my health might be connected to the amount I drink. Nonsense, I drink enough to stay healthy, if anything, I drink more than enough to maintain a robust constitution!

Krispy Kreme your Keks

Staff meeting this morning and as boss is on leave it's my turn to buy the doughnuts. Decide to curry favour by getting posh ones, boss usually scavenges in the reduced bin at local blue and white fleecer for remaindered stale bakery rejects and so I decide to buy loyalty of staff with upmarket stuff.

Stride off train and make way manfully to Krispy Kreme stall at Victoria Station. Usually this is ten deep in American tourists (actually, just two deep, but with their enormous arses it looks like ten people) as baseball-capped trailer trash flatten the stall to get their fatty fix.

Terrorist outrage means that there are no American tourists and so I pitch up.

'Half a dozen assorted doughnuts please'.

The girl behind the counter is an excellent advertisement for her product. I peg her as an American student who, because she has the sort of arse that actually shows up on OS maps as a series of tightly packed contour lines, has decided not to pursue the traditional student method of raising money in London, that is, stripping, lap dancing, escort work and other light-prostitution work, but has instead decided to lend some authenticity to the deep fried taste of home that is sugar glazed and full of jam and custard.

'Did you know that for an extra £1.50 you can get the full dozen?'

I'm paralysed by indecision. On the one hand I don't want to look like some poor sod who spends all day feeding himself doughnuts while watching videos on animal husbandry and fiddling with himself…but can I pass up a bargain?

No, I can't.

'Okay. Thanks'.

So..how do they taste? Well, odd, really. Even on the unglazed ones, you can taste the fat or whatever it is they fry them in. As for the glazed ones…the bottom of them is covered with an unpleasant lard-like substance. There is a distinct aftertaste. Maybe it's the lard, maybe it's the fat or maybe it's some disgruntled worker and I caught a bad batch.

My staff loved them. I am actually quite frightened of the effect they are having on me. For instance, there is a dull pain in my chest…I can actually FEEL my teeth and my WPM has rocketed, as has the number of mistakes that I am making. Spellchecker is in meltdown!

Luckily, I am offsetting the sugar, fat and additives with gallons of coffee, so that's okay then!

At last - exposure!

The democratisation of fame has had some interesting effects. It has meant, for instance, that the currency of celebrity has become devalued as people that appeared on television simply because they are shut up in a posh portakabin with a dozen other attention-hungry tossers are offered magazine 'deals' (here's ten quid love, get your thripps out). Of course, talented people are still famous and we can access their work through books, galleries and films.

But thanks to the interweb, we can now access the work of not famous but still talented people in other ways - the latest being pod-casting.

I bloody love the idea of pod-casting. It's the ultimate in local radio. The basic idea is that you record a programme on your powerbook and put it on the web for others to download and listen to via their MP3 players. The podcasts cited in early stories were about half-hour music shows featuring local bands.

Even better though are later developments. Apparently you can download 'hacked' museum audio-guides. What a great idea, no more of that annoying having to pay a tenner for the audio guide, last used by somebody with mad-ear disease!

I MUST download the new iTunes release, which has allows you to download podcasts. There must, I'm sure, be podcasts that are the best bits from local radio - maybe just somebody reading lists of late-night Chemist shops?

Naturally, I have an idea for a podcast. I think that the format lends itself ideally to city guides and, in particular, ghost walks! Worcester would be perfect and of course, the great thing about it is you wouldn't actually have to bother with any of that tedious business of research! When it comes to the paranormal you can just make up any tosh whatsoever. And remember, you're actually right inside somebody's head, you can use sound effects and everything! For example:

'BEEP - Site seven. You should now be standing at the top of Friar Street. Walking now back towards the city centre, you can see, on your left, the multi-story car park. This concrete carbuncle is proof that it is not just old buildings that are haunted - it is home to the eerie 'dogging spectre of Level Three'. It's said that a young man, out for an evening of mild perversion and charmless rutting with a total stranger, was giving his all in the back of a transit when the back door was opened by the husband of the woman he was, at that very moment, dogging. Ironically, the husband was interested in dogging of a very different nature, having his two pit bulls, Satan and Devil, with him.

It is said that when the wind blows from the East and the moon is full, you can still hear the screams of the poor amorous soul as they make their way from Level Three to the pavement, just as he did in an attempt to escape having his vitals noshed by the hounds of Hell!

Walking past the Birtwhistle Art galley ('Friend of Dave' Discount - 20%) you will see what is now a dolls house shop but what was, in its heyday, Worcester's best wargames and RPG emporium. It's said that the spectral form of Trevor still lingers and that, if the night is very still and one whispers 'do you have the AD&D Monster manual?', a ghostly voice replies - 'Sorry, just sold it to a fellow five minutes ago!'

Finally here in Friar Street, if we retrace our steps, we come to the Cardinal's Hat. There have been reports of ghostly going on in this pub for years. The spirits in evidence are not just the ones served in short measures and the bangs, crashes and thumps are not just the sounds of happy mayhem on a Saturday night. No, there have been tales of ghostly apparitions, spectral figures, unexpected chills and strange noises.

Now, very gently, place you hand against the timber beam that stretches from the pavement to the doorframe between the door and window on your left as you look at the pub. Feel the history, imagine what this wood has witnessed, close your eyes…

Still your breath…

[FX: Bowell shattering scream!]

Did you hear that? Now, straight to the bar for a large one and remember to mention you're here because of a Mac Goolies Podcast'.'

And so on.

Of course…the perfect podcast would be a pub-crawl podcast, say a couple of hours long. The programme would direct you from pub to pub and, between pubs, would keep up a constant chatter of meaningless trivia and banter, occasionally punctuated by comments like 'is this off', 'fancy some crisps' or 'is she looking this way?'. This would, I think, be ideal for the lone drinker…or for those of us abandoned while their mate has f**ked off to Brussles.

Effortless cool

Continue to borrow CDs from library and then burn them for personal use. Current favourite is Saint Etianne Singles. Fantastic. You really were an effortlessly cool chap, listening to that years ago. I merely picked it up because it had a blonde bird on the cover. Unfortunately it does not have the song that starts 'chicken soup', but as I practically bounce around my train carriage anyway when singing 'you're in a bad way' this is probably a blessing.

Al Fresco…is that where Osama eats?

Ah, the annual Staff Pic-Nic. Sat in St James's Park, keeping a wary eye out for suicide bombers who may have switched tactics and decided that maximum outrage can be generated by targeting groups of people sat on tartan rugs and nibbling quiche.

As always, there were those that had contributed cash, those that had brought food made at home (possibly in the hope that somebody they dislike would eat it, so best avoided) and those, like me, that had brought along the booze that they wanted to drink, knowing full well that the sort of people entrusted with the kitty cannot be trusted to buy any decent beer lager or wine at the supermarket and would instead come back with something that has blue and white value stripes on it.

Fended off insects keen on sucking the sugar out of my Pimms and kept an eye out for speculative beggers, all the while aware that public drinking is a slippery slope. One minute you are sitting on the grass chatting of this and that and sipping at your beverage, the next you are sitting on a bench nursing a can of Super and wondering if the puddle of pish you are sitting in is your own.

As the day wore on and more drink was consumed. I have a vague recollection of asking somebody about their toe-ring, but worryingly cannot recall who it was.

Ended day by staggering on to train and consuming an entire tube of Pringles. This is not to be recommended, as I think it has put me off crisps for the foreseeable future. The roof of my mouth was burned to buggery by the chemicals they use for the flavouring and for the next two days all I could taste was some scientist's estimation of the flavour of salt and vinegar.

I mean it's not even salt and vinegar, is it? On the packet it's salt 'n' vinegar. Are the manufacturers of Pringles lazy or illiterate?

What does M.O.T. stand for anyway?

Car passed it's MOT yesterday, despite a crack in the windscreen which I am sure is spreading (and which, of course, I will neglect until the windscreen implodes at 80mph in the fast lane of the M40 during a thunderstorm, meaning at least I'll have been shredded to death long before the resulting crash kills me), and it only cost 45 quid!

This was astonishing, as you know, the last time I went into a garage I came out again after forking out a four figure sum for those bastards at VW fixing my exhaust and, I assume, flying in a mechanic from Germany to hand-tighten my sump.

The difference was that this time, I left it to the wife to sort things out. Instead of going to a main dealer and essentially paying for two receptionists, 700sq ft of sales floorspace and a machine giving you free coffee, Lou instead went to an excellent little local garage where the only woman on show was Miss August and the chap who looked after our car had a respectable amount of grease under each fingernail and smelled faintly of swarf.

I will, of course, be taking the car back there when it needs a service. My only concern is that these days as well as changing oil and so on, the garage has to tell the computer that it's changed the oil. Not that the VW dealership managed to do that on all occasions, leading me to suspect that they didn't service the thing at all but simply cleaned it and charged a fortune.

Still, the VW's computer is hardly HAL9000, all it does is flash up 'service' every now and then. Presumably this is when the car needs a service, though I have always suspected that the computer was linked directly to the VW mainframe and, every time the coffers of the company ran low, the cars instructed their owners to return to the garage for further fleecing.

No more though. Plough Lane Coachworks are the chaps for me. Good news for me, bad news for the MD of VW, who will have to finance his own trips to the Bahamas from now on.

In an English Country Garden

With all the good grace of a seven year old with the right sulk on, I sat and piouted in the passenger seat of the car on Saturday as Lou drove me to the RHS gardens at Wisley.

As it's just down the A3, this was a trip for us, but judging by the number of cars and coaches in the huge car part, Wisley is a 'day out' for many, and as I humourlessly quipped as we arrived, you could almost smell the piss and mints - in other words…old people ahoy.

In fact, the place was fantastic and the visitors were nothing like I imagined. Gardening may no longer be the new rock and roll, or even the new chamber music, but it does have a fascination for an awful lot of people. It might even be described as a passion, a religion. And if gardening is a religion, then RHS Wisley is holy ground.

More than just a big garden centre, it's where the RHS have their test gardens. So as you walk round you see fields of what appear to be the same sort of flower, all being test grown to see which is the best. I couldn't tell them apart obviously, as the limit of my horticultural knowledge is that when you fall in a patch of stinging nettles it hurts. However, expert gardeners could and did, and the real experts - the bees - certainly could.

The place was awash - literally, there had just been a downpour before we arrived and as the sun came out the smell of the wet earth drifted up and everything in the garden was indeed lovely. Middle class people strolled around looking at things, very well behaved children wandered round with trail maps and activity packs.

The lawns were fantastic. Flowers might not turn my head but I'm a sucker for a good lawn and the last time I saw stripes that straight was on a suit.

Despite my earlier sulky pout I enjoyed myself tremendously. The gardens are beautiful but of special interest was the 'allotment' section. Much thought in the Macster household has been given over to allotments. Lou no doubt dreaming of a crop of sunflowers and I of a place to distil things and hide porn. The RHS allotment was amazing and we left it with much to ponder and a sneaking regard for polytunnels. Two weeks further into the growing season and I suspect I would have left with pockets bulging with fruit too.

The place was enormous and, though there were lots of people there, it wasn't crowded. It was very much the middle class equivalent of B&Q. The shop sold watering cans but, unlike my £2.99 Wickes special, these were made of shiny metal and would no doubt last forever…as they should, at twenty quid a pop. What do people fill them with…Perrier?

Wandered to the café and, as the rain came down, were terribly British and sat huddled beneath a brolly drinking tea and eating scones, watching pensioners dash for cover from tree to tree, like overgrown aged squirrels.

Came away with what appeared to be a daisy plant, but is probably not, and all sorts of enthusiastic ideas about an allotment. Have decided to start saving up for my shiny watering can as this, and a pipe, is, I consider, far more important to successful gardening than slug pellets, horse sh*t or actually knowing what you are doing would ever be.

http://www.rhs.org.uk/WhatsOn/gardens/wisley/index.asp