Great balls of fire!

The midweek post comes a little early this time around, chums. Allow me to explain.

You see, once again, Yr. Humble Chronicler is doing a show. But no ordinary show. This time, Youth Action Theatre is spreading its wings somewhat and going for an all out, high-camp, rock ‘n’ roll musical, Return to the Forbidden Planet! Wooo!

If you don’t know the show, it’s… well, how can I describe it? It’s a spoof of sci-fi B-movies which is based loosely on The Tempest, set to a track of classic tunes from the 1950s and ’60s. It owes more than a little to Forbidden Planet, as you might imagine from the title, but also borrows liberally from just about every terrible science fiction film of that era. As well as pretty much everything Shakespeare ever wrote. It’s complicated.

The basic story is that the spaceship Albatross, under the command of the heroic Captain Tempest, makes the mistake of going on a routine survey expedition. As you know if you’ve watched any episode of Star Trek, in the future the word “routine” means exactly the opposite of what it does now, and the ship gets diverted to the mysterious planet of D’Illyria. There, they are greeted by the mad Doctor Prospero, his beautiful daughter Miranda and their camp robot Ariel. And then things start to go wrong. What is the terrible secret of D’Illyria? Who is the enigmatic new science officer? Where did Prospero get that outfit? All this and more will be revealed…

(By the way, I’m playing Doctor Prospero. Yeah, I do have to sing. Yeah, I am slightly bricking it.)

If science fiction campiness is not to your taste, I should mention once again our extremely rocking soundtrack. Good Vibrations, Shakin’ All Over, All Shook Up and Shake, Rattle and Roll are in there, along with a variety of songs that aren’t about vibrating at all, like Teenager in Love, Mr Spaceman, Great Balls of Fire, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, Wipeout, The Monster Mash, The Young Ones… and that’s just the ones you’ve heard of. All live, performed by an awesomely talented cast, and also me.

Our production is going pretty all-out. We’ve got the Mill doing our special effects – that’s the Mill, as in, the people who do Doctor Who and Torchwood. I know, right? We’re going to have a live band on stage. We’re transforming the Hampton Hill Playhouse into a spaceship (not literally). It’s all going to need a lot of work, so Yr. Humble Chronicler intends to be mucking in tomorrow evening.

Anyway, if you’re looking for something fun to do next week, something that’ll put a spring in your step, the show runs 9th-12th November inclusive at the Hampton Hill Playhouse in West London. To book tickets, kindly click on this link. Blast off!

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…

Welcome to Tooting

I’ve been off work this past weekandahalf, and I’ll be honest, it’s getting a little dull being stuck at home all the time. I never thought I’d miss being in an office.

On the other hand, it’s given me an opportunity to experience my local area during the day. To see the neighbourhood in a new light. It’s like one of those movies where everyone learns a very important lesson and in the space of a week becomes a whole new person. Except this time it’s set in Tooting.

Not much gets set in Tooting. The only thing that springs immediately to mind is Citizen Smith. Don’t get me wrong, in many ways it’s a pretty cool place, particularly once you get up towards Tooting Bec, but in many ways it’s also… not. At least, not on a weekday.

For instance, one thing you notice is a certain type of triumvirate. Two members of the triumvirate will be male humans, very fat, clipper haircuts all over, swigging from cans of lager even though it’s ten in the goddamn morning, and the third will be a ratty dog. So common is this combination that I’m starting to think maybe we should think of all three as part of a single colonial organism, like the Portuguese Man O’ War. Seriously, you see them everywhere. I’ve even had one or two of them attempt to half-arsedly start a fight with me, even though the merest attempt at physical exertion by any of them would result in a massive heart attack. You know that feeling you get when every snobbish thought you’ve ever had suddenly feels justified? Yeah.

I’ve also been trying to get in shape a bit. There’s been a lot of beer recently, and I was starting to feel guilty. Fortunately, on the intriguingly-named Figges Marsh, they’ve installed one of those new outdoor gyms. This is great if you’re me – I can’t be arsed with joining a gym. The concept apparently originates in China, and it’s one of those things the government likes because it helps to Improve the Health of the Nation. God knows it’s not just me who needs that. I mean, can you imagine? 2012 comes along and we’re all, “Oh hey man, I know I live just around the corner, but I’m going to take the bus.” What will the other countries think of us then?

Where was I? Yes, outdoor gyms. The one on Figges Marsh seems to be pretty popular. Every time I’ve been there, there have always been plenty of other users. I also found it pretty easy to use. It turns out my upper body strength lags significantly behind my lower body strength, which is lame. Must be all that running from the police.

It also turns out that the bank gets very busy, but that’s not interesting. Although seriously, what was with the guy behind me who felt the need to sigh and tut every thirty seconds? I know bank queues are boring. This is not a new thing.

As for tomorrow? Well, who knows, my friends. Who knows.

Fairies, schizophrenia and other distractions

The other day I found myself at a loose end and so, as I’d been meaning to do for quite some time, I went with Hurricane Jack to the Richard Dadd exhibition at Orleans House in Twickenham, which as it happened was in its final week.

Richard Dadd is primarily famous for two things – fairy paintings and being insane. Outsider art, particularly that produced by the mentally ill, holds a strange fascination for me. I suppose it’s because art, perhaps more effectively than any other form of expression, offers a view into the mind. Art is heavily reliant on emotion and imagination, and as such is an ideal gauge of the mind. I’m not the first one to suggest this, of course, and art therapy is these days a popular form of psychiatric treatment.

In the 19th century, of course, there was no such thing as art therapy. Hell, there was hardly anything you’d even call therapy in the modern sense. However, during Richard Dadd’s periods in Bedlam and Broadmoor, he produced a number of works of art that are these days regarded as classics of outsider art – although given that he was an established and respected mainstream painter, it’s debatable whether you could really call him an “outsider artist.”

Come Unto These Yellow Sands, 1842

I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. Dadd was born in 1817 and, from a young age, was considered a highly talented artist. A number of his works were put on show at the Royal Academy and he received several commissions from wealthy patrons. Unfortunately, he also exhibited a number of unusual personality traits which were amplified during a trip to the Middle East. He became violent and deluded, hearing voices and developing the belief that he was descended from Osiris and obliged to fight the Devil. The Devil, he believed, was capable of taking human form, and one of the forms he took was that of Dadd’s own father. Therefore, on 28th August 1843, he murdered his father and fled to France. He was arrested and put in Bedlam. Among his personal effects were a number of sketches of friends and family members with their throats cut and a list of people who he felt had to die. The general consensus now seems to be that he was afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia.

The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke, 1855-64

During his period in Bedlam he produced his most famous works, including the intricate fairy painting, The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke. This is commonly regarded as his masterpiece, inspiring a song by Queen and the Terry Pratchett novel The Wee Free Men. The intense detail in this and his other fairy paintings tends to be seen as a sign of an obsessive mind (although you might also argue that it’s a sign of someone with a lot of time and very little to do, but then, I’m not an art critic or therapist).

The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke wasn’t in the exhibition, nor were any of Dadd’s other fairy paintings. Actually, the exhibition seemed almost apologetic about this fact. I think this was unnecessary – it’s very often the case with artists, particularly notorious ones, that a particular work or type of work they did has been allowed to eclipse other, equally worthy works.

Sketch to Illustrate the Passions: Agony – Raving Madness

So what we have in this exhibition is, basically, The Rest. A selection of Dadd’s art from before his arrest and throughout his time at Bedlam and Broadmoor. Quite a lot of it is, I’ll be honest, rather pretty. If you didn’t know its origins, you wouldn’t be able to tell it was the work of a schizophrenic. I rather liked his stained glass work. However, there were a number of works seemingly produced as a deliberate expression of his mental state – the evocative “Passions” series stood out for me, which features allegorical figures representing various negative qualities. Some of these appear to have been painted from life, including a couple of representations of the architecture of Bedlam.

 

I wouldn’t have described the exhibition as what I was expecting from a Richard Dadd show, and that actually doesn’t bother me at all. I came away with what I felt was a fuller understanding of a very complex artist. Frankly, the chap deserves better than to be known simply as a mad artist.

 

Oh hey, look at this

Izzi has a new blog devoted to art. Take a look at it, do.

The Infernal Tower

There have been some interesting proposals for London buildings over the years, from the Pyramid of Death to the scheme to rebuild the Crystal Palace so that it stood on its end. Perhaps the most significant landmark-that-never-was was the Wembley Tower.

It all started with the old Metropolitan Railway. Being a commercial enterprise, the directors of this company were naturally keen to make as much money as humanly possible. In the 1880s, though, they were already making quite a lot of money. What is a railway tycoon to do under such circumstances? If you were Edward Watkin, Chairman of the company, you simply create more traffic by making London bigger.

The idea was simple. Buy land out in the sticks where it’s cheap, miles away from London. Build a railway to it, build some houses on it and bam! You got yourself a suburb, mister. Sell the houses, there’s a goldmine for ya. You’d be amazed how much of London basically didn’t exist until people did this. Put it this way – until the 1860s, Kensington was considered to be a rural village.

Watkin was a man who liked to think big. For instance, his ultimate plan for the Metropolitan was to run trains up to Manchester and down to Paris (I forget how that one turned out). When he looked upon the route of his railway, he decided that what his grand plan needed was a selling point. Some sort of focus that would draw people to the area (and, let’s not forget, drive up the land values).

In 1889, the latest wonder of the world was the Eiffel Tower. Watkin came to the conclusion that what we needed in London was something similarly troubling to Freud, only more so. Possible sites included High Street Kensington and Gloucester Road, but eventually it was decided to purchase a 280-acre site at Wembley and develop that. Former Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone asked questions in Parliament on behalf of Watkin and was told by the committee that “although the atmosphere of London may not be so favourable to extensive views as Paris, the view would be incomparably superior.” Suck-ups.

Having been given the go-ahead, the Metropolitan Tower Committee was formed in 1890 to decide on the form this tower would take. Many exciting designs were proposed. I think my favourite was one based on the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I’m no structural engineer, but I can’t help wondering how wise it would have been to build something like the Leaning Tower, only much taller. I also like the one about the “colony of aerial vegetarians.” Gustave Eiffel himself was even approached and did initially show some interest, only to decline later on patriotic grounds (he probably heard that dis about the views in Paris).

As it happened, the final design was very similar to the Eiffel Tower, only 320 metres taller. Work started in 189e and in 1896 the park around the tower’s base was opened to the public. The tower had only reached its first stage, but hopes were high even if the structure wasn’t.

Yet already problems were being encountered – the year before, the new Chairman of the Metropolitan, John Bell, had already been convinced the whole thing was a white elephant. It turned out that the foundations couldn’t quite support all that weight on just four legs (the original design called for eight). The biggest issue of all, though, was money. It turned out that not everyone was as enthusiastic as the Parliamentary committee, and very few were willing to invest. The park itself was not the major tourist attraction Watkin had hoped for, and work ground to a halt.

In fact, the tower ended up having a detrimental effect on the Metropolitan Railway. At this time, the Great Central Railway used the Met lines to get into London, a costly move. With the construction of the Tower, the Great Central was able to say (and I’m paraphrasing here y’understand), “Oh hey, that’s cool, with all that extra traffic you’ll be getting from the Tower you won’t be able to run our little trains so we’rebuildingourownlineintoLondonbyenow,” and promptly rushed off to Marylebone.

The Tower also had something of a domino effect on Watkin’s other schemes – it was very clear, as the mostly-incomplete tower rusted away, that Watkin had maybe lost his golden touch, and so investment in his grand scheme to run trains to Paris dried up as well. The ugly monument gained such unflattering nicknames as “the London Stump” and, the name by which it is perhaps best known today, “Watkin’s Folly.”

The enterprise went bust in 1899, in 1901 Watkin himself passed away and in 1902 the whole thing was declared a health and safety hazard and closed down. In 1907 the remains were blown up and sold for scrap. Yet Watkin’s scheme was not entirely in vain – in the 1920s, when the organisers of the British Empire Exhibition were looking for somewhere to build their stadium, they discovered there was a perfectly peachy-keen area of flat ground at Wembley…

… and the rest, they say, is history.

Coke en Stock(well)

Don't explain the joke, you idiot.

I thought I’d elaborate a little on a small adventure that happened on the way back from the Carnival, as described in the last entry, for ’twas quite the strangest thing that happened that day. Well, not quite the strangest. Probably in the top ten. Or twenty. It was certainly strange.

You see, the problem with being very drunk and very tired and altogether in quite a state is that it can be quite difficult to stay awake. And the problem with getting from Bayswater to Colliers Wood is that it’s quite a complicated route by night bus. End result was that I kept ending up in completely the wrong place by virtue of falling asleep on the bus. Eventually, when I ended up in Vauxhall, I decided to give it up as a bad job and walk as far as I could.

Now, it took me quite a while to figure out that Vauxhall is close to Stockwell, and a night bus to Colliers Wood goes that way. It is a testament to how very mashed up I was that it took me this long – I’ve worked in Stockwell and Waterloo, and several times I’ve walked from one to the other by way of Vauxhall.

Nevertheless, after much trial and error, I arrived in Stockwell. All in all, I was feeling pretty invincible. Which is good, because as places go, Stockwell sucks.

[PARENTHESIS: I've noticed something odd about London. My decadent and sinful lifestyle takes me through many different parts of the city. Yet in places like Hackney, Elephant & Castle, Battersea, Brixton, Tooting, Feltham and Stockwell, I rarely have any trouble. Meanwhile, in supposedly affluent, middle-class places like Richmond, Kingston and Wimbledon, I've had far more trouble with lairy drunks trying to start fights - to the extent that I actually try to avoid Kingston and Wimbledon late on a Friday or Saturday.]

Stockwell is famous mostly for the notorious case of the Stockwell Strangler back in 1986 and in 2005, for the shooting by police of Jean Charles de Menezes during the 7/7 attacks. Apparently it’s on the up these days due to the fact that it is literally within walking distance of Central London. At the moment, though, it’s still pretty sketchy. This I mused upon as I waited for the good old N155.

At this point, a couple of gentlemen approached me. Well, I didn’t initially think they were approaching me – after all, it’s a bus stop, one of the things about public transport is that it’s for the public (though you wouldn’t think that judging by some of the people you mumble mumble mumble).

But then one of them spoke up. “I like your…” he began, and ran into difficulties. My scuffed jeans, chocolate-smeared T-shirt and worn out shoes didn’t exactly give him much to work with, and so he settled on “…glasses.”

“Thanks,” I said, uncertain how best to react. I mean, I like my glasses too. They stop me from being blind. They are, I must emphasise, nothing special. Fairly discreet with black wire frames. Basically, I use them to see with.

“You having a good night?” asked the fellow.

“Yeah, you know, long night, good night, complicated, going home now, bed,” I said incomprehensibly. All of which was true.  At this stage it was half past four and the fun part of being drunk was well and truly over. I just wanted to get home.

“Oh hey, that’s great,” said the chap. “Do you like Charlie?”

I was confused. Charlie? Was that his friend? Was I being propositioned? Solicited, even?

“Sorry?”

“Do you like Charlie?”

“Er?”

“Charlie?” He opened his bag and pulled out a couple of bags of white powder. “Charlie?” he repeared.

Ah yes, Charlie. Cocaine. Blow. Peruvian Lady. Bolivian marching powder. Aunt Nora. Witch and Zip. Foo-foo dust. The White Stuff. Alas, cocaine is not among my many vices, and I explained as much.

“Not at all?” asked the man, with palpable disappointment.

“Afraid not. I’m more of a booze man myself.”

“Not even to try?”

“Sorry. It’s just very late at night, I don’t want a buzz, I just want to go to bed.”

“Oh,” said the man sadly, and he and his friend trudged off.

I spoke the next day to Hurricane Jack and Succubusface, who opined that the guy was either not a very good drug dealer or the cocaine he had was fake, as discretion should really be your watchword when you’re out selling illegal substances in public. Indeed, it’s my own personal experience that normally when someone approaches you with the intent of selling drugs, what you get is a muttered “Skunk?” as they pass you. At least, I think that guy was selling skunk, it was fair to say that I’d woken up in the wrong part of London and not showered that morning.

And so I think we all learned an important lesson.

Mine eyes dazzle

Now, I’m afraid I’m going to be a bit rubbish over the next two weeks, chums. The reason for this is that, as I have previously said, I’m going to be in Youth Action Theatre’s production of The Duchess of Malfi, this week in London and next week at the Edinburgh Fringe. This will, I fear, make updates on this blog sporadic at best.

Of course, if you’d like to see this play yourself, you’d be most welcome to come along. This week – from Tuesday 9th to Thursday 11th August – we will be performing at the Hampton Hill Playhouse as part of a double-bill with a rather exciting devised piece called Lost and Found. It’s a world premiere sort of thing, so I must confess to not knowing a huge amount about it – however, I can vouch for the talent of the author, cast and director. It’s made extra-exciting by the fact that Yr. Humble Chronicler is supplying some of the props.

The Duchess of Malfi follows, and in accordance with the limitations of the Edinburgh Fringe, is pared down to an hour long. What this means is that you can tell everyone you’ve seen Webster’s masterpiece, but you haven’t had to sit through the full-length version which is like six weeks long or something.

If this all sounds like your kind of thing, and frankly why wouldn’t it, more info can be found here. Or if I’ve excited you sufficiently with this blog entry alone, you can book tickets here.

Of course, it might be that you’re in Edinburgh the following week, in which case why not come to see us up there? We’ll be at The Space (venue 36) from August 15th-20th, and you can book tickets here or here.

So there we are. I hope you’re as excited as I am, and I hope to see you there. Until next time, chums.

Why I Am Not A Motorist

 

It goes without saying that this never happens.

A question I get asked a lot is why I don’t drive. This seems like a bit of an odd thing to ask me, as even the most casual acquaintance knows the obvious answer to be “because I’m a drunken psychopath reprobate.” At this point, the person laughs and asks what the real reason is. Then I stab them up good for suggesting that I’m a liar. Well, I did warn them.

But anyway, because the truth hurts (literally), I’ve come up with some more “believable” reasons for why I, as someone who lives in London, do not drive.

1. Public transport is actually pretty good

I’ll admit that I have been known to complain about public transport now and again. But the fact is that if you live in London, you are very fortunate in terms of getting around. As you may already know, I live in Colliers Wood. I’m on the Northern Line. Within half an hour’s walk are Wimbledon, Haydons Road, South Wimbledon, Tooting Broadway, Tooting Bec and Tooting stations. I’m also within walking distance of the Tramlink and there are several buses passing through. There are night and 24-hour buses, and I’m just off the main road, so I am never ever stranded as long as I’m in London (although there are also 24-hour services to Oxford and St Albans, other familiar haunts of mine). Everywhere I need to go on a regular basis, I can get to without a car.

2. Money

I have an Oyster Travelcard which costs me just over £150 a month. Now, that’s quite a lot, but as I work in Central London it works out cheaper than paying a fare every time I use public transport. And as it’s a work expense, what that means is that everything time I use that other than for work, I’m effectively getting free travel.

If I had a car, I’d have to pay for petrol, maintenance, road tax, parking and the Congestion Charge. That’s before the start-up costs of learning to drive and buying the damn car in the first place. This leads me on to…

3. Even if I did get a car, I’d have to use public transport anyway.

This man would totally drink and drive.

As regular readers will be aware, I like to party. Quite often, when I go out, booze is involved. As a responsible adult (har har), I could not possibly drive after such libation, so I would have to either not take my car out or not drink. Few things are more tiresome than being the one sober individual at a wild party, so I’d have to use public transport anyway.

That’s before we’ve got on to the fact that in Central London, traffic and parking are bastards anyway. Coupled with the congestion charge, it would be a rare occasion when driving into London would actually be easier than taking the Tube. I know an awful lot of people who have cars but commute by public transport anyway. So if I’m going to shell out for the Oyster, might as well save my money on a car I won’t use.

4. Walking is awesome

I love to walk. I walk all over the place. Often with no plan or end goal, just walking around the city, seeing what I can see. I’ll take random and illogical routes. I’ll explore places that are probably best left unexplored. When I set out on my own, I rarely know exactly where I’m going to end up. This is an experience that you can’t replicate in a car. You just don’t have that flexibility, and if you’re going slowly enough to appreciate the backstreets you’ll probably get done for kerb crawling.

And walking is a great way to stay in shape, too. I find exercise boring as all hell, so if I can maintain my shape doing something I love, then so much the better. If I over-indulge one night, well, the next day I’ll take the long route home instead to compensate.

5. Everything is nearby

Even if I didn’t have excellent public transport, Colliers Wood is not badly located for shops. As I mentioned, I’m within walking distance of Wimbledon and Tooting Broadway, which are excellent places to shop. Everything I actually need, I can get from there. What’s more, there is a massive, massive Sainsbury’s and a similarly huge Marks and Spencer about five minutes from me.

“But Tom, you handsome bastard,” I hear you cry, “isn’t it a hassle when you’re doing your weekly shop, having to carry all those bags? I mean, even ten minutes on foot with heavy shopping can be a Herculean task.” Firstly, it’s a bit weird that you all used those exact same words, but secondly I should point out that I’m a bachelor with no need to plan ahead shopping-wise. I don’t really do a “weekly shop” per se. More a “today and possibly tomorrow if there’s anything left over, and oh damn I’ve forgotten something, well, let’s stop at the Tesco petrol station on the way back” shop.

6. Think about the environment!

Actually, I don’t, but the fact that I don’t drive a car does make me a bit more environmentally friendly now you come to mention it. Smug!

To conclude

I don’t drive because I don’t need to. I appreciate this doesn’t apply to everyone, and that there are perfectly sound reasons for owning a car if you’re not in my circumstances. I also admit that there are circumstances where even I would find a car useful, but these arise so rarely as to not be worth worrying about.

Plus I’ve seen that film Cars, set in a post-apocalyptic world where vehicles have risen up and slaughtered their human masters in a bid to create an automobiles-only society. Let’s not let that come to pass.

Foulwell and Kingston-Upon-Railway

The suburbs are weird, aren’t they? I mean, by their very nature. Central London has long been a well-defined place. City walls, city gates, parish boundaries, main roads and the river have meant that for centuries the different places in London have been pretty clearly delineated. Granted, there’s the occasional dispute about, e.g., where the West End ends, and there are new places like Fitzrovia and Chinatown to contend with, but by and large you know where you are.

The suburbs, though, are different. You can’t really have suburbs until you have decent transport, so the area we now tend to think of as “suburbia” didn’t really exist until the 19th century. And I know I go on about the railways in London quite a lot, but the fact is that they were absolutely instrumental to the formation of Greater London.

For instance, take where I live – Colliers Wood. Where is Colliers Wood? It’s at the southern end of the Northern Line (incidentally, it’s a geographical irony that the Northern Line goes further south than any other Tube line). When was it founded? Well, basically, Colliers Wood-the-place didn’t exist until 1926, when the Tube station was opened. The area wasn’t exactly desolate and uninhabited, but this place as a whole was known as Merton. Colliers Wood was a local landmark that hadn’t existed for about fifty years when the Tube came along. Had the Underground station been named something different, I might well consider myself a resident of Merton Abbey, or Haydons Road, or Tooting-on-Tube.

The last may seem like a flight of fancy, but know this – there nearly was a suburb with an equally stupid name. When the London and Southampton Railway opened their station a little way south of the busy market town of Kingston, they planned to call it Kingston-upon-Railway. Because it sort-of served Kingston, but not quite. Good sense eventually prevailed, and it was renamed in 1869. The original Surbiton was a small village, also not-quite-served by the new station. However, the station and its railway line were very convenient for commuters, and so a town grew up around the station. The station was called Surbiton, so, inevitably, was the town around it. What if the station had been called something else? Would we even have a Surbiton today? Would we think of Kingston-upon-Railway as the main town, and Kingston-upon-Thames be relegated to the status of “Old Kingston” or some such?

I suspect a few of the suburbs, such as Hampton Wick, wouldn’t really be anything more than a theoretical concept were it not for their railway stations. Hampton Wick has little by way of a focal point other than its station. Certain other suburbs, lacking notability, were absorbed by others as the commuter towns expanded – Lonesome being a case in point, once a village in its own right and now just a part of Streatham.

And this brings me on to the strange case of Fulwell. Fulwell is one of those places that always feels as if it’s on the verge of vanishing, as I had cause to reflect when I went there for a party on Saturday. It’s quite old, its name may have derived from “foul well” (so good work on getting that renamed, I suppose). It doesn’t really have a high street to speak of – a few shops, but nothing to distinguish it from the outlying parts of Twickenham or Teddington, on whose borders it lies. Its major landmark is the bus garage, pictured above right, but that’s more of an obstacle than a focal point. There is a railway station, sure, but it’s an unmanned two-platform branch line affair in a back street. I’m not clear exactly where it begins and ends. I reckon that, were the station to be renamed, the town would cease to exist altogether, torn between Teddington and Twickenham. It’s usually at this point that a bunch of angry residents of the area post a huge rant in the comments section about how I’m wrong and stupid, so scroll down to skip straight to that.

Yet right next to Fulwell, but a short walk from the station, you have Hampton Hill – nothing but a high street really, yet nobody would dispute the validity of its existence. Damned if I understand the suburbs.

Confessions of a Blogger

Can we talk about filth for a moment? Everyone okay with that? Vicar, you okay with that? Excellent, then we’ll begin. See, I’d like to talk today about one of those oddities of British cinema, a strange and slightly embarrassing dead-end that film historians rather like to pretend never happened. Namely, the British Sex Comedy.

Sex and comedy go well together. The human attitude to sex (generally speaking) is a very paradoxical thing. We’re not supposed to talk about it, but nevertheless it’s something that goes on all the time. Most of the population are either doing it or after it, whether they’ll admit it or not. The hypocrisy and repression surrounding it have been fertile grounds for humour since, well, literature was invented. Certainly Aristophanes managed to get a few gags out of it.

The joke here would appear to revolve around fisting.

Few nations not actively under a theocracy were quite as repressed as Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries, and so a culture of innuendo-laden humour developed. A fine example is the rise of the saucy seaside postcard, one of which is shown on the right. Then, of course, you got the Carry On films, whose humour was heavily reliant on innuendo and which were sometimes funny. There’s a lot of nostalgia for this sort of thing now, with the Carry On films being practically respectable.

In the 1970s, however, British cinema ran into a problem – the American money that had funded the domestic product since the 1960s dried up, and so a pressing need developed for movies that would be cheap to produce, but which would make an awful lot of money. The solution was simple – comedy was cheap and sex brought in the punters.

The result was a slew of cheap, badly-made sex comedies made by Soho-based companies that somehow managed to be neither sexy nor funny. The plot was pretty much immaterial, just so long as you could get a few aspiring actresses to get ‘em out for the lads. All that was really necessary was a setting that could be produced on the cheap. Basically, you were pushing the boat out if you filmed it beyond the edges of Greater London. If you were really lucky, you might get a derelict holiday camp or a condemned country house to play with. A common scenario, notably in the Confessions of… and Adventures of… series as well as many, many imitators, was that you would have a lovable and hideously ugly loser who would somehow be irresistable to attractive young women and… well, that was about it. Basically, invent a scenario into which naked women could be inserted and polish off the script in a day or two, we start filming Monday.

The humour, such as it was, tended to be weak innuendo and witless slapstick.  Bear in mind that this was an era when On The Buses was considered hilarious, and you’ll understand that the bar for hilarity in Britain was set pretty low.It didn’t really matter, in any case. I don’t think anyone from the 1970s to the present day has ever watched a British sex comedy for the humour.

Oddly enough, given that the majors selling point was sex, there’s something peculiarly unsexy about these films. Maybe it’s that the comedy isn’t exactly a turn-on – speeded-up footage and swannee whistles are alright for Benny Hill, but they don’t exactly say “steamy love scene.” Maybe it’s the gloomy, low-budget settings. If I were to offer my own personal suggestion, maybe it’s because they’re set in a universe in which Robin Askwith is a sex symbol.

Robin Askwith. Control yourselves, ladies.

There’s also something peculiarly tragic about watching them today. Due to the state of British cinema, these films were often able to obtain the services of actors who you’d think could do a lot better – John Le Mesurier, Windsor Davies, Charles Hawtrey. Some of them were clearly at the end of their careers and desperate for a buck - Alfie Bass in Come Play With Me being a particularly depressing example. This film is also notable for featuring Mary Millington, who would be dead of suicide two years later, and for starring and being directed by Harrison Marks, a man who never quite achieved the artistic credibility he so desperately desired. Once you know the background, it’s about the most miserable comedy ever written.

 

And yet, and yet. Despite being unutterably terrible, these films were undeniably successful. The Adventures of a Taxi Driver made more money in the UK than Taxi Driver on its release (no, I’m not the first person to make this observation). I spoke about actors ending their career with this crap – well, quite a few actually went on to become successful in more legitimate media. Robert Lindsay, Lynda Bellingham and Christopher Biggins all received an early leg-up from the dirty mac brigade. Hell, by the mid-1970s, other films were trying to imitate them. Try watching the 1974 Carry On Emmanuelle, whose dire attempts to imitate sex comedies led Barbara Windsor to turn the job down.

 

The success of these films highlights the hypocrisy I mentioned earlier – for all Mary Whitehouse and the like railed against “smut,” obviously there were enough people who disagreed with her to make these films a financially attractive proposition. In those days, it was about as explicit as you could get in the UK.

 

Such films ceased in the early 1980s, the oft-cited reason being that more explicit and better-made pornography from Europe and the States became available on home video around this time. The British cinema industry collectively decided to pretend that none of this had ever happened and the British cinema audience decided to go along with that. Aside from a few throwbacks like the dire Sex Lives of the Potato Men a few years back, the genre is deceased.

 

Or is it? Sure, the reasons for making these films no longer exist, and the chances of anything like this appearing in the mainstream cinema again are slim to nil, but I will leave you with this fact. The most successful porn star in Britain today is a Cockney chancer operating under the name of Ben Dover. Maybe the genre didn’t die. Maybe it just crossed over.

 

Anyway, I’m off to have a wash. I may never be clean again.