Beneath the Grave – Ghosts of the Central Line

Good evening, fright-fans, it is I, Tom, your extravagantly-cleavaged Master of the Dark [picture inadmissable]. As Halloween approaches with the inevitability of death, I thought an appropriately-themed entry might be in order. As last year’s entry on the ghosts haunting the Northern Line was so popular, I figured I might continue the theme with the hauntings on the old Central London Railway or, as the kids call it nowadays, the Central Line. Mind the gap…

Northolt

You’ve all heard of the Beast of Bodmin, but did you know there was a Beast of Northolt? In the early 1990s, there were several sightings of a big cat alongside the Central Line between Northolt and Greenford. Accounts vary as to the species of cat, although most seem to settle on “puma.” Whence it came and how it got to Northolt without being noticed remain to be explained.

Marble Arch

If you should find yourself leaving Marble Arch late at night, when the station is quiet, you may find yourself being followed up the escalator. Several people have reported a sinister man in 1940s clothing who they sense close behind them on the escalator and see out of the corner of their eye. Upon turning around completely, the man vanishes. Again, no explanation has been offered as to who this restless spirit might be.

British Museum

Perhaps the most unlikely ghost out of the many on the Underground was sighted at this now-closed station. The ghost would, so the story goes, appear at one end of the platform and walk to the other, wailing mournfully. What marked this particular spectre out, however, was the fact that he was dressed in the clobber of an Ancient Egyptian. Being the intelligent and probably very sexy reader that you are, you’ve no doubt figured out why there might be an Ancient Egyptian haunting British Museum Station. To be more specific, the Egyptian is said to have some sort of link to the so-called Unlucky Mummy (pictured right), a sarcophagus lid in the Museum that is said to be cursed. This is just one of many legends attached to it, the most interesting of which says that it was responsible for sinking the Titanic.

Even bearing in mind that I’m a sceptic, I’m inclined to take this one with a pinch of salt. The accounts are lacking in detail and only emerged shortly before the station was closed down. I’m inclined to believe it was the invention of a journalist looking for a spooky story. Nevertheless, the story persists, albeit with the ghost now haunting Holborn. Why Holborn and not the closer Russell Square or Tottenham Court Road stations? It is a mystery.

Chancery Lane

Chancery Lane has plenty of secrets of its own, but in the tunnels between here and Holborn, there’s said to be one more surprise. During the 1960s,drivers stopping at signals here would often be freaked out by the appearance of a man standing next to them in the cab. Apparently some sort of fellow crewman, he would be staring straight ahead, and would vanish as soon as the train pulled away.

Bank

I covered the manife-stations (see what I did there) at this stop in last year’s entry, but I thought I’d mention that it’s a haunted station on the Central Line for those pedants who’ll leave comments if I don’t.

Liverpool Street

This terminus is built on the site of a plague pit and one of the several incarnations of the notorious Bedlam. The building of this and neighbouring Broad Street Station involved the disturbance of many final resting places, so really it would be surprising if there were no hauntings here. Sure enough, Liverpool Street and environs are said to be haunted by the ghastly screams of a woman.

The most popular suggestion for the screamer is one Rebecca Griffiths, an inmate at Bedlam in the late 18th century whose illness included a compulsive need to hold on to a particular coin. Upon her death, one of the staff (who were not known for their selflessness) stole it from her lifeless fingers and Rebecca’s inconsolable spirit searches for it still.

More recently, in 2000, the Line Controller sighted a man in white overalls in the tunnels who should not have been there. He sent the Station Supervisor to investigate, who found nothing. What made this particularly peculiar was that the Supervisor found no man down there – even though the Controller could see the man on the CCTV screen right next to him.

Bethnal Green

I’ll finish with the Easternmost of the haunted Central Line stations that I’m aware of, and one of the most frightening hauntings. This one is traceable to a specific incident that took place on 3rd March 1943. As often happened in the East End at that time, when the air raid siren sounded, the local people made for the Tube station. Unfortunately, on this night it had been decided to carry out a test-firing of an experimental new type of rocket in nearby Victoria Park. Panicked by what sounded like a very nearby explosion, the crowds surged forward. A woman on the stairs lost her footing and fell, taking several others with her and causing further panic, which in turn worsened the stampede and the crush inside the station. 173 people were killed in the disaster, crushed or asphyxiated. For reasons of morale, the Bethnal Green incident was covered up until 1946.

From 1981 onwards, however, there were reports of an extremely unnerving nature from the station. Staff working late at night spoke of hearing screams – at first one or two, then more and more, clearly identifiable as women and children. These screams would go on for up to fifteen minutes before dying down.

There you have it, readers. I hope you enjoy your Halloween this year and whatever you do, don’t have nightmares…

The Beasts with Two Backs

Saturday was a busy, busy day. It started when I woke up in bed with two women and an empty champagne bottle. However, because this is the real world, the reason I was in bed with two women was because we’d passed out watching Moulin Rouge. The champagne is more complicated, and remind me to tell you about it some time.

Rashly, I had agreed to meet the Da and the Sis in London for lunch, and so I had to stagger back from Fulwell to Colliers Wood to get myself into some sort of respectable state. On the way, I decided that mobile phones should be banned on buses, purely because when you have a pounding headache and rising nausea, there is little that is more annoying than a guy sitting directly behind you, babbling non-stop for the entire journey. Well, actually, screaming kids are more annoying. There was one of those, too.

I had hoped a shower, a snooze and some lunch would take care of the hangover. Even a hair of the dog at the Princess Louise in Holborn didn’t help. This was particularly lame, as I was supposed to be meeting some of my theatrical chums at the Natural History Museum.

Our destination was the Sexual Nature exhibition, and after half an hour in line in the sun (with a hangover, I don’t think I mentioned that before) we were in. The exhibition, if you haven’t seen it, is basically devoted to the subject of reproduction in the animal kingdom. Reproduction is a hugely important part of life – if you go with Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene theory, it’s basically the meaning of life. But what makes this such an interesting exhibition is the incredible variety of it out there.

The exhibition covers a very wide area, from mating displays to pheromonesto  The Deed Itself to birth and those early days of life. Each section in turn covers a huge and incredible variety. Take the seahorse, where the males are the ones who give birth. Or ducks, in which the females have evolutionary strategies to deal with gang rape. Or the angler fish, for whom the males are so much smaller than the females that scientists initially thought they were parasites (any radical feminists in the readership?).

Isabella Rossellini is a strange woman.

Although such a broad topic is by necessity going to be unable to cover any individual topic in great depth, it certainly brought home the incredible variation among the many, many species with which we share the planet. We were particularly taken by the section on scent, including a rather pungent exhibit enabling you to experience the smell of jaguar piss. And there were a number of very strange short films by Isabella Rossellini from the Green Porno series. Good fun.

Following a swift cheap-and-cheerful Chinese meal, we headed over to Holborn, to the Princess Louise. As I think I’ve said before, this is one of my all-time favourite pubs, due to its pure Victorian decor downstairs, its luxurious lounge upstairs and, not that I want to sound like a cheapskate or anything, the fact that you can get a round of drinks for a tenner without descending to the accursed levels of Wetherspoons. Here, we met Shoinan for more alcohol and inappropriate conversation. At this point, my hangover finally subsided and I could return to damaging my liver in earnest.

After this, Shoinan and I decided to move on into sinful Soho to see where a couple of reprobates like us could get some more booze. We came upon the Nellie Dean, a pub we’d visited once before. This is another old-skool place, unkempt, disreputable-looking, not too crowded and not remotely trendy. Therefore, ideal for us. It’s also open until midnight, which helps. We continued to put the world to rights over a jug of Pimms (executive decision by Shoinan) before heading home.

I feel we all learnt a lot that day. Unfortunately I can’t remember any of it. Hey ho.

The evolution of evolution

As you will no doubt be aware, Saturday was Charles Darwin’s birthday (happy 202nd, Mr Darwin!) and so to celebrate, Becky B held a loosely Darwin-themed party. My own shirt evolved several frills to frighten off predators, which seemed to work, as I am still alive. I even managed to avoid a hangover the next morning, which was impressive given that I’d started Saturday with a stonker of a headache.

Charles Darwin evolved an impressive beard towards the end of his life.

I’m something of a fan of Charles Darwin and, indeed, of evolutionary biology in general. I’m no scientist, it goes without saying if you’re a regular reader of this blog, but I take an interest. Call me an evolution groupie, if you like.

I was actually introduced to the concept at a very young age – I can’t have been much older than six or seven when I came across an ape-like man in a case in the Natural History Museum. How Wayne Rooney got in there in the first place, I shall never know, but next along was a case with a model of homo erectus therein. I expressed bemusement to the Ma, who explained that, in fact, people thousands of years ago looked like apes and, further back, actually were. This didn’t seem too ridiculous to me – if every generation looks different from the last one, well, what was so strange about the concept that we might have been apes a long time ago? After all, an ape sort of looks like a human if you squint.

[PARENTHESIS: The word "orangutan" is a Malay term meaning "man of the forest." Which suggests that the people of Malaysia also saw the resemblance. Despite making such excellent librarians, orangutans are critically endangered and may be extinct in the wild by 2015.]

So anyway, I never found evolution to be a weird idea. Okay, it conflicted with the Bible on a lot of points, but I had the kind of nonconformist view of Christianity that was fairly typical of a British six-year-old (for instance, I thought the concept of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost all being the same person was some sort of misprint).

Actually, Charles Darwin’s own religious background is something of a curiosity in terms of how very orthodox it was. Creationists tend to view him as a kind of Antichrist who came up with his theories purely to make Baby Jesus cry, but in his early years he seriously considered becoming a vicar in the Church of England. Unusually in his family, he was entirely C of E in his views, despite his father and grandfather being freethinkers and his wider family being largely nonconformist. Even at the end of his life, he never identified as atheist, preferring to describe himself as agnostic – although some accounts suggest that he didn’t see any real difference between the two, except that people who called themselves atheists tended to be kind of jerky. A quick tour of any Internet bulletin board on the subject of religion will show that he wasn’t entirely wrong there.

There’s nothing particularly strange about the idea of someone taking an interest both in holy matters and in biology (although Kent Hovind can still piss right off). Bear in mind that your average Victorian clergyman was an educated, middle-class fellow with a decent income and not much to do during the week. If they were in a country parish, studying nature was an agreeable way to pass the time.

I thoroughly recommend a visit to Gilbert White’s house if you should find yourself near Selborne. White was an 18th century curate and also a kind of proto-ecologist, believing in the importance of studying wildlife in its natural habitat. This led him to discover that, among other things, birds migrate as opposed to, e.g. hiding underwater in the winter (a serious theory at the time).

Or if you’re looking for another vicar who paved the way for modern biology, how about the Very Reverend William Buckland? Perhaps the first British paleontologist, he disputed the suggestion that modern rock formations had been created by Noah’s flood and in 1824 discovered the fossil bones that he would name “Megalosaurus” – this was the earliest identification of dinosaurs. He also reputedly ate the mummified heart of Louis XIV. Nothing to do with religion vs. science, I just thought it was an interesting fact.

Yet another irony, considering the question of religion vs. evolution, is the fact that although Darwin is perhaps the most important name in modern biology, there was one significant place in the 19th century where his name was mud – the Natural History Museum. More specifically, in the office of the Museum’s effective founder, Richard Owen. Now, I don’t want to dis Owen for his work as a biologist, and there’s no doubt that without his diligent work (and friends in high places), the nation’s natural history collections would have remained a mere collection of trinkets and curios overseen by erratic curators in a wing of the British Museum. But he refused to believe in the concept of evolution by natural selection, firmly coming down on the side of creationism. It’s said that the reason the Natural History Museum’s facade depicts only living species on the west wing and only extinct ones on the east was because Owen refused to even passively acknowledge that they might be linked. This also goes some way to explaining why Darwin’s statue is in the tea room – it was a late addition.

Although in the 1860s Owen’s views were those of an intelligent if conservative scientist, within a few decades they would become less and less credible and a hundred years later would have been abandoned by all except fundies and cranks. These days, the museum even has a research centre named after Darwin.

For all the likes of Richard Dawkins might complain about a rising tendency towards fundamentalism and the rejection of evolution, I don’t think there’s that great a risk in this country. Britain is an essentially secular nation – the Archbishop of Canterbury himself admits to the truth of evolution (so does the Pope, by the way). There might be Bible-bashers ranting about how Darwin burns in hell even as we speak, and there might be scientists being patronising and rude to religious folk, but for the majority of the nation, I don’t think we really give a damn.

I get a kick out of you, part 2

Hullo all, this is just a quick entry to alert you to something that may be of interest. Regular readers will be aware that the Wellcome Collection is currently holding an exhibition entitled ‘High Society,’ which Yr. Humble Chronicler recently visited.

Well, for those of you interested in exploring further, might I humbly suggest – if you find yourself at a loose end this weekend – that you take a stroll over there for an event entitled ‘High Society: Drugs in Victorian Britain.’ On Friday, there’s a magic lantern show on the subject and on Saturday there will be a series of discussions from eminent and knowledgeable folk on the subject of what got our ancestors high. For those of you with an interest in drug culture in Britain, who are into that whole Victorian decadence scene, or who are just curious about what the dickens Lewis Carroll was on, you should take a gander.

See the website for further details.

Peninsula Envy

I had Tuesday off, and like most people, I decided to take advantage of this time by exploring desolate post-industrial wasteland. I invested in a shipping venture last year from Anatoly “Nickname” Chugarov (I think I mentioned that in the previous entry). Anyway, the whole thing seemed a bit dodgy to me, so I decided to pull out and asked Anatoly to give me my 5% of the venture now. I’ll admit I’m not too hot on this investment lark. Anatoly said he’d meet me on the Greenwich Peninsula with my share, so I thought I’d take advantage of this to kill two birds with one stone.

I don’t know why, but I’ve always been fascinated by industrial urban desolation. This might explain why I find Amy Winehouse strangely attractive. The Greenwich Peninsula has long been known for these qualities, as I discovered myself when I ended up here by accident some years ago (put it this way – the Dome hadn’t yet opened). I was curious to see how it had changed in the intervening time.

As you can see in the photo above, it’s what we psychogeographer-types call “hostile.” Once you step out of North Greenwich Tube Station, you’ve basically got lots of roads, fences and barriers on all sides – not exactly hospitable to pedestrians. Once you finally get down to the river, you can see that this far east, London is still a working port.

On the right you can see Trinity Buoy Wharf, one of the oddities of London. Circled in purple are a couple of lightships, what they’re doing there I have no idea. Circled in green is the Bow Creek Lighthouse, the only inland lighthouse in the United Kingdom. I really wish I could have got a bit closer. Some other time, maybe.

On the left you can see a contrast between old and new Docklands. In the background, the Canary Wharf development is very visible. In the foreground, an old pier used for loading barges. This has been turned into a sort of wildlife preserve , part of a general policy to bring the area back to nature. After a century and a half of pollution, this is a motion I applaud. An interesting scheme in place elsewhere on the peninsula is to resist erosion by binding the mud with naturally-occurring plant life rather than artificial walls.

There was something unutterably surreal about the view on the right, almost post-apocalyptic. Although many industries have occupied the Peninsula, and several still do, the big one was gasworks – more gas was produced here in the mid-twentieth century than anywhere else in the world (insert fart joke if required). When North Sea gas was discovered, the gasworks were rendered obsolete. Though there are a few remnants here and there, most of the ground has been built over or – as here – cleared in anticipation of new development. This is another of those transitional things that I think is quite important to capture.

Now, this is taking psychogeographical hostility to the limit. You see that flooded road between the heaps of sand there? Yeah, that’s the footpath. I’m not joking. It was at this point that I began to get heartily sick of post-industrial wasteland. No, wait, I tell a lie…

… this was when I got heartily sick of post-industrial wasteland. Readers may note the highly unsuitable choice of trousers. Consider also that this was actually quite early on in the scramble through floodwater/over sandbanks. By the end I was considering suicide, or at least buying a decent pair of boots.

On the right is an aggregate… tower… loading… thing. I don’t know what it is, if I’m honest. It has a conveyor belt. By this stage I was starting to go a little bit mad, I think. God only knows why I took a picture here.

In fact, I think I’m going to skip the next few photos. They mostly consist of mud and concrete. I found some rails where a crane once went, that was about it.

However, I did eventually find something more interesting, for a given value of “interesting.”

And here it is. These strange steel structures are on Enderby’s Wharf, once the location of a submarine cable works. Which made cables, you see, for going underwater. It’s quite interesting. I think, anyway.

The wharf is preserved now, but was locked up when I was passing. The actual works buildings are boarded up, which is lame.

Here is a breaker’s yard for boats. Again, not sure exactly what my thinking was in taking a photo here. This is actually one of the nicer photos.

I think I might have photographed this because it was a landmark I remembered from the previous visit. I also recall a chemical plant, which seemed to have closed down since then. I remember passing under some sort of loading-pipe-rig-type thing that was no longer there.

This is another of those “observe the contrast between the old Docklands and the new” photos. On one side of the road, grotty industry. On the other, shiny new flats. It makes you think. Specifically, it makes you think, “Christ, imagine having to look at that grotty industry every morning.”

Ah, now, this is interesting. This is Greenwich Power Station, built to supply electricity to the London Underground and London County Council Tramways from 1910. Despite its antiquated nature, it is still used as a backup supply. Architecturally, I think the main body of the plant is actually quite pleasant. Certainly compared to some of the eyesores I saw earlier (“eyesores I saw”… dear me).

And here we are at historic Maritime Greenwich. Incidentally, if you wondered how I came to be on the Greenwich Peninsula back in 1999, the simple answer was that I wanted to get here, and figured that North Greenwich wouldn’t be too far away. As the crow flies, it’s not. But when it’s cold and bleak and the path is muddy and the route winds around many huge obstacles, well, let’s just say it wasn’t worth avoiding the change of trains. And here endeth the lesson.

Oh, wait, the investment thing. Well, Anatoly was as good as his word, and did indeed give me my 5% share.

Son of a bitch.

Canal Penetration

I do not appear to understand the concept of a short walk. This fact was brought home to me on Sunday. Having attended a wedding on Wednesday, I was feeling somewhat guilty at the Elvis-level calorie intake I had managed that day, and therefore had resolved to behave myself with a little more restraint. Sunday, I thought, would be an ideal day to get a little exercise. I thought it might be nice to do some more of the Regent’s Canal.

The Regent’s Canal, if you’re not familiar with it (though you may have some passing acquaintance with it if you’re a regular reader of this blog), is a waterway running from the Thames at Limehouse to the Grand Junction Canal at Paddington. The canal was opened in two sections – from Paddington to Camden in 1816 and Camden to Limehouse in 1820. In those days, before decent roads and railways, canals were the arteries of industry. The Grand Junction Canal was the quickest means of transporting goods in quantity from the industrial Midlands to London. The Regent’s Canal therefore served an important economic purpose, as it formed the final link between the Midlands and the Port of London and therefore the rest of the world. It survived the coming of the railways and the roads, but by the 1930s was largely obsolete.

Today, although there is a small amount of cargo, it’s primarily used for pleasure craft. The warehouses and factories that once lined its route have either been demolished or repurposed (most notably, one major interchange between rail and canal is now Camden Lock Market and the Stables). The towpath is a popular route with cyclists, walkers and idiots (yo).

My original intention was to only walk a short section of the canal, say Camden to King’s Cross or Islington. But I have this tendency, once I start walking, to keep on going far longer than is perhaps wise. As a result, I ended up walking all the way to Limehouse Basin. As I had previously walked from Camden to Paddington (hence the photos you have been seeing so far), I can now say that I have walked the full length of the canal.

From a psychogeographical point of view, what’s interesting about this walk is that it let me see familiar places from a different point of view. Of course, I’d seen the canal at Paddington, Regent’s Park, Camden, King’s Cross, St Pancras, Caledonian Road, Islington, Hackney and Limehouse before. Indeed, I’ve written about it in at least two of those locations in this very blog. But it had just been a landmark then, with no sort of context. I had some vague awareness that this stretch of canal was the same as that stretch of canal, but only as a theoretical thing. To experience the whole thing from a boat’s eye view, as it were, was rather novel. I think I’ve been enlightened in some way.

Anyway, I’ve waffled on for far too long already, given that this was supposed to be a photo-ey entry. I shall keep the prattle to a minimum from here on in, and instead continue to present my (usual crappy) photographs in geographical order from Paddington to Limehouse. Camden Lock is a notable omission here,  due to the fact that on neither of the walks presented here did I actually intend to document the entire canal.

One last point I would like to make is the range of contrast as you go along the river, from affluent Regent’s Park and Little Venice to the post-industrial landscape of the Docklands. I’ll shut up now. For now.

Sorry, me again. At this point on the walk, the canal cut through the hill at Islington, and I had to leave the towpath. Some explanation may be needed for the following photos.

I snapped this because I had walked along this road once before, a couple of years ago, desperately hungover. I was leaving the Barnsbury flat of a friend we shall simply call The Monster early one Sunday morning. I attracted disapproving looks from pious souls. Anyway, to end up here again was rather surprising.

I eventually reached Angel – you may recall that my first paid acting gig was near here. Despite my familiarity with the area, I wasn’t entirely sure how to get to the canal. Fortunately, this sign guided me. It may also explain some of the stranger sights coming up.

Isn’t this just the dearest little owl?

Spitalfields already? God be damned.

And Shoreditch! How we are honoured!

This is a nice thing to do with a block of council flats. Photographic portraits of local folk. It’s like Eastenders, only without the death and unimaginable horror.

Hackney. If you feel a chill down your spine, that is because we are but a stone’s throw from the Last Tuesday Society’s sinister museum.

A dilapidated narrowboat advocating the cleaning up of canals. This would be that famous bargees’ humour I’ve heard so much about.

Some sort of junction. Further investigation is required, I feel – especially as there’s something familiar about this canal here.

Lo the Isle of Dogs!

Herons are basically the easiest birds in the world to photograph. How I managed to make this one blurry enough to shame the most avid Bigfoot enthusiast is therefore beyond me.

I feel this toy boat has a story to tell.

We are so close, me hearties, I can practically taste that lime!

Is that not the viaduct of the London and Blackwall Railway?

It is! Limehouse! We made it! Long live, long live!

I say “we” made it, but mostly you just looked at photos. I didn’t want to make a big thing of this.

The Thames as the sun begins to set.

The Docklands Light Railway at Westferry. Everyone wants to get on the seats at the front of the train, but for a novel experience I recommend the seats at the back as you enter the tunnel for Bank. It’s like disappearing down a giant oesophagus.

 

Further Reading:

http://londonparticulars.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/talk-about-burning-your-bridges/ - An earlier entry focusing on a particular part of the Regent’s Canal.

London Particulars reviews: Mongrels

TV, there’s something I don’t watch much of these days. I probably should watch a bit more. I have no idea what is hilarious about comparing meerkats, for example. However, on the occasions when I do watch TV, about 90% of the time I remember exactly why I watch so little. Call me a snob if you will.

The other day I caught a trailer for a new BBC3 sitcom called Mongrels. My curiosity was piqued, and so I headed over to iPlayer to investigate.

The series revolves around a group of animals living on the Isle of Dogs (GEDDIT?!?!?!?!). However, that wouldn’t make a very good sitcom. These animals are portrayed by puppets and go through typically human problems, albeit with an animal spin.

Now, adult humour using puppets is very hard to pull off. The only two examples that immediately spring to mind for me are Team America and the superb Avenue Q. In most cases, though, it comes across as being like a teenage writer who thinks ineptly-written sex scenes will make her fan fiction more mature. You see, the reason those examples worked was because they had more than just the novelty of their medium. Team America had some funny songs, broad but dead-on satire and a hilarious script from the South Park guys. Avenue Q has sharp observational humour and, again, great songs with a satirical edge.

... And Then You Die. And then it did.

Far more of it falls flat, though. For instance, did anyone see …And Then You Die on Dave a while back? Don’t worry, you weren’t missing out. The premise was that it was a comedy panel show presented by a puppet. Sounds funny in theory, in practice not so much. Or there’s the admittedly popular, albeit inexplicably so, Achmed the Dead Terrorist. This character, operated by ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, is a dead terrorist named Achmed. The premise is that he is a dead Islamic terrorist, or an approximation thereof. His entire schtick is shouting “Silence! I keel you!” while his eyebrows bob up and down, followed by predictable jokes about getting 72 virgins.

So. Basically, if you’re going to derive comedy from puppetry, you’d better have some damn good writing to back up the funny man on your knee. Or, if you’re Jeff Dunham, a stupid redneck audience also works. But I digress.

Mongrels, I fear, lacks this. The humour is unashamedly Family Guy-style in nature, in that it relies heavily on cutaway jokes. This, incidentally, is probably the number one criticism raised against Family Guy - that it uses cutaway jokes as a substitute for proper humour.

And – oh Christ – it tries to be shocking. But in that terribly British, nervous way. So it tries to make a bad-taste joke (Freudian slip – where I meant to type “bad taste joke” I just typed “bad joke”) set in a dog obedience class. The dogs are told to pretend to be Richard Whiteley – and so they play dead. Ha ha ha, Whiteley died five years ago. It suggests that they wanted to make a crossing-the-line joke about a celebrity, but were worried about crossing the line. Either go for it or don’t.

And if you have shock humour, make sure it’s funny. There are cutaway gags about Harold Shipman and Anne Frank, neither of which are amusing enough to justify themselves and frankly feel like a last-minute attempt to inject some moral outrage into an otherwise fairly tame sitcom.

Also, puppets aren’t exactly the best medium for the kind of humour I sense these people wanted to do. Puppets lack subtle movement, so if you’re setting up a quick-fire gag or physical humour, they are not ideal. Sorry to dump on the basic selling point of the sitcom, but there it is.

That’s not to say that I don’t think the idea has promise. There were one or two jokes that, admittedly, I didn’t laugh at, but I quite liked. The running gag about Toby Anstis was funny (and live action). The basic story of the first episode – a fox falls in love with a chicken – had a lot of comic potential that wasn’t fully realised. I did, for instance, like the gag where the fox and the chicken have a bag of grain and want to go on a boat.

In conclusion, I’ll probably stick with it for a couple of episodes to see where it goes, but at the moment I must admit it feels a little bit confused as to what it wants to be – OTT slapstick shock humour or surreal character comedy? Either way, it’s still sharing a suitcase with Achmed right now. Basically, it would be better if it stopped trying to be Family Guy and tried to do its own thing instead.

Hungry for fame

Remember that entry I wrote about Secret Cinema? Well, The Friend Formerly Known As Krang heard from Small Emma that the BBC had done a report on it. Check it out. It’s at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment_and_arts/10362662.stm

 Also, check out the handsome chap talking to the snake lady at 2.08.

I should point out that I probably look more urbane here than I actually was. What I was actually saying was more along the lines of, “Er, so, is that the poisonous kind of snake or the swallow-you-whole-like-you-was-Jon-Voigt kind? Please keep it away from me.”

Further Reading

http://londonparticulars.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/ive-seen-things-you-people-wouldnt-believe/ - A fuller recap of events.

C U Last Tuesday

NSFW WARNING

Well, chums, I think I’ve finally recovered from Friday night, physically if not morally. You see, Friday was the night of the Last Tuesday Society’s May Masked Ball, an event so very over the top that it actually caused reality to collapse in on itself, leaving me in a confused state.

When it comes to events, the Last Tuesday Society really goes the extra mile to provide an experience that is, shall we say, unique. If I might be permitted some cheap and amateurish philosophy, I have a theory. You may want to skip this bit if you’re of a non-wanky disposition.

We, humanity as a whole, are a deeply confused species. We’re expected to behave ourselves at all times – don’t say this out loud, don’t scream, mind your own business, eat your prunes, be pure, be vigilant, behave. Yet in reality, once you strip away the bullshit, we’re basically governed by the two imperatives of life – survive and reproduce. Or, to put it more crudely, eat, drink and screw.

Yr. Humble Chronicler in full regalia

The conflict between the way society expects us to behave and the way we want to behave instinctively creates the desire, every so often, to be a little bit naughty. Victor Wynd and the Last Tuesday Society caters to this desire.

The masked ball, as I have said before, is effectively a licence to misbehave. The tickets make it very clear that the event is “Masks obligatory, clothes optional.” I was particularly in a mood to misbehave, having been on this diet for two weeks now. I wasn’t brave enough to go without clothes (more on this later), and so had assembled a look inspired by various sources – part 1890s thug, part the Emcee from Cabaret, part A Clockwork Orange. The waistcoat and cravat were lucky finds in Camden (I think they were glad to get rid of it), the cane originated in 1901 and had not been out in public until then and the bowler came from a market stall in Seven Dials. The finishing touch was translucent white make-up from Charles H. Fox in Covent Garden (I’d told them I was looking for a “corpse-like pallor” and they found the stuff right away).

Also in attendance were various chums, including Mistress B, the Directrix, Teachmaster D, Catlady, Tiny Emma, Long-Haired Tom and various others who don’t have nicknames yet. Two leading lights of the blogosphere were in our party, namely Shoinan and Izzi, both of whom are linked to on the right. Weirdly enough – and this was the point at which reality began to collapse in on itself – also in attendance were a former next-door-neighbour of Yr. Humble Chronicler and, stranger still, the Bro, neither of whom had been invited by me or my friends. Their presence was not unwelcome, just weird is all.

While there, I met another fellow-blogger. I had just been alco-philosophising to Shoinan and Izzi while giggling in the style of the late Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, when a young lady came up to me and asked if I was the chap who writes the London blog. Somewhat confused by reality collapsing still further, I confessed that yes, I was. The blogger in question was Johanne of Mara and Johanne in awesome outfits (http://pleasegiveusfreestuff.wordpress.com) who said that she had learnt of this event through this blog. Which was utterly flattering and totally made my night. I just wish I hadn’t been giggling at the time is all.

One problem that became evident was the difficulty of keeping track of everyone. There are many rooms with many exciting things to see and do, and the event was a popular one. It’s therefore particularly easy to lose members of the party, particularly when naked people naked people naked people.

At some point I was photographed.

I got the impression that people enjoyed themselves, and certainly as the evening went on, quite a few inhibitions were lost. Tiny Emma, Mistress B and Mistress B’s boyfriend ended up in the hot tub and invited Yr. Humble Chronicler to join them, possibly out of masochism.

I was eventually persuaded through a combination of peer pressure and wine. But fear nothing, readers, I am a highly moral individual, and so did not go entirely “as nature intended.” I kept my bowler on throughout, as befits a gentleman.

Eventually we left the hot tub, largely due to an uncouth gentleman who found the presence of so very many unclad folk a little much and decided to “take matters into his own hands,” as they say. Getting it on with someone else in the hot tub is cool and totally in keeping with the occasion. Getting it on with yourself in the hot tub is just not cricket.

There were parts I missed out on – there was, for instance, a life drawing class. I used to be pretty not-bad at life drawing back in the day, so this would have been a fine opportunity to see if I was still any good. I also avoided the bucking-mechanical-woman, as I suspected it would not have gone well with the amount of gin in my system at that point.

I’d only have one real complaint, and that’s the bars. There were several, and they all had massive, massive queues. Now, I appreciate that bar staff are only human, and that the more staff you have, the more staff you have to pay for, but the waiting time for drinks was just ridiculous. Izzi was half an hour buying a round of drinks (we love you, Izzi!) and the Bro reported waiting an hour at a different bar. I gave up myself, but in turning around managed to trip and fall flat on my arse which, even at the time, I had to acknowledge looked pretty funny.

This was the one major fault I would raise, though, and on the whole we all had a fantastic time and learnt many interesting things. For instance, I learnt that, after the first few hours of seeing random naked people doing decadent things, you find your perception altering. That is to say, you’ve seen so many crazy and naked things that it kind of stops being an issue. It’s just like, “Hey, there’s a guy. Hey, there’s his gentleman’s prerogatives. Congratulations, naked guy, your girlfriend is a lucky woman.” I mean, I never thought it was possible to see too many breasts, you know what I mean?

We stumbled out at four in the morning, as the sun was coming up. I staggered towards Elephant and Castle, still in my consumptive makeup and full costume, getting some funny looks from the passers-by in the style of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

I woke up at 3 the following afternoon, thinking I was terribly hungover. It turned out I just hadn’t taken the makeup off yet.

Roll on the October event, I say.

Further Reading

http://pleasegiveusfreestuff.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/14/ - Mara and Johanne offer their take on events.

http://bryndlewindle.blogspot.com/2010/05/last-tuesday-society-may-masked-ball.html - Another review, this time from a Walthamstow-ite.

http://alisonadventures.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/the-great-may-masked-ball-a-review-in-prose/ - Another review, this one less nudity-filled than the previous ones.

Fly, my pretties

Even the most die-hard anti-global-warming  Jeremy-Clarkson type would have to acknowledge that humanity, as a species, has had a severe effect on the ecosystem. I need not mention such obvious examples as the dodo and the passenger pigeon – in the eighteenth century, it was actually considered a noble thing to make as many animals as possible extinct. Apparently it was something to do with establishing how great we were.

But not only have we been responsible for wiping certain species out, we’ve also put quite a lot of animals into places where they had no business being. Rabbits are a major pest in Australia and wallabies may be found wild in Derbyshire of all places. On occasion, animals end up in odd places due to no direct intervention on the part of humanity. The urban pigeon springs to mind. A coastal bird, they found city buildings to be a most agreeable substitute for their natural habitat in craggy cliff faces.

The other day I saw a couple of examples of some of the more recent arrivals to make their home on our shores (watch out, Daily Mail readers). Unfamiliar birdsong caught my attention, and upon looking up I saw two of the feathered chaps you see above left. As regular viewers of this blog will know, I live in South London, where this species is becoming increasingly common.

They are rose-ringed parakeets. Your boy the rose-ringed parakeet is a popular choice as a pet, being able to mimic human speech. It’s also very adaptable, explaining no doubt how they were able to establish a population here.

They are believed to have originated in South Asia. There are estimated to be about 10,000 in Britain. Exactly how they came to roam wild is unknown, but it doesn’t take an ornithologist to come up with an educated guess. They most likely escaped from captivity, though when and how many escaped is unknown. One rather romantic albeit perhaps unlikely story has it that they are all descended from a pair released by Jimi Hendrix.

They are most commonly sighted in the suburbs of South London, and have been dubbed “the Kingston parakeets,” though Twickenham, Chessington and Richmond have all laid claim to them and they have been sighted as far North as Hampstead. Well, further, too, but beyond Watford is mostly wasteland as far as I can tell. There are believed to be colonies along the South Coast. Further afield, there are also flocks – unrelated to the British ones as far as anyone can tell – in Belgium and the Netherlands.

The parakeets are believed to bring luck – apparently two in your garden is a sign of favourable weather coming up. Less fortunately, there are fears among conservationist-types that, as with the pigeon and the grey squirrel, these green fellows may threaten native animals (not literally, although the concept of a parakeet mugging a sparrow at knifepoint is worth consideration) and eventually have to be hunted down, thus resulting in widespread Monty Python tributes.

Oddly enough, given that they are thriving over here, in their native South Asia they are under threat. Their popularity as pets has resulted in huge numbers being captured and treated in ways that are not good. As a result, the conservationists over there are trying to discourage the pet trade.

[Incidentally, a similar situation exists with the Syrian Golden Hamster, a popular pet that is almost extinct in the wild.]

Of course, if they’re that worried about losing their parakeets, I’m sure we could let them have some of ours. No doubt it would result in a hilarious culture clash as the sophisticated urban parakeets try to get to grips with life in the jungle.