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THE LONDON BLOG

"there is in London all that life can afford" -
Samuel Johnson, 1777

Gentle reader, as 'blogs are now too fashionable to ignore we've decide to start one ourselves. If no-one reads it we'll stop it. You have been warned.

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SATURDAY 6th Back from snowy Vienna to a dull cloudy London. As we flew in there were three banks of clouds stacked on top of each other, the final grey, depressing one only fifty feet from the ground. And it was raining.

Driving back into London reminded us of the contrast between road signage in Europe and Britain. Road signs were harmonised in the UK way back in 1951, and won major international awards: most standard signs worldwide are pale imitations. At the same time the Underground and the NHS got their own, unique, and copyright, typefaces. Up until that point each local council had its own unique and divergent signs.
But at least the signs are there. Driving into Vienna there were only two types of signs: To The Motorway or To the Centre.
Austria is the size of inner London, population-wise and the Haupstadt is thought of more as a single village, so they see no need for signs to different parts of town. Whereas London is thought of as a collection of conjoined villages: The West End, Mayfair, Belgravia, Chelsea, Kensington, Islington, Fitzrovia, etc etc so we need and use roadsigns. However the roadsigns merely indicate the direction the local borough council wants you to take - they're not the most direct nor the shortest route: hence 'the knowledge' that taxi drivers have to accumulate.

When they were creating the new town of Milton Keynes, amusingly named after two economists (thank the gods they didn't call it Marx-Hitler Stadt) they changed the roadsigns in the region to bring traffic into the famous home of mini roundabouts. Suddenly you couldn't drive from London to Cambridge without going through Milton Keynes. It put the city on the map. It remains, however, a boring corporate wet-dream of a town. Anarchy is always the best town planner.

We read in the Independent that the new Rough Guide to London thinks it's is the World's Happening City - they're probably right. It has a list of cool places: the editor of that renowned, if unread, newspaper produced his own: Cool restaurant: Gordon Ramsey at Claridges and the Berkeley Hotel (expensive);  Best place for Tea/light meal: The Wolseley at 160 Piccadilly;  Cool Zones: Clerkenwell, The Borough (here Time Out concurs);  Best galleries: Haunch of Venison in the Yard of the same name W1, The Wallace Collection (we agree) and the White Cube in Hoxton (soon to relocate).  Hoxton as a cool spot is outre, they say, but it's still packed. Time Out says the Borough's Bermondsey St is the coolest part of London. Yes, to live here, as we do, gentle reader, but not really for tourists - though it's the best place to eat in the area. Borough is a cool district, particularly the market area, and if you can afford it, live here, though it's shockingly expensive.
TUESDAY 9th Yesterday, Monday, we were convinced that spring had arrived. There was a floral awakening in the air, the soft scent of provencal blossoms on a mild southerly. Today, however it started snowing. So,gentle reader, beware. Pack for every conceivable weather type until April. After April you can leave out the thermal underwear and the mountain-survival equipment. Just make sure that cagoule is never more than a foot away at all times. Apparently by the end of the week parts of the country will be knee deep in snow, but by the end of the weekend it'll be a lot warmer. You see why the brits are all obsessed by the weather.
Another of our obsessions is tea. I've recently been monitoring my tea consumption. At work (we also have a day job) it's about 2 gallons a shift and only slightly less at home. For all who don't know it: NEVER use sterilised or UHT milk in tea. You risk eternal damnation, or re-incarnation as a teabag. Just don't do it.
Remember our soon-to-be-king wants to be re-incarnated as a tampon (this from a secret transcription of one of the telephone calls he made to his mistress) so it could be worse: at least a tea-bag...(the rest of this sentence was censored by a female contributor)
FRIDAY 12th And here comes the snow. Wales is closed, officially. Essential journeys only, no school, trains sitting idle in their shelters. Shepherds out with their collies on the hills looking for lost lambs. You get the picture. London rail services usually grind to a halt if there's the merest hint of snow (on one occasion 'the wrong type of snow') or if a leaf drops on the line - despite accurate predicions of coming weather. So you can imagine what it will be like.
Funnily enough the one place where there isn't enough snow is in the Scottish skiing districts, which are up for sale. Basically global warming (ie the American lifestyle) is to blame. Skiing in Scotland was never really a goer: for a start it costs more to get there than it does the Alps, the accommodation is more expensive and the food awful: the main reason the Scots live in a cold, wet, midge infested annex is because their diet never made them strong enough to conquer any other part of Europe. They ended up there by default, painting their faces blue (why, one wonders, with the horrible temperatures they have to endure, blue?). The food is awful (though northern Spain gives them a run for their money, but at least the food there was living in recent memory, and the bits that end up on Scottish plates are fed to the animals).

The only thing I can see that Scottish skiing has going for it are the free facials. It's a little known fact that the modern fad for removing the outer layers of the epidermis by pummelling it with granules of hard, wet defoliaters came from the experience of skiing at Glenshee. A horizontal hail will remove the hard corny bits from your face, as well as any protrusions (noses, ears) if you let it. Then you get to the top of the ski lift and have 30 seconds skiing down again. Dinner is completely vitamin-free so you'll feel as exhausted after a few runs here as you would after a day's off piste in Chamonix. The only consolation is the Whiskey: which you can now buy anywhere, cheaper. Scots rave about getting drunk - and as alcohol is known to lower your standards of taste, we can see why.

In summer Scotland is pretty, if you can see it through the swarms of midges. Take jungle-strength insect repellent (and wet weather gear): the hills are alive with the sound of scratching.

My main gripe about Scotland is the expense of being a tourist there: it's bloody expensive: twice the price of a similar holiday in the Alps. Why are you going there then, you might ask? Because of the excellent publicity machine. The Scots (from Waverley onwards) are world class in that department!
Hibernophiles: please note we can be equally rude about Wales, Ireland and the rest of England and will be soon. Watch this space.
SATURDAY 13th My driver remarks that he hates March. Apparantly it's the worst month to drive in London due to all the roadworks. Britain's financial year ends in April and all the local councils are trying to use up the money in their account - on the very sensible basis that the central bureaucracy will reduce their grant for the next year if they have a surplus. So there are roadworks, unncessary road narrowing schemes, speed hump building (we call them 'sleeping policemen') and other such wastes of money.

What the councils never think of doing is reducing their reliance on fines - parking fines, traffic fines and the new 'anti-social' fines to be introduced, with the sole intent of maximising local council revenue. It's under the banner of 'improvements' but just as Bush justified (post hoc) the invasion of Iraq as 'promoting peace and democracy' instead of an oilfield-grab, the councils dream up new schemes to increase their revenue and think the public will be fooled. Which in most cases they are. One could reduce council expenditure by incinerating all 'undesirables' (eg people over 70, the sick, single mothers). It would achieve its aim of reducing council costs and lowering the poll tax. But the public would see through it (well actually they didn't in Germany in the thirties...)
SUNDAY 14th The government is increasingly worried about Britain's 'violent drinking culture' - according to a document 'leaked' today. The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is increasingly concerned about "the situation at night in our towns and city centres" and the "level of alcohol-related crime and disorder".

However pressure from the treasury, which earns a lot of money from alcohol taxes, and the Culture Ministry, heavily lobbied by the drinks industry, has prevented measures being taken. There is also a demonstrable effect of raising taxes on consumption (it works for tobacco). The Government is just about to announce its new 'voluntary' scheme to tackle violence, but with so much money being earned from drinking there is a clear conflict of interest.

A research paper last month showed that most violence takes place near pubs and clubs, late in the evening. In cases where people were suddenly attacked by strangers half were alcohol related. So you're really more likely to be the target of random violence outside a pub/club in the centre of a city or town: the pattern of binge drinking followed by violence has spread from large urban centres to smaller town centres, and moved from Friday and Saturday night to earlier in the week.
We wouldn't want to scare visitors, because this kind of thing isn't as common as you'd think and you can generally avoid it, and unlike America, it doesn't involve guns: the rate of murder is the UK is a fraction of that in the states. However the interesting thing is how a lucrative taxing policy, combined with a national weakness can lead to this kind of thing being 'tolerated'.

The government's only response will be to attack 'anti-social' behaviour with more authoritarian laws. Watch out for policemen and other 'enforcement officers' fining people on the street (but my guess is they won't be hanging round outside pubs at closing time) to meet targets set by the incredibly bureaucratic Blair government. If only government could let slip a little of its dependence on alcohol tax levies perhaps they'd be able to think this through more clearly.

Of course, if the government banned alcohol and promoted ecstasy the problem would disappear overnight. The clubs we've visited where they follow this are peaceable events: however, of course the habituees are reduced to jibbering depressives in five years time, their serotonin receptors burnt to a frazzle, but then they are more suceptible to the advertising of branded products... (the binge drinkers don't generally go on shopping trips to solve their problems) ...maybe the multinationals should be lobbying for more ecstasy.
The thought of town centres filled with loved-up giggling loons, hugging the lamp posts like their best friends, rather than belligerent youths trying to inflict brain damage on passing strangers, is an appealing one. Pass the soma, Aldous...
MONDAY 15th One of the most annoying things about London, as any blue badge guide or historian will tell you, is that it is constantly changing, largely for the worse. We were doing a little checking up on one of our walks. The Speaker's coach used to be kept at the old Whitbread Brewery near the Barbican. It's recently been relaunched as a corporate entertainment centre. If you wonder where the money you pay your broker/banker/insurer/pension goes, it's here. Corporate entertainment is BIG in the city. It's also big at Ascot Races, Silverstone race track, The Royal Opera House etc. Not only are those in the city overpaid, but they are over-entertained as well. That's where your money is going.

Another sad aspect of the changes London are going through is the rapacity of corporate landlords and the effect they are having on small traders. Our favourite coffee shop is having to close down because of huge rent increases. Chinatown is under threat, and if you wondered why you're eating overpriced carbohydrate-based meals in Soho, served by someone who only speaks Serbo-Croat, on minimum wage, it's probably because of Soho Estates. We read a strange thing in the paper the other day: the iconic Paul Raymond Revue Bar, which virtually defines the seedy side of Soho is under threat from Soho estates who are whacking up the rent and probably putting it out of business. And guess who owns Soho Estates...one Paul Raymond.
TUESDAY 16th Another move.. Les Mis moves from its home of many a year in Cambridge Circus to a smaller theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue soon. It was good in its day but its day has come and gone. In its place comes 'The Woman in White'. Apart from one small factor it comes with a mixed pedigree: Charlotte Jones script (good), Trevor 'Cats' Nunn as director (well he has done some other stuff) and has a good director. The bad news is the script is ex Disney (prolefeed, as Eric Blair would say) music is by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

I wonder which 19th century composer he'll rip off (sorry, recycle) for his tunes this time. There was a cabaret act 'Kit and the Widow' who did a long sketch in which they took the ALW 'originals' and transformed them into the 'ALW' rip-offs - and they were legion. (One example was Mendelssohn's violin concerto for the main song from JC Superstar). The Woman in White is one of the best Victorian novels. However a disneyfied version could well be pap. It could be worse: imagine a rap version of 'The Woman in Black' starring P Diddy and Mickey Rourke and featuring the theme from Ghostbusters. So: watch this space.

However bad (or good) the Woman in White is it will probably be a success. ALW's tactic is to keep his pieces running a long time until they become 'established' at which point the coach parties start to book - he has the capital to do this while other, better writers (eg Sondheim) don't. Strangely enough, we were at College with a stuck-up Etonian known for his dreadful 'one man and his piano' singing act. The next time we came across him his name was below ALW on a billboard and he was 6 million pounds better off. That was some time ago - he must be even richer now: the Phantom is still running. But that's Cambridge for you: the next time you see that snotty, spotty erotomane dwarf who used to steal milk from your fridge, he's running the country....
WEDNESDAY 17th Even worse news on the leases/rent story. Pollock's Toy Museum - a rarity and original that compares with the John Soame Museum - is to lose its lease. It's a beautiful old building, run in a beautiful, old way.   As 'The Guardian' put it "all it needs to complete the image is gingerbread windowframes".  It is a treasure that London, and Britain CANNOT afford to lose. If it gets absorbed into the much inferior 'Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood' which has about as much charm as a packet of crisps something irremediable will have been torn out of the heart of the capital.   See http://www.pollocksmuseum.co.uk and also read the Guardian article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1169353,00.html

If you want to discover Britain's answer to Michael Moore read Francis Wheen's articles in the Guardian - or the two collected collections - some of the best journalism around. The reason Britain doesn't (yet) have a Michael Moore is that we have more press freedom than the US. We also have much less radical librarians (it was only the intervention of librarians round the US that made MM into a name - and got his bestseller books published in the first place).

Unlike the US press, we don't have strong censorship over our media in the UK. Of course in the US it isn't seen as censorship because it's self-censorship. It's called 'not rocking the boat' or 'not upsetting our advertisers'. We are constantly amazed by the stuff American TV leaves out (the excellent World News Tonight from ABC is an honourable exception). Thank God for the BBC and the Licence Fee (which the forces of darkness, and their colleagues in advertising and the multinationals are trying to stamp out). You can pick up Mr Wheen's first collection of essays and articles for peanuts at many of the 'outlet' bookshops (for example the one right under the Raymond Revuebar' in Soho - see above) as the paperback is being rebranded and the early copies have been slushed. His second collection is even better. See http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,6121,1136029,00.html

At the moment Mr Wheen is working with a team on a new 'dummed-up' newspaper launch: something to compete with the Telegraph (good writing, but lowbrow) the Guardian and the Independent. We wish it luck, but as those in power rely on a dumbed-down nation we don't really think it will last. The other thing agasinst it is that it's based on Le Monde, one of the World's most boring newspapers (the main contender for that title is Le Monde Diplomatique - which is the written equivalent of Rohypnol.)
THURSDAY 18th We've just visited the new 'Marks and Spencer' store which has opened up the road. For those who don't know them, M + S is a middle-class version of Harrods. It does clothes (used to be very good, now mediocre) and food (high quality, but very expensive) and lifestyle accessories (the jury is still out). They've joined the rush by the monopolistic supermarket giants to eradicate the corner shop by opening small versions of their stores in trendy locales. We've got a Sainsbury's (another middle class bastion) a few hundred yards one way and M+S the other. The asian corner shops are feeling threatened. They were on to a very lucrative business...

However, what's on offer in the new M+S is telling. It's right next to a couple of accountancy firms - the sort of people who tell lies about corporate viability for a living - and the main fare in M&S is: Microwave readimeals, alcohol, sandwiches (for lunch) and ultra-high mark-up snacks. And a seasonal promotion (mothers' day, Easter, anything to push the consumer goods). The Asian corner shop does more healthy and less yuppie food, and the price is higher for staples, even if the sell-by date is sometimes last year.

The same thing is happening all over Britain. Quirky little shops are being bulldozed out by a combination of rent increases and the invasion of monopolistic chain stores. Moving in are drinking establishments and clone-zones. It's more or less a clear case of more is less, ...

We have seen the future and it's crap. Bring back the past.
FRIDAY 19th From two newspapers, two very differing analyses of the malaise affecting west end theatre. Andrew Lloyd Webber wants to demolish Shaftsbury Avenue and build larger theatres for his blockbuster musicals. But the killer plays, and many of the musicals have been coming from the state-funded theatres and the fringe, not the West End.

We detest all ALW stands for, and think his attempt to make a musical from one of the best Victorian horror/thrillers ever (the Woman in White) is a dreadful idea. ("Oh woman in white, you look so bright, tonight, as you fly, through the sky, wanna make you mine, ditch your fear, and come and live with a hereditary peer" sung to the tune of a recycled Victorian Classical piece.).

Anyway the Independent's diagnosis:
"After Michael Hastings' new play Calico had been given a comprehensive trashing on Newsnight Review, one of the panellists, Miranda Sawyer, delivered a sneering aside. This was the kind of play, she said, which proved why the West End should forget plays and carry on doing musicals.
For surely, if one disregards the small number of serious and probably money-losing plays that are on show, one is led to the conclusion that the mainstream theatre has become a glitzy, professional but distinctly secondhand medium of artistic expression.
The great majority of them have one thing in common: they are borrowed from other media, given a theatrical makeover and, to appeal to audiences, exploit their subjects' previous non-theatrical success. Occasionally plays have a respectable literary provenance - the performed versions of David Almond's Skellig or Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, for example - but more often they are lazy exercises in nostalgia designed to appeal to an undemanding middle-aged audience."

And now the Telegraph's diagnosis:
"If I were a hopeful young dramatist, I'd be grinding my teeth with frustration and anxiety. For the latest fashion in drama is for "verbatim" theatre that obviates the need for a writer.
The Tricycle in Kilburn has become famous for its illuminating "tribunal plays", ranging from the Nuremberg Trials to the recent Hutton investigation, which present the exact, though edited, words of witnesses at public inquiries. David Hare has tackled both the Israeli/Palestinian crisis and the desperate state of Britain's railways in riveting dramas based on personal interviews with scores of those involved."

The trouble is, as ever, television's erosion of the audience and the transformation of the less committed theatregoers into a bunch of dumbed-down brats. No concentration span, no ability to suspend belief. Need popcorn every few minutes. Need to discuss things with their friends during the play. Can't wait for the point, need quick, simple pointers as to what's going on. And bigger explosions.
Actually Shakespeare managed it (the body count at the end of Hamlet is a theatrical precursor to Kill Bill - and it's got great lines as well) integrating comedy, thrills, love, hate, violence, poetry into his plays. So there's the gauntlet: beat Bill.
SATURDAY 20th According to the Times newspaper, Britain's NHS (National Health Service) is the world's third largest employer. The first is China's people's army, certainly not a force for good in the world. The second is India's Railways - a British Colonial overhang, and one of the least efficient organizations anywhere. Bizarelly 1.3 million now work in the NHS. This is even more bizarre if you turn up at the casualty unit of a City Hospital and see the queues, or are waiting for an operation. We suspect the 'report' 'released by the government' is part of the advance party of 'spin' and general propaganda the Labour party is putting out in advance of the next election. With feeling high about backing Haliburton's war in Iraq (also benefiting - all the defence companies who sponsored George Bush's presidential putsch) Mr Blair is trying to do the feel good thing at home. it's a clear case of doublethink, as Mr Orwell would have said, where reality does not match the constructions put on it.

Here's something more bizarre. Virgin Airlines tries to install a little Gaudi in stalls at JFK. Plans for the new toilets at the VIP lounge in New York's JFK airport are shaped like a woman's lips (which set, facial or pudendal we're not told). They are red, matching the airline's livery and sound fun. If you know the average accuracy of the average VIP passenger, either prostate-ridden or drug-laden or just sloppy, then the idea is a good one. Friendly fire makes most male toilets a nasty, damp smelly place. Although our armed forces are better with their weapons than the US Army, with an appalling toll of passersby and other coalition soldiers, the average Briton's standard-issue weapon is not an accurate one. Designs to improve that are legion - from 'peeballs' - small disinfectant laden footballs placed in the urinals, to the 'Amsterdam Fly' - a fly etched into the porcelain which is meant to be irrisistable to the average stream.

Of course America, the Puritan offspring of Britain can't cope. These things provide an ideal publicity opportunity for neo-maoist groups like the National Organization for Women. "I don't know many men who think it's cool to pee in a woman's mouth, even a porcelain one," says NOW President Kim Gandy. I think she may not have much experience. If she comes to Soho and enquires about 'watersports' she'll find it's at least an extra £60 in Soho, and much more in the large, private brothels....

Another company having problems with its stream is Coca Cola, who recently launched a brand of water called Dasani. It was marketed as if it was spring water but it transpires it's just ordinary tap water from the suburban hell of Sidcup near London. With a little chemical processing of course. Unfortunately they've had to do a recall as it was found that the processing was adding carcinogens. Obviously not the real thing.
MONDAY 22nd The National Health Service, as aforementioned the world's third largest employer, is at the centre of a row about soup. Patients in Nottingham are having their brain surgery cancelled after a top neurosurgeon was suspended from duty over a crouton incident. His crime: allegedly taking an extra helping of croutons in the hospital canteen. Britain gets more like '1984' each day as people's actions and thoughts are scrutinised more and more closely, usually by those less able than them, with a view to harm. The unappositely named Dr Hope, is on 'golfing leave' ie sent home on full pay. He will probably have to receive 'crouton therapy' at public expense; he may have to attend 'Croutons Anonymous' whatever happens the public pays, as no hospital, however full its waiting lists could have a croutoholic on its books.

Although we thought Roth's 'Human Stain' (the book, not the film) a bit improbable, this incident shows just how far American-style political corrrectness (which actually is cultural revolution Maoism thinly disguised) has permeated the country. Former Croatian death camp guards and Israeli ethnic cleansers (aren't cleaners in most countries ethnic - in California they're all Spanish, in the UK they're mostly Polish or Ukranian) are treated like honoured guests. Whereas those who mouth self-evident but unpaletable truths, or those that take an extra helping of croutons are treated like unmensch.

In France, of course, there is a greater separation between one's private life and public. Having a mistress, or a liking for croutons is not thought to impair one's skill with a scalpel, whereas in Britain it would be seen as grounds for dismissal. In fact, the French would have more respect for you if you kept a string of mistresses - it happened to the doddering President Mitterand who kept a younger woman for years - his wife also kept a younger lover. However in France, with its corruption at the core of political life, he spent State money on her and even gave her jobs that she had no qualifications for, and the blind eye was turned (strange how this Nelsonic metaphor is so apposite for such a Napoleonic country). The French media cannot mention a person's private life - even if the public purse paying for his mistress. At least the 'Daily Mail' which outed Dr Hope as a croutophile can get some mileage out of the story. And if you're on the waiting list to have your brain tumour removed in Nottingham, take heart. The investigation should be over by 2005, unless your life is, in which case, go and have your op done in France, where the Health Service is in a far better state. Britain sends coachloads of NHS patients over there for surgery each year as hospitals in Britain cannot cope with the load.
THURSDAY 25th First the good news, the crouton loving brain surgeon has been re-instated. I suspect however that the politically correct in Nottingham will be laughing all the way to the tribunal. We also heard of a senior civil servant who is suspended on full pay for using the word 'Paki' - the resultant mess costs the taxpayer about £100,000 a year.

This is bizarre because 'The Paki shop' is a common usage for the asian corner shop, an asian clothing label 'Paki' is thought of as ironic and fashionable, and the term 'Paki' is merely a contraction of the word 'Pakistani' just as the word 'Brit' is a contraction of Briton. I have heard Americans refer to 'f@cking brits' in the same way as your average yob (perhaps the best example of reverse-slang in the Brit language - it's much more common in France, where even the name for the slang is in slang: verlen + l'envers = backwards) would say 'F@ckin' Paki'. The Jewish supporters of a popular northern football team call them selves 'The Yids'. People have to learn that the old adage 'Sticks and stones may hurt my bones but words will never harm me' is a true one.

If you want to see the wounding use of words, visit a school. 'Fatty', 'four-eyes', 'spas', and other words of abuse are common. But they may or not be attached to actual physical abuse or verbal abuse. You can use the term 'fatty' in a number of ways. It's an old wisdom, quoted by Herodotus 300 years before Christianity: Judge a man not with your ears but with your eyes'. We know a former Nazi POW camp inmate whose best friend is a supporter of Le Pen in France. He has a Nazi POW tattoo on his wrist, and saw countless horrors. But he has seen such goodness in his (politically misguided) friend that he refuses to let disagreement get in the way of their friendship. Would that we all were that wise.

As for the ever-shifting net of words that the neurotic liberals try to ensnare people in, the trouble is that however you try to construct a 'Newspeak' world where only politically correct discourse is possible, 'Oldspeak' will keep asserting itself. Attaching negative affect to a word does not mean it has to be erased from the dictionary. Milan Kundera's book 'The Joke' was a satire on the terrible things that can happen in a totalitarian society when someone uses, even in jest, a non-approved phrase. Sadly, in modern Britain, the joke is on us.
Pass the croutons...
MONDAY 29thd We have been visiting the town where we grew up, Chester, in the north west of England. Urban decay is beginning to set in. It is so easily reversible that it's a joke. Rising rents push out old-traditional shops. Only the chains can afford to start up a shop because they can amortise the terrible costs of rental. Councils charge council tax based on a building's rental value and have a vested interest in high rents: and are hard-wired into short term thinking.

The once thriving city centre is now peppered like an old rug with empty properties and 'To Let' signs; the moths of unrestrained capitalism have eaten out its heart. There are fewer and fewer independent retailers. Food shops have disappeared. A large supermarket is on the edge of the town, with a very small pedestrian entrance, and a huge carpark and driver entrance.

A particular loss is the small bookshops, who stocked interesting books and could get you anything on order. They've been replaced by chains and by Amazon, whose greensite warehouse we passed beside the motorway on the way up. Strange that people prefer to order from an anonymous warehouse from their computers than from a friendly bookseller. Of course, most people nowadays eschew reading from videos. When the BBC did its 'Britain's Favourite Book' with a predictable win for Lord of the Rings - buoyed by the film -eschews notched up but a peg. But sales of videos of the selfsame books went mad. We read an amusing article on the web which we reproduce here in full. To see more visit www.avenuevictorhugobooks.com.

The Crepuscule: Twelve reasons for the death of small and independent book stores

1. Corporate law (and the politicians, lawyers, businessmen and accountants who created it for their own benefit)--a legal fiction with more rights than the individual citizen, which allows the likes of Barnes & Noble and Walmart to write off the losses of a store in Massachusetts against the profit of another in California, while paying taxes in Delaware--for making ‘competition’ a joke and turning the free market down the dark road toward state capitalism.

2. Publishers--marketing their product like so much soap or breakfast cereal, aiming at demographics instead of people, looking for the biggest immediate return instead of considering the future of their industry, ignoring the art of typography, the craft of binding, and needs of editing, all to make a cheapened product of glue and glitz--for being careless of a 500 year heritage with devastating result.

3. Book buyers--those who want the ‘convenience’ and ‘cost savings’ of shopping in malls, over the quaint, the dusty, or the unique; who buy books according to price instead of content, and prefer what is popular over what is good--for creating a mass market of the cheap, the loud, and the shiny.

4. Writers--who sell their souls to be published, write what is already being written or choose the new for its own sake, opt to feed the demands of editors rather than do their own best work, place style over substance, and bear no standards--for boring their readers unto television.

5. Booksellers--who supply the artificial demand created by marketing departments for the short term gain, accept second class treatment from publishers, push what is ‘hot’ instead of developing the long term interest of the reader--for failing to promote quality of content and excellence in book making.

6. Government (local, state and federal)--which taxes commercial property to the maximum, driving out the smaller and marginal businesses which are both the seed of future enterprise and the tradition of the past, while giving tax breaks to chain stores, thus killing the personality of a city--for producing the burden of tax codes only accountants can love.

7. Librarians--once the guardians, who now watch over their budgets instead-- for destroying books which would last centuries to find room for disks and tapes which disintegrate in a few years and require costly maintenance or replacement by equipment soon to be obsolete.

8. Book collectors--who have metamorphosed from book worms to moths attracted only to the bright; once the sentinels of a favorite author’s work, now mere speculators on the ephemeral product of celebrity--for putting books on the same level with beanie babies.

9. Teachers--assigning books because of topical appeal, or because of their own lazy familiarity, instead of choosing what is best; thus a tale about the teenage angst of a World War Two era prep school boy is pushed at students who do not know when World War Two took place--for failing to pass the torch of civilization to the next generation.

10. Editors--who have forgotten the editorial craft--for servicing the marketing department, pursuing fast results and name recognition over quality of content and offering authors the Faustian bargain of fame and fortune, while pleading their best intentions like goats.

11. Reviewers--for promoting what is being advertised, puffing the famous to gain attention, being petty and personal, and praising the obscure with priestly authority--all the while being paid by the word.

12. The Public--those who do not read books, or can not find the time; who live by the flickering light of the television, and will be the first to fear the darkening of civilization--for not caring about consequences.

Thus, we come to the twilight of the age of books; to the closing of the mind; to the pitiful end of the quest for knowledge--and stare into the cold abyss of night. John Usher
TUESDAY 30th "It could be Naff, let's varda how it trolls", without explanation sentance is unintelligable to the modern reader, though forty years ago it would have said a lot about which circles you moved in. It's written in Polari, a slang prevalent in Soho and its environs, and used by the effeminate, gay, homosexual, naval and theatrical set. It's derived from Italian, lingua franca and several words persist in English today. For instance the word Khazi - for toilet - is actually the word Carsey - from Casa - house or cottage (and hence the verb to cottage as in LA by George Michael) which belies its Italian origins.

Soho, originally a hunting field (the hunting cry 'Soho' gave the area its name) was very Italian, as evidenced by the italian delicatessens on Old Compton and Brewer streets, and the coffee shops that rerun Italian football matches. It's a far cry from New York's Little Italy or New Jersey's mafia domain. We know two elderly Anglo-Italians, working in Soho who were born in England, but only started speaking English when they were eight, before that they conversed, at home, school and in their community in Italian. But unlike the homophobic nature of American Italians, the Italian Soho was also home to another sort of homi (man) - the 1950s gay community - who were undeniably camp (or K.A.M.P as they were originally known). They plied their gay trade between the Dilly and Cambridge Circus and wove seamlessly into the theatrical community and the ex-naval community. The sailors used to work the flys in theatres, with their experience in the rigging. This is why it's unlucky to whistle on stage: shipboard commands were done with whistles and, in theory, you might have a sandbag dropped on you.

The language was used to confuse as much as communicate: the BBC ran a series called 'Round the Horne' featuring the two prototypes of gays in the media 'Julian and Sandy' who used Polari and double entendre to get away with language that would have seen their show taken off air instantly, if only the Oxford-educated upper management knew exactly what it meant. The same trick of obfuscation allowed two characters (in the children's series Captain Pugwash - about friendly pirates) to be called 'Master Bates' and Seamen Staines. This is actually hotly disputed by many in the BBC who allege it's an urban myth - but the BBC destroyed so much of its archive it's impossible to prove either way. We also believe that 'Willy Wonka'/'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' is similar double entendre in a kids show. Remember, if you live on the Puritan side of the pond that a similar factor comes into play in the lands of Oz: being a 'friend of Dorothy' is slang for being gay and you'll no doubt remember the scene where the noble foursome stray into a poppy field and suffer the effects of opium intoxication, only to be saved by the use of a certain white powder, supplied by a good witch....

A google search for Polari will give you articles on its history. Here's two web pages to start yopu off: The bible in polari: http://www.thesisters.demon.co.uk/bible and a good polari lexicon http://www.thesisters.demon.co.uk/bible/lexicon.htm

And if you get really addicted you can see Julian and Sandy in the revived stage show of 'Round the Horne' currently on in... Soho. (but beware the humour is not suited for anyone not British and under forty). Watch out for words in common usage: Khazi, Naff, Camp, the beak, dolly, bimbo (English usage), cod, dingey, drag, mince, cottage, scarper amoung others.
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