Journal Entries
Do not be alarmed
Posted Jul 10, 2005
I am still me. You are still you. Join us and smile.
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Latest reply: Jul 10, 2005
Remembering Why I Came To London...
Posted Jul 8, 2005
...and why, ever since I was at High School, I always wanted to live in London. It was part of Ken Livingstone's speech that I saw on the news that reminded me:
"If you go back a couple of hundred years to when the European cities really started to grow and peasants left the land to seek their future in the cities there was a saying that “city air makes you free” and the people who have come to London all races, creeds and colours have come for that. This is a city that you can be yourself as long as you don’t harm anyone else. You can live your life as you chose to do rather than as somebody else tells you to do. It is a city in which you can achieve your potential. It is our strength and that is what the bombers seek to destroy. They fear they freedom, they fear a world in which the individual makes their own life choices and their own moral value judgements and that is what they seek to snuff out. But they will fail."
I almost cried when I read that. For me, getting away from Staffordshire and moving to London was all about being me and doing what I wanted to do, and not wanting to live the kind of life I was supposed to. I've lived in this dirty old city for seven years now, and I love it.
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Latest reply: Jul 8, 2005
Number Six is alive and well
Posted Jul 7, 2005
Just in case anyone was wondering if I was caught up in the events of this morning - I wasn't really, I'm fine, and I'm posting this from home.
I got as far as Manor House tube at about half nine this morning - found it closed and shuttered off - then walked to Finsbury Park - was told all Underground closed, tried to get a train into King's Cross but that had just been evacuated so came home with the idea of getting on my bike. My housemate had a similar experience.
Then I rang the BBC and they put me on standby to cover a late shift, was planning to cycle across North London without going anywhere near the centre. But they've since said they don't need me today - as I work for the Sport bit of News 24 there isn't that much I could do.
Looking at it, my feeling is that it seems to be quite specifically a terror campaign aimed at causing maximum possible disruption and, well, terror - rather than mass loss of life. The numbers of casualties are, of course, worrying but I think it might not be as large as is widely feared - probably in 3 figures but nearer that than 4.
What they are wanting to do is put fear and doubt and worry into the minds of everyone in London. But - and I fervently hope I'm not proved wrong here - history shows that once attacks like this are over, the chances of them happening again are pretty small.
That's what i'm hanging on to, at any rate.
Any London-based researchers probably ought to post here - F2192011?thread=679203 - to let everyone know they're OK.
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Latest reply: Jul 7, 2005
The Soundtrack To Your Life
Posted Jun 30, 2005
I hesitiate to use the word 'Proustian' because I've never read Proust and so I don't really know what the term means. But I think it's something tpo do with smelling a smell and that smell taking you back to a certain particular place and time.
Well for me it's the same way with certain songs - whenever I hear them, I'm instantly transported back to a specific meaningful moment in my life when they happened to be playing. A particular time and place and situation.
I had the idea a while back that you could make a compilation tape (well, or burn a CD, these days) that was like a musical autobiography. Well, I reckon I'm going to have a go. The only trouble is, there's loads of them and I only remember them at random when they spring to mind (or I hear them again) so I'm going to have a go at writing them down in this thread whenever I remember any.
And of course if any of you guys have any that spring to mind, I'd be interested to hear them 
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Latest reply: Jun 30, 2005
Glastonbury Memories
Posted Jun 28, 2005
Just scribbling down a few moments that are springing to mind from the last few days - because if I don't do it soon (or now) I'm going to forget them.
Top Ten Festival Moments (in no particular order except chronological)
1) Arriving late on Wednesday night and hearing the spontaneous waves of cheers travelling around the camping fields because everyone was just so excited to be there.
2) Waking up after five hours of torrential rain on Friday morning and finding a 15-foot wide river had suddenly come into being and neatly divided the hill we were camped on (we were in the wrong half).
3) The feeling you get hearing the first band on Friday that you really enjoy - this year it was The Zutons.
4) Realising that certain puddles were so deep the water came over the top of my Doc Martens and flooded them.
5) Stumbling along from the Dance Arena back to our tents via The Other Stage singing 'Rockaway Beach' at the tops of our voices.
6) The amazing relief and comfort when, after one and a half days of trudging through the mud with wet feet inside wet boots, you get to the Millets stall and they've just had a delivery of wellies in your size.
7) Everyone getting together above the Pyramid Stage in the baking Sunday sunshine to watch Brian Wilson prove to be the Genuine Article.
8) Finally getting inside the Dance Tent East halfway through Mylo's set after spending ages on the way in hemmed in tightly by a mass of bodies - and then realising that once you were in, there *was* enough room to dance. You can't half bust some moves in those Wellingtons...
9) Going up to Lost Vagueness when the bands were finished on Sunday night and discovering that the three of the four venues were offering a Ska night, a Soul night, and an Eastern European Polka Band. Result!
10) A beautiful sunrise, as seen from the Stone Circle at 4.30 on Monday morning.
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Latest reply: Jun 28, 2005
Number Six
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