VandAlism

Last Friday I was saved from a fate worse than death (boredom) by an event in which the Directrix, a recurring figure in these pages, was participating. And so it was that I, together with a chum we shall refer to as “the Easterner” found ourselves en route to South Kensington. The Directrix’ event was taking place at no less a venue than the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Victoria and Albert (or “V&A,” as it’s known to friends) is, I have to admit, not my favourite museum by a long shot. I don’t know why, it focuses on art and design, and I’m quite interested in design as a subject. I think the problem is that it covers so very much – from the Classical period to the modern day, and with exhibits from all over the world – that you have to be really into design to take the whole thing in. Compounding this is the fact that it’s quite an old-fashioned museum in terms of the way its exhibits are laid out. There doesn’t seem to be any attempt made to really “wow” the casual visitor in the way that other museums in London do. The whole thing feels like a place you ought to visit rather than a place you visit because you really want to. You know, you go there with your grandma who’s down from Yorkshire for the first time in twenty years or something.

The Great Exhibition

The museum was opened in its current location in 1857, and like its friends the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, was funded by the proceeds of the Great Exhibition of 1851, seen on the right. The Exhibition was Prince Albert’s idea to showcase all of the greatest innovations of the day under a single roof. The venue was Hyde Park, in a massive building known as the Crystal Palace – an edifice made all the more spectacular by the fact that its designer, Joseph Paxton, had no formal training in architecture. The exhibition made a profit of over £180,000, which in modern money is lots, and Albert oversaw the purchase of land in then-largely-undeveloped South Kensington to establish an area of culture and education. This area became known to the satirists of the day as “Albertopolis.” Albert’s progressive aspirations for the British public were not universally acclaimed, perhaps not least because the German Prince Consort was not felt to be “one of us.” It’s like, what does a guy got to do to get some respect around here?

Prince Albert. His facial hair may also have worked against him.

Anyway, the other permanent legacy of the Great Exhibition was that many of the items therein formed the nucleus of the V&A. Lest you think the Royals were incredible egotists, the institution was known at its opening as the South Kensington Museum. However, you’ll notice that like the later title, “the South Kensington Museum” gives no clue whatsoever as to what the museum is actually about.

Anyway. The Directrix’ show was an experimental-type theatre piece as part of one of the events known as “V&A Lates.” These are, as the name suggests, late night openings. In this case, the theme was theatre, and the Directrix’ show was one of a number there. The Easterner and I spent the evening in fear of being audience-participated-with. Much as I enjoy theatre, I have a pathological hatred of audience participation. Actually, I don’t think anyone apart from the actors themselves actually enjoys it.

There were a number of events of great interest there – the one that really stuck for us was a reading from Shakespeare’s First Folio by father-and-son acting duo Timothy and Samuel West. The First Folio is the first halfway-decent edition of Shakespeare’s plays ever published, only omitting the lost texts Cardenio and Love’s Labours Won and the existing plays you’ve never read The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The readings were unpolished and not particularly rehearsed, but even so it was superb to see two highly acclaimed actors showing their stuff. It’s unusual to see Shakespeare’s comic scenes played in a manner that’s actually funny – most actors attempting them tend to go at them as if attempting to bludgeon the jokes to death. The Easterner at one point commented on West Sr, “Why doesn’ t that guy have a knighthood?” I concur.

Sadly, though, we ended up missing the Directrix’ show as a consequence of the labyrinthine layout of the museum and the limited timeframe. We were somewhat berated for this, and were informed that our punishment was that we’d missed out on the chance to meet Dame Judi Dench, who had been there to see it. Other Tom demanded to know why the Directrix had not attempted to capture Dame Judi – I forget what the answer was.

Then we went to the pub, where one guy was so drunk he pissed on the stairs. A good night, all in all.

And if you liked this…
… why not come and see the play I’m in? No audience participation, I promise.

Coming Attractions

What are your plans for this April? I know there’s Mother’s Day and Easter and I believe that Royal Wedding business is happening then, but what about the period from the 13th-16th inclusive?

I know! Why don’t you go to the theatre?

I can understand some of your objections – it’s expensive, it’s hard to get tickets for the big shows, Andrew Lloyd-Webber is pretty rich already, and so on, and so forth. So why not go a bit further out, to Hampton Hill in West London? At the Hampton Hill Playhouse, I hear there’s a superb production of Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible coming up. And what’s even better is that I’m in it. I’m playing Danforth, the dude presiding over the mess, no less. So don’t worry, it’s not like one of those shows you go to because someone you know is in it, and then it turns out they’re only in like one scene at the end or something.

The Crucible is one of the all-time greats of American drama, a dramatisation of the Salem witch trials originally published as a protest against McCarthyism, so much so that Miller (shown left) was himself investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee over it. Though McCarthyism is but an embarrassing memory, the play still retains its relevance – wherever personal morality is put to the test by greater oppression, or where ostensibly laudable motivations are used to mask selfish greed, where mass hysteria overcomes reason and emotion is given precedence over common sense, there you’ll see the parallels. For this reason, it’s Miller’s most performed play. Plus a guy gets crushed between some rocks, which is wicked-awesome.

So, an amazing piece of drama with me in it. How much would you expect to pay for that in the West End? Thirty? Fifty? A hundred pounds a ticket? Well, turns out you can get them at a low, low price of EIGHT POUNDS!

Yeah, I know, now you’ve had some time to recover, you’re probably wondering where you can take advantage of this incredible offer? Well, you can book online right here.

I’ll see you there! Yaaaay!

Difficult Riders

Now, y’all know I like me some old-fashioned machinery, right? Steam trains, early cars, ships, pumping engines, whatever you got. If it’s weird and mechanical, I’m probably into it.

Epsom. Really early. Sunday.

So when the Da asked if I fancied coming along on the Pioneer Motorcycle  Run last Sunday, you may imagine I fairly leapt at the chance. Or at least, said, “Yeah, cool.” The run, I was informed, was from London to Brighton. As it turns out, it in fact starts from Epsom. On Sunday. At 8am.

The run is, basically, a motorbike-based equivalent of the Veteran Car Run that takes place every November (see Yr. Humble Chronicler’s entry on that subject linked above). It’s organised by the Sunbeam Motor Cycle Club, and this year is the 73rd anniversary. Only bikes built before 1915 may participate (although as you might imagine, there were plenty of more recent classics ridden by the spectators).

Morgan tricycles, really pushing it on the bike classification there.

I have to confess to a lamentable lack of knowledge when it comes to motorcycles – even less than I know about cars - so apologies if this account comes across as the ramblings of an ignorant maniac. But I had no idea of how much variety there was in those early bikes. For instance, on the left you may see a Morgan cyclecar. These were essentially a tax dodge – cars that, by virtue of their engine size and weight were classed as bikes by the Ministry of Transport. They were also cheaper to buy and run. The Reliant Robin and the bubble car are direct descendents of the cyclecar, although small, economical vehicles such as the Mini and the Citroen 2CV pretty much put paid to them.

These days, when cars are nigh-universal, it’s often forgotten that widespread car ownership is a relatively recent phenomenon. Motorbikes with sidecars are something of a novelty these days, but well into the 1960s it was common for such a thing to be the family runabout – Dad in the saddle, Mum riding pillion and the kids crammed into the sidecar. It was just that much more affordable than the latest offering from Morris or Rover. Cyclecars were something of a step up, and the AC Sociable on the right (made at Thames Ditton, London fans) played up in its name the virtues of the cyclecar over the motorcycle combination.

An alternative solution, if you want to carry more than one person, is to stick a seat on the front. Actually, these are car enough to participate in the aforementioned Veteran Car Club run, and several do. Am I the only one who keeps imagining a sort of Edwardian version of Death Proof involving one of these?

I include this photo and the next to illustrate two more varieties of tricycle, but they also coincidentally depict another of my favourite veteran vehicle phenomena – dressing the part. After all, if you’ve gone to all the trouble to get your 190-something bike exactly as it was a century ago, why not go the whole hog and make yourself period-authentic too?

 I think my favourite such item was the deerstalker crash helmet, but alas, the chap wearing it was moving too fast to be photographed. It’s exactly what it sounds like – a tweed-covered crash helmet with earflaps and brim to make it look like the sort of thing Sherlock Holmes didn’t wear.

I also rather liked the names of the manufacturers whose products were participating. Obviously you had the likes of Sunbeam, Norton and Harley Davidson. But then you had companies whose names verged on cockiness – Triumph, Matchless, Zenith Gradua, Premier, Favourite. In some cases, they weren’t just fronting. BSA and Royal Enfield, both of whom were represented here, were actually arms manufacturers for whom motorbikes were just a sideline.

If you were a little more humble or at any rate poorer, you might consider the vehicle depicted on the right. Well, not the entire vehicle. The actual entrant is the thing bolted to the back wheel – the Wall Auto-Wheel. Basically just a wheel with a petrol engine, you’d attach this to your existing bike and zoom away, leaving people agape at your badassery. Until you came to a hill and had to pedal, of course. There’s a rather good article on riding one of these little devils here.

Unfortunately, my ruminations were somewhat spoiled by a sudden feeling of nausea that overcame me. I assumed this was a hangover, before remembering I’d not had anything to drink. It was swiftly followed by a headache, dizziness, loss of vision and a slightly wussy collapse. Apparently I was overcome with the fumes, which is crap.

However, I am assured that the rest of the run went as normal – people zooming around surprisingly fast, a few breakdowns, a lot of running repairs and a massive queue at the bacon roll stand. Nothing to do with the bikes, it’s just that on a Sunday morning when it’s freezing cold, sometimes you just need some bacon in you.

To finish, here are some more photos. Born to be wild, &c.

The Mayor or Epsom and Ewell, Clive Smitheram, sends 'em off.

"Are you sure the BSA van ought to only have a single wheel supporting the cargo space, sir?" "No, but I am sure I have thousands of guns in this room here, so get on with it."

Life, death and the confusing divide

So anyway, to wake me up in the morning I tend to take a slightly indirect route to work via Goodge Street. This gives me a bracing walk through Bloomsbury which takes me past such scenic locations as the British Museum, Russell Square and the Ministry of Truth. Lately, I’ve noticed these bods hanging around Bedford Square:

Notice they're all dudes. I'm just sayin'.

Protesting is very fashionable at the moment (thank you, Mr Cameron!), particularly in this part of London with its many educational institutions, so I’ve pretty much learnt to tune them out. These ones, though, intrigued me both with their persistence and their message.

 They represent an organisation called ’40 Days for Life.’ Their “thing,” their “bag” as the kids would say, is abortion. The appearance of abortion protesters, or pro-life protesters as they like to be called, is something new in this country. It’s quite popular in America, and there has been a certain amount of hand-wringing in the British press. In the US, the protesters are notorious for their use of shock tactics – giant photos of bloody foetuses, shouting abuse at abortion doctors and the like. There have even been cases from the lunatic fringe of doctors being murdered and clinics being bombed.

Now, I think this sort of behaviour is less likely to become widespread in Britain (although a couple of protesters were arrested in Brighton last October for holding up a giant poster of a foetus), purely because there’s less of a Puritan streak in the UK. To put it in perspective for my Yankee chums, your political “left” is our “centre” and your “right” is our “ha ha but seriously.”

Now, speaking personally, I am pro-choice. Here’s why – and I give you fair warning, this will be tackled with all the gravity you can expect from a semi-humorous blog by a foppish wastrel. The thing about pro-life is that, basically, their goal is to rid the world of abortion on the grounds that life begins at conception and God hates that shit. One of the larger banners these protesters have quotes God as saying that he knew us all in the womb. Presumably in the case of miscarriages and stillbirths, he knew those babies were going to grow up evil and their mothers should therefore rejoice.

But here’s the thing. I don’t believe in God. As I’ve said before, I’m an atheist, and therefore the words of God (or one particular version of him, at least) carry no more weight for me than the words of Albus Dumbledore – and there’s about as much solid proof of his existence. I think of myself as fairly tolerant, but I do object to the idea that we should all live our lives in order to placate the whims of what is to me, if you’ll forgive the confrontational wording, a fictional character. When I see protesters arguing that every life belongs to God, I say “prove it and we’ll talk.”

Okay, that’s faith, you can argue that it’s not their fault if the Bible tells them they’re in the right. But it’s not just a question of religious faith, though. In order to justify and promote their position, the pro-lifers have a tendency to exaggerate and even outright lie in order to discourage women from undergoing the procedure. If you can’t make a case without lying, then you have no case. 

Now, yes, I do appreciate that the decision to terminate a pregnancy is a serious one, and I agree with the pro-lifers that it should not be undertaken lightly. Nor do I feel that women should be pressurised into having an abortion if she does not want one. But under the current situation, the one pro-choice folks are generally happy with, a woman can choose to have an abortion or not to have one. If she shares the protesters’ beliefs then she can choose to keep the kid. Everyone wins. That’s why the pro-choice movement is called “pro-choice” and not, e.g., “pro-death.”

Anyway, this is one of those thorny issues that won’t be solved easily. I’ll tell you what both sides can agree on, though – Scientology!

Together at last

Yr. Humble Chronicler is no stranger to bizarro treats. In fact, I tend to view weird food as kind of a challenge. So when I came across this chocolate bar…

Mo's Dark Bacon Bar

I must admit that my curiosity was piqued. A chocolate bar containing bacon sounds like the kind of idea you only come up with when stoned. In theory, a great idea – chocolate = good, bacon = good, ergo chocolate + bacon = very good. In practice, this sort of equation does not necessarily work out, as I discovered for myself when trying to combine puppies with jet engines.The question is, would this be a successful combo of good things that brings great joy (like Star Wars Lego) or a terrible idea that induces vomiting (like Alien vs Predator)? At the risk of encroaching on The Hungry Sparrow’s territory, I felt it was my duty to investigate.

First, though, a little bit of background. According to sources, bacon was invented in 1610 by Sir Francis Bacon, pictured right [citation needed]. It’s a delicious and flavoursome cured meat – one of Yr. Humble Chronicler’s vegetarian friends has said it’s the only animal product that has ever made her tempted to abandon her principles. It’s spawned an entire cultural movement, Bacon Mania, devoted to the dead pig derivative in all its forms. We’ve seen the arrival of the Bacon Explosion, bacon vodka and even the bacon alarm clock among many other exciting if cardiologically inadvisable innovations. Yr. Humble Chronicler has watched with interest, partly due to the diet – when you’re calorie-counting, articles about bacon are the equivalent of hardcore pornography.

Bacon’s position in our collective culture is nothing new – after all, it’s a central part of both the Full English and Full Irish breakfasts. And what’s more satisfying on a cold early morning than a hot bacon roll (I’ll have mine with HP Sauce and a hot coffee, please). I didn’t add a question mark there, because it’s a purely rhetorical question – nothing is more satisfying.

The bacon mania concept appears to have come about in the 1990s. One popular theory has it that it’s due to the rise of the Atkins diet, a terrible idea that excludes carbohydrates but allows high-protein, fatty foods (though regular readers of this blog will recall that this idea is nothing new). Personally, I favour the idea that it has arisen for the opposite reason – as a rebellion against healthy food. Just as the rise of French haute cuisine led to the creation of the bluff, basic and patriotic Sublime Society of Beefsteaks in 18th century Britain, and just as the strait-laced chastity of Victorian England led to some truly perverted underground movements (no, you can’t have a link to those), so people’s dislike of puritanical diet movements has created a demand for gluttony on an obscene level. This, one presumes, is at least in part the origin of such concepts as the doughnut burger and the giant Jammie Dodger.

Of course, examples like the above are extreme – you have to really want to stick it to the diet faddists to go to that kind of effort. Ben Goldacre achieves much the same thing by dissing Gillian McKeith in his blog on a regular basis, which I include purely because it’s funny. Bacon, on the other hand, requires little effort. Throw it under the grill, heat it to taste, put between two slices of bread, lovely. No embellishments needed, it’s delicious enough on its own. Dieticians will shake their heads sadly at you, but really screw them because you’re eating bacon and you can’t be bothered now.

So, back to my point. The whole bacon mania thing appears to be largely a North American phenomenon, at least when it comes to some of the crazier concepts arising thereof. So when I was strolling through Teddington the other day on the way to rehearsals for the play I’m in, I was intrigued by the sight of the aforementioned chocolate bar in a shop window. I strolled in, paid really quite a lot of money and walked out with a bacon-containing chocolate bar.

So how was it? Well, not as bad as you might think. The chocolate was absolutely gorgeous – really rich, and sweet enough to take the edge of the bitterness but not enough to overwhelm it. But as for the addition of the bacon? Well, I’d give it a resounding “meh.” There isn’t really enough bacon in it to make a difference – in fact, the chocolate is so rich that you can barely even tell that it’s bacon in there. At best, at its most concentrated, the bacon adds a slight saltiness to the bar. So, my conclusion basically would be that “it’s alright, but it would be better without bacon in it.” And this is why I’m not a food critic.

Sell out and stay classy

There are a number of stereotypes attached to railway enthusiasts – socially inept, anorak-wearing, middle-aged loners with NHS spectacles and plastic lunchboxes. While undoubtedly this stereotype is vastly exaggerated and largely inaccurate, it is fair to say that there are certain qualities which might fairly be attributed to the average rail nut. The majority of active rail enthusiasts (not all of them, before you leave angry comments) tend to be middle-aged, politically conservative, technically-minded, musically retro, male and white.

Yet there is a subsection of rail enthusiasm to which these stereotypes are not generally attached. I refer to the Tubeheads – enthusiasts of the London Underground. While there are plenty of technically-minded Tube enthusiasts, there are seemingly just as many if not more who are not – perhaps the best-known Tubehead is the esteemed Annie Mole of Going Underground.

I came to reflect on this phenomenon on Saturday, when I visited the Museum Depot at Acton, where the London Transport Museum keeps its reserve collection. Twice a year it’s opened to the public. While I have reported on this before, today I saw some exciting new things that gave me an insight into the Tubehead phenomenon.

You see, I think the reason there isn’t a Tubehead stereotype comparable to the trainspotter one is because there is a lot more to being a tube enthusiast than just the trains. The sign on the right depicts the Roundel, which has become a symbol for the entire city. Similarly, the Underground itself has come to represent London. One of the iconic images of the Blitz is Londoners taking shelter in the stations. It was no accident that the 7/7 bombers chose to hit London’s transport, so dependent is the city on its network. Indeed, Christian Wolmar argues that the Underground was instrumental in the shaping of modern London – it encouraged the development of the suburbs and enabled commuting as we know it today. The Underground is the city.

Actually, Christian Wolmar was there at the event, and I saw his lecture based on his book The Subterranean Railway. Wolmar claims not to be able to tell one end of a locomotive from the other, being more interested in the social aspects of railways. However, his enthusiasm for the subject shines through and the talk was Most Enjoyable. I recommend his books for railway nuts and anyone with a passing interest in the subject.

Yet even the social aspect of the Underground doesn’t cover the full spectrum of Tubeheadedry, as was brought home to me by another of the Things To Do on Saturday. You see, the Underground has always had a very strong design aesthetic.

This was the case right from the days of Charles Yerkes, the American magnate who bought up the Piccadilly, Bakerloo, Hampstead and District lines to create Underground Electric Railways Limited. He engaged architect Leslie Green to create a distinctive unifying style for the company to make it instantly identifiable. Green came up with the distinctive oxblood station frontages still visible throughout Central London.

However, the Underground’s image as a kind of corporate style icon really came about when Frank Pick became Managing Director of the Underground Group in 1928. He hired Charles Holden to create up-to-date art deco stations, Edward Johnston to devise a special alphabet and some of the brightest new stars in graphic design to come up with posters. Pick was not really an engineer, but he understood well that good design is good publicity, and his legacy is felt right up to the present day.

So when it was announced at the Depot that there would be a tour of the poster art collection, I leapt at the chance (not literally, that would be stupid).

The collection is nothing short of spectacular. According to the chap giving the tour (the Head of Collections, no less), the London Transport Museum can only put approximately 2% of its collection on public display at any time, although they do try to rotate the exhibits (again, not literally). The rest is kept at the Depot. “The rest” consists of almost every poster that London Transport has ever produced.

So in this back room in an industrial depot building in suburban Acton is perhaps the most impressive display of commercial artwork in London. It’s utterly spectacular, and I’m presenting here just a few of the photos I took. Posters line every wall, they’re on every table, they are literally all over the place.

I noticed a few art students among our party, and that’s not entirely surprising. Some of the names hired by Pick and his successors include Jacob Epstein, Man Ray and Edward McKnight Kauffer, often when they were fresh out of art school.

Consequently, original poster prints can be worth tens of thousands of pounds each.

You can therefore only imagine how jaw-dropping it was for us when we were taken through to the room where the original artworks were kept.

The original artwork of John Hassall's 'No Need To Ask a P'liceman,' the first Tube poster.

Here, on wire racks, are the original paintings from which some of the most highly-regarded images in the history of graphic design are taken. The experience is utterly surreal. By rights, these should be housed in some airy, purpose-built art gallery. But in fact, they’re just stored in a back room. Utterly bizarre. It’s like rummaging in Grandmother’s attic, if Grandmother was a multi-multi-multi millionaire.

One of these days I’m going to have to get around to robbing the place. [NOTE TO SELF: Don't leave this in the finished entry.]

So, to wrap up, it seems to me that the reason Underground enthusiasts are not limited to the technical types is simply because the Tube was very good at achieving its publicity aims – it’s not just a means of getting from A to B, it’s an integral aspect of London life. For all we may complain about engineering works and suchlike negative aspects, it’s a vital part of our historic, geographical, cultural and aesthetic identity as Londoners.

God, I do go on.

Further Reading
The London Transport poster collection is now online. Explore it for yourself, why not?

Attack on the Clones

When walking on Twickenham Green, I would often pass this shop:
As you can see, in most respects, it’s a fairly normal shopfront. It looks like the sort of thing that would be used by a small firm of solicitors or accountants. The one minor detail that caused me to scratch my head in puzzlement was the freakin’ Star Wars armour in the window.

Twickenham Green is a more villagey part of Twickenham than the town centre, lying between that and Fulwell, a place that probably wouldn’t even exist were it not for the railway station. It’s a place of respectable middle-class housing, restaurants and small shops. It is not, in short, the sort of place where you could in the normal course of things expect to see Imperial Stormtroopers.

The shop offered little by way of clues as to what the hell it was. It didn’t look like a sci-fi memorabilia shop – as I say, it looked like a regular high-street office aside from the symbols of semi-theocratic fascistic oppression in the window. It might have been a company that made costumes, but why Star Wars armour and nothing else? And it can’t have been an Imperial recruiting post, because as we all know, the Empire collapsed following the Battle of Endor in 4ABY.

It wasn’t until I saw this week’s copy of the Richmond and Twickenham Times that the mystery was finally solved. It turns out that this shop is actually the headquarters of Andrew Ainsworth, an industrial designer whose main claim to fame is that he actually designed the original stormtrooper armour.

Back in 1976, Star Wars was just this low-budget sci-fi film that nobody particularly expected to go anywhere. Nick Pemberton was commissioned to come up with this armour for the stormtroopers, and approached Ainsworth to actually make the damn things. In 2004, Ainsworth started producing replica armour for sale to the hardcore fans. Lucasfilm subsequently noticed he was doing this and told him, in legal terms, to cut that shit out. In 2006, the courts in the USA ruled against him, and so Ainsworth decided to go to war – this time involving the High Court in Britain.

The case has been a curious one. The argument on the defendant’s side rests on two factors. Firstly, that Ainsworth was not technically under contract to Lucasfilm when he designed the helmets, and therefore his moulds are not covered by copyright. Secondly, and somewhat more bizarrely, Ainsworth’s lawyers are arguing that the Stormtrooper armour can’t fall under copyright restrictions because it is a practical set of protective clothing, much like a hard hat or riot gear.

Having seen the original trilogy, it didn’t seem all that practical to me. I mean, seriously, one shot and those guys were down. Indeed, Ainsworth actually admitted during the court case that it was impossible to see while wearing one of those helmets, which goes a long way to explaining this.

While I feel like I should be rooting for the little guy, I don’t know enough about copyright law to say whether I think Ainsworth or Lucasfilm are in the right. Ainsworth’s argument strikes me as one of those irritating technicalities, but on the other hand I think it’s a bit rich on Lucasfilm’s part given that the first Star Wars film swiped heavily from Flash Gordon, Dune, 633 Squadron, Dambusters and The Hidden Fortress. At this point someone will usually mutter something about how George Lucas raped their childhood, and I will be forced to slap them until their nose comes off or until they are able to satisfactorily explain how “making lacklustre additions to franchises that weren’t exactly Citizen Kane to begin with” equates to “childhood sexual abuse.”

In order to distract you from my fence-sitting, here is a video of an unemployed Stormtrooper.

According to the Richmond and Twickenham Times, Ainsworth is “hoping for a triumphant end to mirror the finale of the original Star Wars trilogy.” Presumably this means that Lucasfilm will return twenty years later with a much more spectacular and expensive set of lawsuits that is unpopular with fans but makes a Lucas a huge amount of money anyway.

Further Reading
All about Stormtrooper armour. If you were curious.

Stormtroopers turn up in the strangest places.

Also
Went to the Acton Depot open weekend today. Very strongly recommended if you’re a transport nut or a London enthusiast or just bored in West London. More on this later.

A seat by the fire

The Great Fire of London. Or at least, one of them.

London is no stranger to blazes. Even prior to the now-legendary Great Fire of London of 1666, there had been at least twelve major conflagrations that had destroyed or at least very seriously damaged the city.

This was something of an occupational hazard in a city so crowded and crammed together, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that regulations were so poorly enforced. In theory, it was illegal to build a house out of wood with a thatched roof. In theory, businesses that were a fire hazard were illegal within the city walls (hence the East End, where those things could legally be put). In practice, as you might imagine by my sneering italics, neither of those laws were enforced with any great enthusiasm.

There were firefighting provisions of a sort. Watchmen, employed by the parishes, were expected to keep an eye out for blazes. However, as I have previously mentioned, those chaps weren’t exactly the most dynamic of fellows. Similarly, citizens were expected to form impromptu fire brigades, which were generally pretty effective in the case of small fires – the prospect of losing your house is a great motivator. The favoured method was to use hand-powered fire pumps (such as the one modelled above left) or, where that failed, to demolish houses and thus create firebreaks. If your chimney was on fire, the most common advice was to fire a gun up it. For some people, that’s the solution to everything.

What the Great Fire highlighted was what King Charles II (seen on the right) had been saying for years – that this sort of thing was all very well in the case of small blazes, but in the case of larger ones it was utterly useless. Indeed, during the fire, Rev. Thomas Vincent complained that “London, so famous for its wisdom and dexterity, can now find neither brains nor hands to prevent its ruin.”

Charles, despite being a well-known playa, was not without wisdom when it came to firefighting. He had been one of the louder voices prior to the fire calling for the stricter enforcement of building regulations. During the conflagration, he overruled the rather useless Lord Mayor  and placed fellow firefighting nerd the Duke of York in charge. He himself took a major part in both directing operations and dousing the flames. I presume he wasn’t dressed like he is in that picture, but it would be funny if he was. Following the fire (and indeed, during it), he arranged for operations to temporarily accommodate displaced inhabitants of the city and to bring food to the ruins. Admittedly this was in no small part due to the fear of riot – Charles was pro-Catholic, which had made him a lot of enemies in Protestant London, and there were plenty of people eager to blame the blaze on Catholic conspirators (so much so that when the Duke of York later converted to Catholicism, records of his own heroic efforts were deliberately distorted to make him look like one of the arsonists).

Oddly enough, though, it wasn’t Charles’ firefighting enthusiasm that led to the beginnings of the modern fire brigade, but the commercial incentive. Isn’t that so often the way?

Nobody is entirely sure who invented fire insurance, but the most likely candidate was Nicholas If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barbon (remember what I said about how London was a Protestant city?). What Barbon offered was a service whereby if you bought insurance with him, his men would fight any fires that broke out on your property and, if they failed to save it, would rebuild it. The idea was eagerly embraced, and soon there were several other companies offering the service. Homeowners so covered would hang a plaque (like the one above) on the wall in the event of fire.

This was in theory a great idea, but the problem was that insurance companies would only fight fires in buildings that they covered. So if No. 2 was covered, but No. 4 wasn’t (not that houses would have been numbered back then, but you know), the street might still burn down. So in the 18th century, the insurance companies cooperated to bring in a new system. The first fire brigade to arrive and quench the flames would get a reward. Good idea, yes? Well, in practice what it led to was a lot of punch-ups between fire brigades over who got there first, to the detriment of property in the vicinity. There were even instances of rival fire brigades deliberately sabotaging each other’s equipment in order to prevent their enemies claiming the cash.

In 1833, eventually some semblance of order was achieved with the foundation of the London Fire Engine Establishment under James Braidwood, an Edinburgh gentleman who agitated for the founding of a proper civic fire brigade (such as the one he had headed in Edinburgh, in fact). The LFEE played a prominent role in attempting to save the Houses of Parliament the following year, despite the fact that, as Braidwood pointed out, they were under no obligation to save the uninsured Parliament buildings. The Duke of Wellington, who was undoubtedly a great military commander but as a politician was a bit of a dick, opposed the concept of a proper fire brigade on the grounds that it would reduce public vigilance. The same man also opposed mixed-race marriages in India and believed railways should be discouraged because they allowed working class people to move about.

Braidwood was killed in the line of duty on 22nd June 1861, when a fire broke out on Tooley Street. This blaze would engulf the waterfront from London Bridge to where Tower Bridge now stands, and was the largest blaze the city had seen since 1666. Like Charles II, Braidwood believed in strategic firefighting, and so to that end advised that getting to the heart of the fire. In so doing, Braidwood was crushed by a falling warehouse.

His death was, however, not in vain. His passing was the cause of national mourning, and led to renewed demands for a civic-funded fire brigade. The loudest calls for reform came from the insurance companies, who under the LFEE’s policies had to fight fires regardless of whether the property was insured or not, and were thus effectively paying for everyone else’s safety. At last reason prevailed, and London got its fire brigade on January 1, 1866. Took us long enough - Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff and the aforementioned Edinburgh already had brigades in place. Still, we got there in the end.

Anyone for toast?

Sweet Charity

So often in life, our ambitions far outweigh our ability to achieve them, as anyone who has attended an orgy can confirm. In my case, I’m a chap on the kind of income that allows me to live comfortably with a few little luxuries to keep life bearable. However, that’s not to say that I’m exactly rich, particularly if you work for the Inland Revenue.

What I’m saying is, I can’t splash out quite as much as I’d like to. Therefore, as someone who likes to dress up and who reads a lot, I’ve become something of a devotee of charity shops.

The first charity shop in Britain opened in 1941 on Old Bond Street, and was owned by the Red Cross. There are estimated to be over 9,000 charity shops in the UK and Republic of Ireland, which is quite significant if you follow Internet memes.

They are a fine place to find vintage clothes at bargain prices – I’ve obtained some superb items for really very little money. The only thing is that charity shops these days have wised up to the vintage movement, and in many cases have raised their prices accordingly. Not that they are as expensive as your average high street vintage shop, but jaw-dropping bargains are harder to find in some stores than they used to be.

They’re not so great if you’re looking for something specific, but on the other hand you’re far more likely to be surprised. I’ve been introduced to some of my favourite authors purely by having found their books in charity shops. I’m not too inclined to gamble a lot of money on an author who I’m not familiar with and who comes without recommendations, but a couple of quid for a book isn’t exactly going to ruin me if I don’t like it.

These days, your average charity shop comes in three flavours:

1. The Specialist

Certain chains of charity shop have begun to organise their shops into categories. For instance, a number of them have stores that specialise only in books, or only in furniture. The great advantage is that, if you’re looking for something specific, you’re more likely to find it there than in a “general” charity shop. Unfortunately, they tend to be quite rare, and damned if I can work out how they decide on locations.

The New Sort

Charity shops have spruced up their image these days, and particularly in the case of the larger chains (e.g. Oxfam, Cancer Research) they’re much more inviting than they used to be. The specialist shops would appear to have sprung out of this revamp. A few of them, notably Oxfam, have branched out into selling new goods as well as secondhand. The aforementioned Oxfam does a rather tasty line of fair trade goods, for instance.

The Old School

It’s not so long ago that all charity shops used to be like this. They tend to be gloomy and disorganised and staffed by slightly odd individuals. I was hunting through one of these in Camden once, and was rather taken aback by the elderly lady also rifling through the clothes and muttering, “I’ll spend what I like – not just a pound here and there, not like he would have wanted.” At that point I remembered I had an urgent mumblemumble in the rffrrnmnrr and had to leave.

These shops are a relative rarity in London, but tend to be located on the less prestigious high streets, owned by the smaller charities.

Tips

• Consider the area. Somewhere like Kensington tends to chuck out a higher quality of goods than somewhere like, say, Tooting. A bookish place like Bloomsbury is an excellent place to find books. However, note also that more expensive areas tend to charge higher prices. They’re cunning like that.
• Vintage clothing shops get a lot if not all of their stock from charity shops. This was brought home to me when I saw a couple of waistcoats for sale in Wimbledon, only to see them a week later in a Covent Garden vintage shop for four times the price. Ergo, the optimum place to find a bargain is a fairly well-off place without a vintage scene.
• Not that I’d normally advocate leaving the city, but when you get out of town you’re more likely to find places that meet the well-off/no vintage scene criteria. However, you’re more likely to find shops of the old school in these places.

And, of course, it’s all for a good cause. A much better way of raising funds than the use of chuggers, and you’re getting something out of it yourself. It’s ethical, environmentally friendly and money-saving. Give yourself a pat on the back.

Don’t take my word for it.

Do you know what really annoys me? Apart from chavs, idiots on the night bus, engineering works on the London Underground, people who can’t use a ticket barrier, over-attentive shop assistants and Slough, that is? Urban legends.

Well, no, that’s not entirely true. I love urban legends. A good ghost story or conspiracy theory is generally pretty entertaining, even if it is utter hogwash. There’s a specific type of urban legend that really does make me facepalm in frustration and mutter “Christ almighty.” The type in question might broadly be defined as the “scare rumour.”

I came across an example of this on Facebook on Sunday. One of my friends, who shall remain unnamed and also doesn’t read this blog, had this as her status:

WARNING TO PEOPLE OF SOUTH LONDON…tip off by south london police…two major dog fights are being arranged…small dogs and cats are being stolen for blood baiting…please warn all areas

Terrible, right? I mean, it’s hard enough to get meat on a budget without some bastard stealing the dogs and cats. I’m not going back to fox, that’s for sure.

But if you’re remotely analytical, you’ll have spotted a few problems with this apparently well-intentioned warning. Notably, it’s very vague. “Tip-off from South London police.” Which police? Any names? Where in South London? I live in Colliers Wood, I’m often abroad in other parts of London that may be called “South” (and god damn I do not want to hear yet another person whining about where South London begins and ends, there’s an S in my postcode and that’s good enough for me), yet I have never heard about this. Maybe it’s only taking place in some part of South London that I don’t visit very often – but in that case PC Nameless is being unnecessarily vague.

Let’s do a bit more research. Let’s Google “South London dogfights.” Nothing. Well, nothing relevant, unless you count an advert on Gumtree. Given that Gumtree has been known to advertise apartments in Mayfair for £100 a week from non-existent estate agents, I think we can safely discount them as a reliable source.

So, a policeman or the police in general have given out a tip-off. Presumably they want people to know about these dogfights. Yet they have not gone to the press about them. Now, do not tell me the local press wouldn’t be interested in a story about cute widdle pussy-cats and puppy-dogs being kidnapped by nasty men, they’d leap on a story like that. It’d fill people up with righteous fury, sell loads of papers.

Taking that line of questioning further, how do the police know these dogfights are happening? There’s been no news of any recent busts, any caches of dogs and cats, any people running to the police in horror to say what they saw. All we have is that dogs and cats are being kidnapped. How do we know that they’re being kidnapped, as opposed to merely going missing in that way that pets are wont to do? Have a larger number of small animals than usual gone missing?

Now, I responded to said friend’s status by pointing out that it sounded like an urban legend. And Oh My God you should have seen the uproar. Now, yes, I can understand the desire to defend your friend’s honour (whatever that is), but the apparent wish for this rumour to be true verged on the disturbing. One chap kept posting links, none less than two years old, saying that dogs had been kidnapped at some point in time and space, that dogfights happened at some point in time and space, that dogfighters might use small dogs and kittens for bait and that one time a dog had gone missing in South London. Another pointed out that, no, I could be wrong, because sometimes these things happen and they don’t get reported (presumably the police are hiring psychics these days).

Notably lacking was any evidence that linked all these factors together to give us the terror mishmash of the above warning. For the sake of sating this morbid desire, I have posted a picture of a kitten being mauled below.

Assuming my picture researcher has done his job (I pay him in the moonshine I brew under my desk at work), that should satisfy some of the fearmongers.

But in all seriousness, why do people come up with rumours like this? I can understand those public information films that scare the living crap out of you to warn you of a particular danger, and even those commercials that do so in order to sell you something. But how does it benefit a person to come up with a scare story such as this? These rumours won’t net them any glory or credit, for the most part the inventor won’t even see people getting freaked out by them.

Anyway, here is my simple guide to tell whether a story is true or an urban legend:

1. Is there a reliable source?

I don’t want to diss your friends, but unless they work for some sort of journalistic organisation (as it happens, several of mine do), they might not be best-placed for all the facts. So if you hear some remarkable story, check it out for yourself. If there’s some sort of terrible ongoing crimewave, it seems unlikely that it would be known to everyone except the news.

2. Details?

Every crime has a victim (except murder, in which the victim is dead). Are there names for these victims? Or for any party involved? Are there dates and times? Where did it happen? If the warning came from the police, the police where? Vague and missing details make for an unverifiable story, which makes me stroke my beard suspiciously.

3. Has this happened before?

There are such things as copycat crimes, but it makes me twirl my moustache quizzically when I hear a rumour of something dreadful, only to hear that the exact same story has played out somewhere else, a few years ago, and similarly not made the news. In the case of email forwards, the story might even have the exact same wording. It’s my experience that when you point this out to people, they say “Well, yes, it was fake there, but this time it really did happen!“

I’ve met people from three different universities who are adamant that the story about the student killing themselves with a couple of pencils up their nose definitely happened in an exam at their uni. The truth is, of course, that it happened at the uni that I went to.

I’m joking.

Holy craps, Tom, there are no reliable sources, no names and it’s happened fifteen times before!

Then, my friend, you most likely have an urban legend. Glad I could help you with your problem there. Anyway, I’ve got to run, I hear there are dwarf pirates terrorising the canals of Brentford. I heard it from a friend of mine, who got it from an email.

Further Reading

Inevitably, a link to Snopes. If you hear a stupid rumour, it’s probably on here.