First Class Part 2

PROLOGUE





So, spent several minutes attempting to place an AVI file into yesterday's post - you know, "262Kb of 20MB uploaded" etc, etc. Finding the file was in itself no mean feat as AVI files (my old camera used to save video in MPEG format, sob) have a kind of semi-existence on a Mac anyway, but find it I did and then lost myself in reveries of dial-up data transfer while I made some crumpets, went to the toilet and kept an eye on the blue bar crawling across the bottom of the screen. I was slightly perturbed by the ! in a triangle and the message saying "Unable to contact Blogger.com. Please check your connection by clicking here." but I didn't want to move away from the page in case I lost that which had already passed through the intarpipes, so I persevered to the end.


"20MB of 20MB uploaded" it said at last. But the blue bar kept pulsing away. How long is 5 seconds in the broadband age? It is an eternity, that's how long. Nothing happened, and the window saying "Your video will be displayed here" was nothing more than an object in Powerpoint, complete with grab handles at the corners. I deleted it.

On with the show

After The Only One I Know, Roll With It came on and the ground was starting to fill up, with the exception of the upper tier of the away section. (I thought they were supposed to be BIG footy fans?) Kept my eye out for the eye-catchers, watched Dunney and Micah warming up, Petrov pinging it about and the almighty Elano stretching. I was sitting in the family stand, but had no fear of repeating some of my previous foul mouthed rants during the reign of Keegan as I had a good feeling about us.

Boro's lineup wasn't exactly the most intimidating either. Who the fuck is Craddock? And I've just noticed that the BBC report on the match doesn't mention Tuncay in the Boro lineup. He was their most annoying, and most effective player. Very strange.

Steve Bennett was a total wanker and let 4 or 5 bad tackles by Boro go unpunished. They couldn't live with us in the first half and either shat themselves (our first goal a classic example) or hacked our players down every time we broke forward. We looked a bit shaky (Joe Hart) and a little lacking in energy (Micah) but Boro rarely threatened. And they don't have an Elano in their side like we do. His first was an absolute belter and the ground rocked when it flew in.

Half time and no balti pies left, so I unwisely shovelled the scalding grey mush of a cheese & onion in before going back up. Vile.

Second half we were at the City end, and not expecting to see much action. I had a perfect view of Elano's brilliantly taken free kick sailing in though and proceeded to do the arms aloft Blue Moon.



Three nil and that was Boro fucked, despite Tuncay's badgering and moaning. Woodgate was solid in defence for them and I feel we would have had more if he hadn't have been playing. He got booked though. Ha! City fell asleep at the end, with large numbers of the fans having already left, and Hutchison got a consolation back for the Teesiders, but on the whole it was a great day at the office. It says a lot for how far we've come that I heard people saying they were disappointed we hadn't kept a clean sheet, and that we hadn't played as well as we did against Newcastle. Last season we would have killed for a home performance like that.

We wound our way back through the post-apocalyptic surroundings to the car and there was the little ginger girl, this time on a bike, as we approached. She wasn't on the ball like City but, and didn't approach us for the promised quid. "If she ain't gonna ask," said our Manc driver, "Then I certainly am not going to fork out. Let's go!" and we fought our way through the horrendous traffic back to Piccadilly.

It was to be a long journey, but if I had known quite how long, I wouldn't have been anything like as relaxed as I took my seat in First Class and proceeded to read my King of The Kippax, waiting for the optimum moment to trek down to the buffet (or 'shop' as they insist on calling it these days) for a g&t and a packet of Big Eat cheese & onion. The carriages down in steerage were very crowded, and even First Class was almost full by the time we reached Birmingham New Street. I gave up any hope of getting some kip when someone sat in the seat opposite me, but my troubles were just beginning.

At Birmingham International, another large crowd - off the planes - got on, most notably a Paul O'Grady clone (when I say clone, I mean lookalike, 'mk?) who sat on the floor of the vestibule and began to yell into his mobile. Every time the doors opened, I would catch a snippet of what he was saying ("Look at me, just got off a first class flight, and I'm sitting in a fuckin' corridor!") and he seemed to be more or less repeating the same story.

Ten minutes out of B'ham International, the train ground to a halt and our guard informed us that there had been signal problems, that there were four trains ahead of us and that there would be some delays. Was he ever right! Two sodding hours we were stuck, inching forward every 15 minutes. Paul O'Grady kept telling different people his story:

"Table for two please."

"The entry charge is 6 Euros," (in a very good Dutch accent) "You go around the side, and we will refund the money, but you must take off your clothes... It was a fucking sex party! Jesus Christ! Table for two please. Take off your clothes! Can you believe it?" This went on for the entire rest of the journey - 4 hours, ladies and gentlemen, 4 HOURS! - in various forms and to various people. I must admit to finding it amusing the first couple of times - he seemed like a comedian - but he could have flown from Amsterdam without the help of an aeroplane and seemed unaware (unless he was extremely narcissistic and thought that we all wanted to hear his story again and again and again) that he was repeating himself.

After about an hour, I could smell cigarette smoke drifting in from the vestibule. Paul was smoking, and he had little to fear from the guard (or 'Train Manager' as they insist on calling them) because the guy was locked in his cupboard in fear of his life. One elderly man I passed at one point could be heard calling the 'Train Manager' a 'loser' in a loud voice, because he had failed to make any announcements for the almost two hours of us being stationary. I could not but agree. We arrived in London at around midnight, after 6 hours on the train, and Virgin Trains had laid on taxis for those travelling on to other destinations. I overheard Paul say that he was planning a trip to Southend-on-Sea.

blogging

blue moon

cameras

city

football

mac

manchester

trains

travel

Broken camera

UPDATE 2 - 9/9/07

Well, it was an amazing shop, really old school, just stuffed with lenses and camera parts, and two blokes hunched over a workbench. I was told that the camera would need a new focus mechanism and that this would cost £79 plus VAT.

So I went and bought a new Samsung L700 from Curry's for a ton, and gave the old one to my mate, who reckons he can fix it. I remain to be convinced.


UPDATE - 7/9/07

Well, if you know me, you can probably guess how the repair went...

Those screws are tiny and I lost the first one I took out almost immediately. Ho hum.

I am going to pay a visit to these guys later on.

I feel a tad pissed off because my camera is broken. No biggy in the scheme of things I know, but I have been starting to really enjoy taking pictures and posting them to Flickr.

I bought the camera, a Nikon Coolpix P2, back in February for £109. It's not particularly high spec, and I admit that I never even used the big selling point of the Wi-Fi connectivity. But, it did more than enough for me.

I dropped it (more than once, as it goes) and finally it came up with a Lens Error message which I couldn't make go away. I took it back to the shop for repair, but alas there is much evidence of the drops it has endured, so it would 'fall' outside the warranty terms for free repair. Get this though. The rather severe lady behind the counter told me that a repair would cost anything between £150 and £200! Where is the sense in that? The damn thing only cost a one-er when I bought it.

"That's the thing with digitals," she said, "lenses, displays, you've had it. Sorry."

What a load of bollocks. Anyway, I've bought a set of watchmaker's screwdrivers and I'm going to have a bash myself. Nothing to lose after all.

Halt! Who goes there?

So yesterday, for reasons not to be revealed, I found myself in the Redbridge area of our fine capital. Being an amateur blogger and even more amateur photographer, I take an interest in urban landscapes and seek to find some images which might fit the London-Alt group on Flickr, or which are simply of interest to me.

The picture below, which although after all didn't turn out that interesting, did lead to the occurrence of an amusing little vignette of modern life.

After snapping the shot, I walked on looking for some more potential shots, when I heard a voice from behind me:

"Excuse me..."

Looking down the road, I could see a small man running towards me in a fairly agitated state. I stopped and waited for him to catch up. I smiled as he approached.

"You were taking a picture of our building..."
"Yes."
"Well, you do know that you were seen by our CCTV cameras taking this picture?"
"Oh."
"Obviously, we're a very high security company, and so I was just wondering why you were taking pictures."
"It's a hobby," I said, pulling out my phone and opening the pictures file as I spoke so that I could show him an example. "I take pictures of urban images..."
"Yes, but you do realise that you were captured on our cameras?"
"Oh. Look, here's one..." it was a picture of a building on the Cally Road. He looked at it, but didn't seem particularly impressed.
"We saw you taking pictures of our building."
"You said," I said. "I was interested in that thing at the top - don't know what it's called, sorry..."
"Ah, the menorah," the look on his face clearly indicated that he thought I was a schmuck "The... candlestick."
"Look," I said, "I'll be happy to delete it if you like. It's not that good anyway..."
"It's not a question of deleting it," he said, "It's just, you should be aware that we take security very seriously."
Oh right." I was unsure what to say next and he didn't appear to have anything else to say, so I started walking away.
"Just so as you know," he said from a distance, "You have been photographed. Taking a picture of our building. You are on camera."
It seemed an odd kind of threat in this day and age.




photos

I love a good list

There is a tradition, started by the occasionally fine Ally Ross, and pathetically mimicked by the rarely sort-of-readable-but-only-because-I-am-obsessed-with-reading-TV-reviews, Ian Hyland, of the random irritations/random gold listings.

Referring back to my previous post about coffee shops (I love self-referencing almost as much as I love lists) and to my previous post about the sudden appearance of a group of naked women on a bus (well, I did say...) I wanted to compile a list of random irritations about living in London, along with a list of random goodness about the same subject. Given the moebian nature of the web these days, I have no doubt that most (if not all) of the items listed will be instant old hat. But who cares, right? So here goes:

Random Irritations

Escalator (and even more so – bus) queue jumpers. There is a line!

Get IN THE LINE!!

Tube loiterers blocking corridors while staring open-mouthed at directional signage

Automated announcements on tube trains ("Please remember to take all your belongings with you when leaving the train at this station.")

No sleeping signs in shop windows

No drinking signs in parks



No smoking signs in shops where nobody has EVER smoked and where nobody ever WILL smoke.




Brass hat bullshit.

Over-enthusiastic chuggers (all chuggers)

Locked squares for residents only

The smell of McDonalds

The smell of Subway. Subway in general. Six inch or foot long? Cheese on both sides? Honey mustard dressing? WTF?

New Kent Road

Brewery Road

Random gold

Cycling through Regents Park in the morning (not in the evening)

Cycling over the Millennium bridge

Encountering good tube etiquette (is there no such thing as a bus alternative?)

The smell of the tube (really!)

The smell of a good greasy spoon. A good greasy spoon (strictly speaking, this is an Oswestry reference, but I just had to put it in) in general. Fresh crusty bread, nicely done bacon, an excellent cup of tea. Lovely.

Football matches in Finsbury Park (OK, so this is Hackney Marshes, but I couldn't find any pictures of a match in Finsbury Park)


The City of London dragons

The accordion player I once heard playing near the Pirate Castle on the canal in Camden. Beautiful, haunting sounds that echoed around on a Sunday morning.

Riverbuses

Turnagain Lane

Old Pye Street

Cold Bath Square

bikes

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