Concrete Jungle

Something seen on the Wooster Project that I feel Taiga especially will appreciate, and that I'm dying to copy.

The 21st Century is a scary and troubling place. Let us take inspiration from Bowleserised and cover the world with googly eyes and small plastic animals!

Square eyes

I'm not talking to you. Yes, you. Why did no one tell me about this?

This is very, very dangerous. I may never leave the house again.

Shop with Slaminsky

Occasionally on my travels I will see odd random items in the shops that I am powerfully drawn towards buying, for no reason other than they tickle me in some way.

So far I've held back because I think 'I do not need this useless stuff, plus I am poor and trying to buy a house' but then today I had this cheering thought - 'If I buy it, I can blog about this useless stuff! People will love to see it!' (Which just shows, our brains are very clever at seeking out reasons to do things that we know logically we have no good reason to do. Stupid human brains.)

So, *drumroll* today is the first in an occasional series of odd random items I have found. (I justified this one by thinking maybe I can use them in school sometime. I might claim them back on our class budget - shhhhhh...)

A whole bag full of eyes, available for a mere £1.00 from Paperchase. Not only useful, but extremely good value, I think you'll find.

This post dedicated to my dear friend V, who as we speak is about to go off to make a zombie movie, in Poland. Attagirl!

Love sees no colour

Dealing with a bit of racism in the playground (the little girls refusing to hold the hand of one of our few white kids because she’s ‘not Muslim’ and it’s ‘ghoona’ – a sin.)

Now they do get a bit confused with what they’re told at home, kids after all start off with a blank slate and racism is learnt behaviour, but you can see where the problems start and I have to deal with it, though my heart is sinking.

So I’m giving them the big speech about how we’re all different, and we all have to get along, and doesn’t it make the world a more interesting place that we’re all different. ‘Look at Mrs U’ I say. Mrs U is another teacher who works in my year. She is Nigerian, about 15 years older than me. We look about as different as different could be.
‘We’re very different, but we get on. What different things can you see about us?’
Hands go up. ‘Yes, Tasnia.’
‘Mrs U is wearing a watch, and you’re not.’

Mutton

As an interesting side effect of the weird viral Cold/Cough/No Definitely Not A Chest Infection (to quote my GP) That Won't Ever Go Away, I am now (temporarily) deaf in one ear.

Can't hear myself or other people talk and feel somewhat unbalanced, in short it has given me a clear insight into the frustrations of the hearing-impaired - am v sorry now for being at all impatient with my poor slightly deaf mum on the phone. Soz, mum.

Now, where's my ear trumpet?

Update: Sudafed Maximum Shit-kicking Ultra-Supra-Hyper-Strength. It's the business. Especially with a side order of Magners Cider.

Easily led

'Did the campus killer copy this film?'

Funny, I saw the Sound of Music many, many times - every Christmas, for years and years - you could even call it indoctrination, yet strangely it never inspired me to become a nun, or run up mountains whilst singing lustily.

I love the inland revenue

Dear Miss Black

Thank you for sending us your P60. A tax refund is due, and a cheque will follow shortly.

Oh come on!! Don't torment me! '... a cheque?' My mind is boggling, somewhere between a fiver and retirement to my own private island with slaveys to mix my cocktails.

Fed up and sulking

... And not just about my bad hair day. If a picture paints a thousand words...

Me me me

Seen at Billy's and The Whales...

1. PICK OUT A SCAR YOU HAVE, AND EXPLAIN HOW YOU GOT IT
Running for the bus, jumped on, aimed too low, whacked leg against bus step with full force of bodyweight behind it, saw everyone sitting on the bus make screwed-up 'ouch' face at me, passed out on bus with extreme pain. Nice little shiny scar on shin as a souvenir. Doh!

2. WHAT IS ON THE WALLS IN YOUR ROOM?
You really want to know? Framed Catwoman comic; weird poster from Brick Lane of lots of different types of the letter Y; Philip Lorca Dicorcia picture; Berlin by Rost picture; framed picture from a book called 'Photography at the Bauhaus'; Gillian Ayres poster; Paul Klee poster; Flamenco festival poster; pictures of family; tube map; Stieglitz poster of New York; Exhibition poster of Carme Sole Vendrell, a Catalan illustrator.

I like posters, me.

3. WHAT DOES YOUR PHONE LOOK LIKE?
Silver, shiny, ergonomic, you know, your regular mobile phone. I hate our landline phone, it's yellow plastic with a sticker of George Clooney on it which I did not put there.

4. WHAT MUSIC DO YOU LISTEN TO?
I refer you to the mix tapes.

5. WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT DESKTOP PICTURE?
You can see it right here!

6. WHAT DO YOU WANT MORE THAN ANYTHING RIGHT NOW?
I want the engineer to fix the washing machine so I can have clean underwear without braving the skanky launderette.

7. DO YOU BELIEVE IN GAY MARRIAGE?
Hm, I don't really believe in marriage full stop, but I do believe that gay people should be able to get married if they should so desire. It is rubbish that they can't.

8. WHAT TIME WERE YOU BORN?
My mum can't remember, despite the fact that it was on her own birthday so you'd think that it would have been memorable. Bah.

9. ARE YOUR PARENTS STILL TOGETHER?
Hahahaha! The very thought tickles me.

10. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO?
Some very dodgy lovers' rock which is drifting down from the flat upstairs.

11. DO YOU GET SCARED OF THE DARK?
Not in the city, it never really gets dark...

12. THE LAST PERSON TO MAKE YOU CRY?
Can't remember, I'm generally quite cheery.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE COLOGNE / PERFUME?
My old faithful is 'Pampelune' (Guerlain, if anyone's buying) which is kind of grapefruit-flavoured, but on the lookout for a new one.

14. WHAT KIND OF HAIR/EYE COLOUR DO YOU LIKE ON THE OPPOSITE SEX?
It so depends on the person, though do have a soft spot for redheads. Green eyes are nice.

15. DO YOU LIKE PAIN KILLERS?
Yes, I should have shares in Nurofen.

16. ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT?
I don't know about shy, more like 'utterly useless.'

17. FAVE PIZZA TOPPING?
Which one saves Venice?

18. IF YOU COULD EAT ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Nothing, but would love a glass of vino.

19. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU MADE MAD?
Mad? As in angry, or mental? Of course, I have driven many men insane with desire...

20. IS ANYONE IN LOVE WITH YOU?
I'm guessing Not, though the kids do write love letters occasionally, which is endearing.
'You are best techr. You are kind. I love Misis Black.'

Own it, run with it, make it yours!

Man bites dog

So, my continued shunning of the UK's press (& TV news) has resulted in a total ignorance of what's going on the world, when they declare World War III, I'm relying on you lot to let me know.

There are a few papers I graze occasionally though, which give me an interestingly skewed perspective on the events that matter to humanity:

Hackney Gazette:
(sample headlines 'Baby's body found in garden' 'Teenager stabbed in face' Somebody wants to do a Hackney Gazette headline generator, like the Daily Mail headline generator - it would feature the words 'crack den' and 'knifing' quite a lot.)

East End Life: (published by Tower Hamlets council)
Sample headlines 'Nominate Your Local Heroes' 'Model Citizens In The Making'
Life is great! This is the best of all possible worlds! We're so busy doing community work, improving our schools, cutting hospital waiting times and halving crime figures! Hurrah!

East End Life is like the alter ego of the Hackney Gazette. The stupid thing is, even though I know I'm being manipulated, it's so relentlessly cheery and positive that reading it does cheer me up.

Metro -( free rag distributed by the (allegedly) evil Associated Newspapers Ltd)
Sample article: 'Are you the fit blonde girl I saw on the Bakerloo Line at half past six on Friday evening? You were wearing a red top and black trousers, our eyes locked over my copy of The Da Vinci Code and now I can't stop thinking about you...'



I'm actually ashamed, now I come to think of it. Nothing for it, will have to start listening to Radio 4 again...



news

Modern love

Overheard on Oxford Street [I wasn't eavesdropping, they were walking right behind me talking ve-ry loudly]:

'So where'd you meet your girlfriend?'
'On MySpace.'
'MySpace?! Of all the places...'

But he sounds more jealous than surprised... It's all true, you heard it here first, the kids of today are no longer pulling in clubs, they're pulling in cyberspace.

myspace

Snapshot

Back in leafy North London, looking at houses again.

Outside Finsbury Park station is a young couple, he's holding her face in his hands and murmuring intently in her ear. It could be romantic but there's something just a little off about it. They could be any two young Londoners, wearing jeans, t-shirts and trainers, but they are both thin, dead pale, cheap clothes looking strictly utilitarian and not chosen for reasons of fashion.

I run into them again moments later on the stairs down to the platform, he's looking all around him and I look away when he glances in my direction, I've a feeling that eye contact would be unwise. This time he has his arm around her, on the stairs he pushes her up against the wall, holds her face again, starts muttering. Her face is turned away, long fair hair covering it, she keeps her head down, like she's used to avoiding conflict. Prostitute and pimp? Junkie and dealer? What would you do? I'm a Londoner, and a coward. I walk past.

Return of the iPod...?

From: TFL Lost Property Office LPO@tfl.gov.uk
Subject: Your Lost Property enquiry – Ref: Enq /111----

Dear Ms Black
We may have found the lost property that you enquired about. You need to contact us so we can confirm that the property is yours before we can return it to you.

Yours sincerely
Transport for London Lost Property Office
200 Baker Street
London NW1 5RZ

They're posting it to me! Someone handed it in! It's coming home to mama. Hurrahhurrahhurrah!

Oye Como Va

I hate exercise, I do. I quite like the weight machines at the gym, but every time I use them some man comes up and tells me I'm doing it wrong. And except swimming, but the pool is always filled with dive-bombing teenagers or excessively aggressive grannies who try and punch you when you pass them in the lanes.

But I like dancing. So I'm joining a salsa class. (If only Latin men didn't always come up to your chin, it would be a good place to meet people. I'm not sizeist, but it is just not appealing to me when you feel like you could pick a man up and throw him over your shoulder with no difficulty.) Undeterred by the fact that I'm extremely malcoordinated when it comes to dancing with someone else, and have not really mastered the art of being lead, tending in fact to step on people's feet and twirl round at the wrong moment, I have visions of taking the floor with supreme confidence style and elan. The best place I ever went dancing was La Paloma in Barcelona (warning, Flash!), it is an old-style dancehall like something out of Moulin Rouge, you can't help but develop Latina attitude in that ambience...

Sadly, Bar Lorca and La Finca on Pentoville Road have both long since closed down, and I would rather stick pins in my eyes than go to the one on Charing Cross Road, which is like hell on earth - anybody know of a good one?

Oh bondage, up yours

This is the tenth (and I promise, the last - I swear, I'm losing them in droves every time I post another one) Mix Tape, and I have to say, I'm in love with it. It features New Wave music - some people might argue with my definition of New Wave, and say that my chronology is up the spout and that I have no justification in including Aswad, Iggy Pop and the Soft Boys as New Wave - and why have I included no less than 3 Specials tunes? - to which I say, bugger off and make your own mix tape.

This music must have been kicking around in the background when I was growing up, but it wasn't til later that I grew to appreciate it muchly (because if I am honest, my clearest musical memories of the 70s/80s were *cough* Elton John, Gary Glitter and Alvin Stardust. And the Brotherhood of Man. And disco, disco, disco...)

When I look back, the late 70s/early 80s was quite a rich time for music, you had all the shiny silly pop bands and then there were all the interesting left-field agitators writing songs about earth-shaking political issues which you just don't get in pop music now. Would you know these days that we've been living through war and terrorism and huge upheavals just from listening to music radio?



















new wave

Adios, iPod

The end came too soon. We went through good times, and bad times. You were never the same after the techie boy downloaded all his music onto my computer and wiped out all my lovingly-created playlists., but I grew more and more attached to you, not just for the way that you would sweeten my working day with music, but for the way you could filter out the millions of annoying people on public transport.

Then I left you on the tube at Liverpool Street. After all we've been through! I didn't mean to, I swear, it was a codeine-and- lemsip-induced haze that caused a moment's lapse.

And I've been having unloyal, unfaithful thoughts since you've been gone. Like, maybe, just possibly, there's a better mp3 player than the iPod?

Goodbye to Berlin

Conversation with a local.

Outside the mainline station a pretty teenage punk wearing stripey leggings, all over piercings, speaks to us.
"Heineken sauerkraut lederhosen?" she says.
"Er..." I say, intelligently. "Er... wir sprechen kein Deutsch."
"Ah," she says, and in perfect English for our benefit, "Do you have some money to give me?"
"No!" says Rae. "We're poor - give US some money."

Good to see her education not going to waste though.

Berlin featured incredibly friendly smiley chilled out Berliners, everywhere lots of graphic design and general stylishness, lots of fine (& impressively Soviet style) architecture, fine food, and fine conversation with the charming and gorgeous BiB, who took us to a great bar that I can't remember the name of.

(BiB had also said there was 'lots of totty' in Berlin and he was not wrong. Lots of tall, skinny, good-looking men wearing glasses, we liked it a lot. And unlike Londoners, who are too cool for school, they actually check you out.)

Check it all out on Flickr (which as usual features lots of random photos of graffitti & bits of buildings, making it look like Berlin is completely uninhabited by human beings - in fact this is not very far off from the truth, after London it seemed spookily uninhabited).

Dying to go back and stay for longer. Was even considering the TEFL option but don't know if I could ever bear to go back to teaching phrasal verbs to bored businessmen again, even for the sake of this fabulous city.

Essential reading...

for the discerning blogger. There's a lot of reading in this, Tim, or as Bad Sarah said 'It's like a book you 'd read at university.' Looking forward to getting into it...

Anyway my dears, off shortly to Berlin, where hopefully we'll meet this lovely blogger (if Ryanair doesn't let us down), see y'all next Thursday.

Tim Footman
Radiohead
Radiohead Welcome to the Machine Okay Computer and the Death of the Classic Album