Journal Entries
Blimey, two entries on the Front Page in one day
Posted Mar 3, 2003
This sub-editing lark seems to be working out... therefore I've elected to append my title in brackets, as seems to be the custom hereabouts.
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Latest reply: Mar 3, 2003
Teenage Fanclub
Posted Feb 21, 2003
Went to see Teenage Fanclub at the London Astoria on Wednesday night. A phenomenal gig - it's great when a band has got to the stage where they've got three or four great songs on each album they've done and five album's worth of stuff to get through, and they play virtually everything you want to hear... 'Mellow Doubt', 'The Concept', 'Radio', 'Sparky's Dream', and best of all 'Discolite'... magic.
The only, only song that I still wanted to hear by the end of the gig that they hadn't done was 'Star Sign', but you can't have everything can you?
I even bought a T-shirt, which I consider pretty radical behaviour for a 28 year-old...
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Latest reply: Feb 21, 2003
Amsterdam Peace Protests
Posted Feb 15, 2003
I am currently spending a weekend in Amsterdam with my girlfriend. This, unfortunately, meant that we missed the peace protests in London.
The upside of this was that we decided to join in with the one in Amsterdam - along with thousands of people from all over the world, all protesting completely peacefully against a war in Iraq. A truly amazing experience.
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Latest reply: Feb 15, 2003
More Cycling Escapades...
Posted Feb 5, 2003
I started cycling to work again at the beginning of January, and things have proceeded with relative calm.
Until the last two weeks. Since when a bloke in a blue Fiat and another one in a silver BMW have both inadvertently nearly killed me in exactly the same way. It's a worrying tendency. The BMW was this morning, which has prompted me to get the whole thing off my chest.
In both cases, what they do is:
1) start to overtake you
2) when the middle of their bonnet is level with you, they stick their left indicator on.
3) you can't see that they've done this, as indicators are at the front and back of most cars and you're level with their windscreen.
4) when you're level with their front door, they just turn left.
and
5) tough luck if you're in the way.
Fiat-driving bloke was actually very sorry when he realised what he'd done. BMW b'stard just heard my scream, stopped just in time, and then zoomed off.
As one of the few remaining cyclists in London who's read the Highway Code and tries to stick to it (especially in terms of stopping at red traffic lights and zebra crossings, and not riding on the pavement or the wrong way up one-way streets) I had a perfect right to be where I was and find the whole experience depressing and quite scary.
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Latest reply: Feb 5, 2003
Very strange things have been happening
Posted Dec 23, 2002
I didn't think I'd use my journal much, but events seem to have proved me wrong...
It's hard to know where to start.
Right. Well. I've been adjusting over the last couple of years to the fact that these days it's perfectly normal for Virgin Trains to demand £40 for the privilege of taking you from London to Stafford and back* - yet if you pick your moment you can get a return flight to Venice for much the same price and get there in much the same time.
So something happened to me tonight which I find incredible.
I think the world is playing a big con-trick on me.
I've been back home for the weekend. Now, just for once, I was able to book my ticket back from Stafford to London more than a couple of days in advance, and they actually had a cheap ticket available on a train I wanted to travel on, on a Sunday night. It cost me a tenner. Christmas genuinely has come early.
Not only that. Being used to all kinds of British public transport mayhem - I believe firmly in public transport, yet equally I'm forced to question the validity of its existence on a regular basis - what happened tonight takes us from the land of the fortunate into the land of the strange.
The train was early.
And I mean early.
I'm not talking about a couple of minutes shaved off the journey time.
I mean that for a journey that was supposed to take two hours, my train arrived at Euston a full THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES EARLY.
So, mildly stunned by our unexpected arrival in London, I rounded up my gear, got off the train and walked up the platform and into the station concourse. Just to check I'd not lost my marbles or got the train times spectacularly wrong, I turned round to look at the arrivals board.
And??? No mention of my train anywhere. Nothing listed for the platform I'd just walked off, nothing listed for the time we'd just arrived, and nothing listed for the time when we were supposed to arrive.
I can only conclude that the whole thing was a figment of my imagination, and I'm not really at home now writing this. My real self is probably stuck somewhere just outside Watford Junction, waiting for an explanation from the guard.
*Particularly if you're too old for a Young Persons Railcard any more like I am.
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Latest reply: Dec 23, 2002
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