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tower to the people Remember when there was that big one on the corner of Piccadilly Circus, squatting like Elvis on the bog, barely interested in the threats posed by Virgin and HMV on the other side of the traffic? Well that particular Tower Records left the building a while ago, but now they all have - Tower has gone out of business, and disappeared for good. The Davis branch closed down last week, after a couple of months of desperate sales. Faced with Tower's debts, their suppliers had refused to stock them, and so they went belly up. The small independent record store across the street (Armadillo's) was I'm sure delighted that the big chain had been vanquished before they had. However it is not entirely without some sadness, because technically Tower Records was a local business that 'done good'; it started in Sacramento, its offices are in West Sacramento (Yolo county, same as Davis), and the 'tower' refers to the old Tower theatre which is a Sac landmark. So there you go. Hey, the first Tesco store was located in my native Burnt Oak, and look at them now, but what do I want, a medal? Actually yes I do, but that's beside the point. God it's freezing here in California now. Colder than London (but probably sunnier). |
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2.12.06 20:37 |
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snow up in the sierra
watercolour, about twenty minutes ago; from a pic we took in squaw valley, back in march. This scene is about two hours' drive from where we live, but yolo county is flat and yellow and brown, while the sierra nevadas are massive and blue and white. It doesn't snow in davis, but it does in truckee, hell yeah. The scanner made the blues a bit bluer than the original, and the sky above doesn't look much like it does in the painting, but you get the idea. Sometimes you gain something by scanning, sometimes you don't. It's december, and pete felt that a little wintery scene was needed, as Christmas has begun, as far as the world is concerned. Watched rick steve's "european christmas" programme on pbs earlier; how does rick steves get around all those countries on christmas eve? hmmm. Is rick steves real, or just a guy in a suit (and wig and glasses and reindeer sweater)? When did you first realise rick steves was just made up? answers on a watercolour postcard |
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4.12.06 08:22 |
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blowin in the wind You know, that tornado in Kensal Rise made the news here yesterday, so you know it was odd. "A tornado, in December? In London?" the radio said yesterday morning as we drove to work. I quickly got online when I got to my desk and saw photos of familiar-looking streets littered with red bricks and debris. Crikey, I thought. That tornado was pretty powerful. Everybody I mentioned it to that day gasped in disbelief that a tornado could actually happen in a big city not known for its twisters (except those ones spinning around Westminster and Wapping) (no I don't really get that, either). Nor did people believe that the UK tops the league for tornadoes, pound for pound (though most are coastal, like the one that blew down Patrick Moore's back-garden observatory a few years back; he didn't see that coming with his fancy telescope). It brought back memories of the great storm of 87, the surprise hurricane that got me out of going to school one October day, the hurricane that Michael Fish famously announced was just a rumour. I wonder if Michael Fish syndrome affected George Bush and pals just before Katrina? "Nobody anticipated the [insert appropriate term here]." I used to have dreams about tornadoes when I was a kid growing up in Burnt Oak. I would always see them across the rooftops from my window, looking south. The sheer unavoidable force of nature, the incredibly narrow path of destruction. I was certain that I'd dream about them last night. But no, I dreamt about a huge giant bunny rabbit with sharp teeth which was ambling around the garden drunk. |
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9.12.06 04:24 |
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i'm an alien, i'm a legal alien We get around, us Brits, don't we. According to the BBC, one in ten British citizens lives outside of the UK; which means me, too. They've got a very interesting statistical map on their website, showing where expatriate Brits are living; unsurprisingly the winners are Australia and Spain (remember that show Eldorado? with Pilar and Marcus Tandy, "Mar-coos, Mar-coos", awful old wrinkly Trish with her handbag dog and that ugly lad with the big nose and ridiculous ponytail; no, I never saw it) followed by the US and Canada. It's pretty impressive stats, actually. You can look up how mnay Brits live in each country worldwide, including ratio of men to women and how many pensioners live there; Monaco threw up a puzzle - out of 320 Brits living there, 321 are pensioners...that's some dodgy odds if you ask me). I noticed that British immigrants to the Scandinavian and Baltic countries - home to many tall, blonde women - tended to be men rather than women (64% to 36% in Denmark, 66% to 34% in Sweden, 79% to 21% in Finland), while women preferred the warmer and more romantic climate of Greece (60% women to 40% men), though its unclear what effect that Shirley Valentine film has these days. I love some of the triviality of some of it though. There are three British pensioners living in Moldova. Who they are is uncertain, but I think I want to meet them; did their families cart them off there telling them it was 'Dover'. "Where's the White Cliffs then?" Maybe they are the Compo, Cleggy and Foggy of Moldova, always getting into japes, chasing old age soviet-era Moldovan babushkas about, warding off vampires with Kendall Mint Cake, rolling down Transdniestran hills in tin baths, that sort of thing. Now there's an idea for a sitcom - three old northerners living out in the wilds of Moldova. That'll probably be me, one day. We get around, us Brits. |
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11.12.06 08:28 |
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Yr 2, wk 62-63: Christmas Crackpots I thought it was the season to be jolly. In the state of Georgia (as in, “look at the state of Georgia!" ) there is a woman, a very Christian mother of four, who has been campaigning tirelessly to have all Harry Potter books removed from public school and library bookshelves. The authorities rejected her case, but there has been an appeal, and a decision will be made this week. Her claim is that the books “promote witchcraft” and was concerned that children who read them would suddenly perform satanic acts, calling the books, whose stories focus primarily on the struggle of love and friendship against hatred, intolerance and ignorance, “not educationally suitable”. She enlisted the help of a young girl who said that she had been so affected by the message of evil in Harry Potter that she had decided to kill herself (voici). Never mind that Harry Potter has managed to get the gameboy generation into books again. The message of hope was totally overlooked by people who went looking for a message of hate. Have these people got nothing better to do? Is having four children not enough work that you have to go out and try to deny other children great stories (and I’ll bet she’s not campaigning for real things such as gun control and junk food in schools)? Is she going to spend as much energy going through every other work of children’s literature in which someone uses magic and have every copy sent to the local Bible-Belt Book-Burning? After all, the crux of their argument is that any use of magic is a turn towards the way of the devil. Better to teach children to burn books than to read them. Bloody right-wing religious nutcases – I’m glad I don’t live anywhere like that.
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14.12.06 04:35 |
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joyeux vendredi
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16.12.06 19:23 |
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sapin de 'vacances'?
uniball pen, moleskine book, just now; we have a plastic tree (sold to us as a 'holiday tree', which sounds like a sort of magical old oak in whose branches you can be whisked off to far off places like siam and timbuctoo and bognor regis) and this is its second year of service. I love having the xmas tree up, it brightens the room, though where we've put it means i can't watch tv when i'm washing up. But since i don't like washing up and i don't like tv, this isn't quite the heartbreaker you might imagine. |
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16.12.06 21:47 |
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twice bitten; i'll bloody well get 'em i will They got me. Oh, I've been living here for over a year, I know they exist, I've even heard stories about them dancing across peoples faces in their sleep. I've learnt to block them out, pretend they don't exist, even going so far as to let them live every so often (which wasn't very often, but it did happen). But last night, evidently, they got me - the spiders bit me. Twice. On the friggin' face.
Twice! On the face! I never even realised until this afternoon. I was at work, and there was a spot on my cheek that was getting big, swelling, so I went to the bathroom, and there was another one on my scalp. Two big red lumps on my face. "Are these spider bites?" I asked someone. "Looks like it." Now either they are two separate bites (none, ever, then two at once - bloody typical), or this is one huge spider. Either way, I am no longer going to go to sleep ever. Now we all know Pete hates spiders. We just don't get along. Pete's an arachnophobe's anonymous (I use a false name at meetings, but even that's pointless 'cos it's supposed to be anonymous). Pete especially hates spiders when he lives in a place known for its poisonous species, such as the well, spider-who-shall-not-be-named. Pete hasn't yet seen one and does not particularly want to, but is ever vigilant. I'm sure it wasn't one of those. If it were I would have known about it, what with the writhing in mortal agony and screaming blue murder and every f**k under the sun. However, even though experts say they don't live round our way, my big fear is that it's one of these spiders whose name shall not be uttered, the little feckers everyone warned me about when we moved here. Why do I fear these little bleeders? Have a look at this. And this. Yeah, that put you off your bacon sarnie didn't it. Now I usually see house spiders, fairly big, stupid. I've also seen these wierd looking black and grey ones though, fast, ugly, haven't a clue what the hell they are. But they've all been laying low for a while. See, spiders and bugs know my reputation. I have been known to go crazy, get out a lightsabre or a rolled-up newspaper, and just kill every thing in the room that crawls, creeps or flies, maybe leaving one alive to go and warn his friends what will happen to them. All I can say is that they must have been planning this for a while. The PIA failed their intelligence here. We didn't look under the bed. This was a highly coordinated attack, they knew what they were doing. I'm sure out there on the web, various spider groups are claiming responsibility for it. There's probably a spider-training camp somewhere in the Amazon or somewhere (dare I use the Al Spaida joke yet?). It could have been worse. Imagine if I'd woken up and found a couple of spiders on the end of my nose. I'd be bouncing off rubber walls before you could say "charlotte's web". |
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19.12.06 07:35 |
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Yr 2, Wk64-65: Back In The UK It's overwhelming, being Back. We flew into a thick duvet of fog at Heathrow, leaving behind a foggy rainstorm in San Francisco; we didn't know we were near the ground until the wheels suddenly bounced against the tarmac on the runway. Then the excitement of seeing the family, coupled with the terror of being in a small car laden with people, packages and presents on narrow north-west London streets; I had forgotten how much people here have little or no regard for their lives when crossing the road (and yet I grew up as one of these people). And then the getting up early and marching around Sainsburys marvelling at all the food I've missed since being in the US, and popping into WHSmiths and encountering a grumpy old woman (standing sour-facedly in the way of the sketchbooks I'd come 5000 miles to buy) who reminded me that the quick-snarling Brits are definitely not the friendly Americans. And after witnessing the final closure of an old bookshop where I used to work, going to Belgo for some it-didn't-seem-this-expensive-before moules-frites, and on to Camden for many many drinks with many very excellent and very much-missed friends, followed by the obligatory journey across London in my sleep (courtesy of the N5; it's almost like I do it on purpose). Yep, I'm Home, and while my head heart and soul feel like the musical build up in A Day In The Life, I'm not yearning for a return to the US just yet. Christmas Day came and went, I didn't eat or drink anywhere near as much as had been put in front of me. But there was trifle, there were mince pies, there was Pepsi Max; pete's happy. The Eastenders Christmas death was Pauline Fowler, who was herself upstaged by the demise of legendary misogynistic groper James Brown (he doesn't feel good now). Boxing Day began with me crawling out of bed at 5.30 am with a bad back, and enjoying the solace of the wee quiet hours, sketching the tree and listening to Pulp: the Peel Sessions. Later there was Doctor Who, Little Britain, ET, lots more food, lots more drink, lots more cheese and conversation. I've barely ventured out to see how much the UK has changed in my latest absence, whether the asbo generation and the massive influx of Poles that everybody keeps harping on about has really made much of a difference. Burnt Oak looks like the same old Burnt Oak to me, grey, run-down, a rusty tin-can being blown about in the breeze. I've not yet gone to see my old amour, the streets of central London, to be about the mad throngs I used to ignore like I'd ignore the drizzle. I've not yet had a curry, or a pint of London Pride. But I've been travelling with my mind through my life: I learnt to shave in this room, I wrote sad forgettable songs on this guitar in this very corner, I used to sit on this step and dream about living far far away. Yeah, it's nice being back in a past life. It's where I'm from, what I know, and what's more, it knows me - and there's no bugger asking for my ID. |
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27.12.06 08:33 |
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