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« Previous EntriesThe bloated Boris
By Will 1 month ago, 2 Comments »
More daft, brilliant stupidity from Armando Iannucci.
2 Comments »Saturday
I go for a walk and find I’m travelling a lot quicker than if I went by plane. It dawns on me. My fears have all come true: the physical world is reducing. Buildings are leaning over and coming towards me. Pavements are curling up over my head. The luggage was the start. But now with a fat adulterous hero like Boris Johnson to look up to, people all around me are deliberately putting on weight and rushing out to have sex outside marriage. The sudden coming together of a super-dense mayoral candidate, a massive luggage mountain and lots of fat people hooking up in bed means that London is now the heaviest city in the world. Nothing can stop its incredible gravitational pull sucking the rest of the planet towards it.
Sunday
I stay in bed as the entire universe collapses and disappears into a black hole that used to be Boris Johnson. I die happy that he has been foiled in his attempt to become mayor, and I regard the annihilation of the universe as, in the end, a victory for common sense.
All’s not quiet
By Will 2 months ago, 1 Comment »
I live in the epitome of suburbia. It tries to pretend it’s not by virtue of its proximity to a major London tube station, but everyone knows its kidding itself. Regardless, even this leafy London village is not immune to acts of madness.
I’m trying to watch a relaxing, violent film in the peace of my house, but a carload of eastern europeans are causing a riot outside. It’s almost more entertaining than the film. A stream of screaming persisted for about 20 minutes before the screamer, a man, started thumping his fists on top of the car, booming his hatred for all the road to hear. The revs got louder, and some of the girls began a piercingly loud scream (one of terror, it has to be said) as our man climbed ontop of the car, spread-eagled, holding onto the roof-rack runners on either side. Just when it couldn’t get any more Vice City, the car did what we all feared (but secretly hoped) and sped off with man clinging on! He did a pretty good job of holding on, and the car pootled down the street - the lights in each house flicking on, one after the other, as the screams died away.
And now, silence. Not a murmur out there, save for suburbia’s gossipers and do-gooders. No body, no nothing. Back to the film, and the more peaceful world of cricket.
1 Comment »London 2009
By Jonathan Liew 3 months ago, 10 Comments »
The inaugural Twenty20 World Cup is coming to England in 2009, which means a bumper summer of cricket for the whole country. As long, that is, if you live in London. Two of the three grounds chosen to host matches will be Lord’s (group games, super eights and the final) and The Oval (warm-ups, group games, super eights and a semi-final). Which leaves one semi and change for another lucky, lucky ground. The Rose Bowl, perhaps?
Now I live in London, and personally, this suits me down to the ground. In addition, there’s no doubting that the two grounds in question are superb venues. But London is not England. Cricket fans in the Midlands and the North have every right to feel aggrieved at this.
Apparently, if you believe Steve Elworthy, it’s all to do with travelling distances, which was a major factor in last year’s tournament. But a short trundle up the M6 isn’t really the same as 1600 kilometres from Durban to Cape Town. London to Nottingham to Manchester to London in the space of two weeks isn’t going to jet-lag anybody.
It’s not just this, either. Why, for example, is London is guaranteed Tests a summer out of seven (when it has about 15% of the population)? You have to wonder whether the predominance of Lord’s and The Oval is due primarily to the quality of their facilities, or the quality of their lobbyists.
10 Comments »Where to watch the rugby in London?
By Will last year, mid-October, 7 Comments »
Right then. It’s a big one tomorrow for the Rugby World Cup Final. Me and my mate have come up with what we consider to be a definitive list of must-haves for a venue in London:
1) Pub atmosphere. A pub, then.
2) Reasonable quantity of South African supporters, but no more than 50%. And that includes those behind the bar.
3) Decent Guinness, and not the extra-cold filth
4) Decent Youngs, Adnams or other draft and a fine selection of snackage
5) Not massively packed. Yeah, ok - stupid request
6) Easy access to outside for the socially retarded smokers like me
7) Oh, and a TV would be useful too
8 ) Unattached ladies to court. Sloanies need not apply. (No funnies about Soho please)
The O2 centre was mentioned but I’m not going all that way. I want it to be central in case we lose and need to drink into the wee hours. In fact, that applies for both eventualities.
So come on - by this time tomorrow I want a choice of at least 10 ideas.
7 Comments »Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe
By Will last year, mid-October, 3 Comments »
Nothing to do with cricket but worthy of mention. Charlie Brooker has a weekly rant at the ridiculously vacuous world of television and celebrity, and damn fine it is too. I’m all for sarcasm and cynicism, especially when it pokes fun at TV’s crapness.
I happened to see a man being chased by a hoody wielding a fishing net the other day. Even for Shepherds Bush, this was out of the ordinary…until I saw it on Brooker’s show. Curiously, having realised they film a lot of it in the same building in which we used to work, I can now see they do a lot of sketches in the lifts, balconies and bar of the Shepherds Building (which is in some way rather ironic, considering his distaste for tacky television…)
Anyway, it’s on BBC Four and worth a gander I reckons.
3 Comments »Richard and Judy, the librarians of Britain
By Will last year, at the start of August, 12 Comments »
That’s it. I’ve had enough of bookshops. I used to enjoy browsing through them a few years ago, looking up new authors as well as “staple diet” writers who I’ve enjoyed. But the shopping experience in today’s bookshops is overwhelmingly tacky and, well, just overwhelming. Most stores seem to have these tables, with titles piled high, underneath a sign: “our favourites this month” and inevitably there are at least two copies of Paolo Coelho’s wistful musings, and other authors (all of whom seem to share the title of “genius”…) writing about abused Russian alcoholics and Ukranian tractors.
I couldn’t see anything new or particularly exciting, so meandered over to fiction - not my favourite place. And there, emblazoned in yellow and pink and other sickly garish colours, was a stand suggesting five or six books as recommended by Richard and Judy. Good God alive.
Has society plummeted to such literary-ignorant depths that we have to rely on an overpaid, smug TV couple as our national librarians? I only looked at one title - it had a blue cover and, yes, I liked the picture - and, rather inevitably, it was all about a widower and how he’s coping. No surprise there then. I’m not here to judge the quality or writing of the books’ authors - I’m sure they’re very good books - but why the hell are we relying on two celebrities to help us choose what to read? One man’s favourite is another man’s draught excluder.
I very nearly ventured over to the sports section to read a cricket book (spit). Fortunately I found something, after an hour trying to avoid all the arrows and signs and posters demanding I buy THIS book and THAT one: London Pub Reviews by Paul Ewen, a New Zealander who’s written of his experiences and the people he’s come across in some of the capital’s pubs. Perhaps an odd choice for a trip to India, where I’m off to tomorrow, but at least it’s not on Dickhead and Booby’s list…
12 Comments »Anagram fun: Olympic Games
By Will last year, mid-July, 1 Comment »
I’m a bit of a wordsmith, and enjoy the weird anagrams you can come up with. Jenny T of Cricinfo fame just texted me possibly the best I’ve heard in a while, from the latest Private Eye.
“I have noticed THE LONDON OLYMPIC GAMES is an anagram of MEN PLAN SHIT COMEDY LOGO”.
Superb. The Eye is a British institution and should be knighted, or something.
1 Comment »Video of Iron Maiden at Brixton, June 24, 2007
By Will last year, at the end of June, 2 Comments »
Sorry for lack of posts lately. This is why:
It was rocktacular, epic and sweaty. The only possible link to cricket this post has is, after the gig, Miller and I decamped in the nearest pub and met a very old Jamaican and slightly younger Jamaican. Cricket was discussed, among other things…
2 Comments »2012 logo: Blair’s legacy
By Will last year, at the start of June, No Comments; be the first!
Tony Benn on Question Time when asked of his opinion of the disasterous 2012 logo. “I thought it was the logo for Tony Blair’s legacy: flashing lights, confusing - and it causes epilepsy”.
Superb.
No Comments »Excuse me, there’s a bug in my turkey
By Will last year, at the end of May, 11 Comments »
26% of the British population, an estimated 16m people, shop at Tesco every week and I am one of them. Generally, I think it’s a reasonable shop and I’ve never had any ill effects or need to complain. Until today.
Shopping for a culinary extravaganza later this evening I browsed the turkey. It’s all pre-packaged and all looked fine, until a customer next to me started laughing and pointing at one of the packets. There was a bug in it. He was a tourist here on holiday, and found the whole experience very amusing. I’m not sure where he was from, but he didn’t seem to particularly care, and grabbed the next nearest one.
Naturally, I kicked up a fuss on his behalf. After last week’s Panorama investigation into out-of-date food (and other horrors) prepared at both Tesco and Sainsbury’s, I was pretty shocked. The bug appeared to have wings but, from what I could see, had embedded itself into the turkey. God knows where it had been before it landed on this particular strip of exquisite meat.
Tesco’s response was revealing and encouraging. The bloke I approached was absolutely shocked and went into a mild panic, telling me he had to find his manager. “I’m meant to report this, I’ve got to report this,” and so he did. 10 minutes later the manager had been coaxed down from his office onto the floor who was very, very wary of me indeed but apologetic and assured me it would be looked into. According to him, it will be sent away for testing. What about all the other food there? He was less certain - and of course, there’s not a lot Tesco can do short of issuing a public health warning that some meat bought on May 27 from Hammersmith might be infected or contaminated. And they won’t do that unless absolutely necessary for fear of eating into their vast profits.
The manager ordered all of “that batch” of food be taken off the shelf, but the damage has already been done. The shop was closing, the bought food now winging its way across London into people’s kitchens. No one will be any the wiser and, if someone is ill, then so be it.
It was a lesson though. I tend to pick stuff up, make sure it’s not blue or green etc and hopefully find something that isn’t coated in fat, and that’s that. But to see an actual bug, a fly, nestling in the meat…it does make you think.
11 Comments »Stumps in London
By Will last year, at the start of March, 1 Comment »
Stumps on a wall in London…
…and cricket in Mumbai
Street cricket in London
By Will last year, at the start of January, 12 Comments »
It’s more common to see street cricket from the alleys of Pakistan or India, but here’s a game being played in London:
Let’s start a revolution. (photos found at Guy Atherton’s Flickr)
12 Comments »Cricket on an ice rink in London
By Will 2 years ago, mid-December, 6 Comments »
There was a charity match to raise funds for the Ben Hollioake Fund this morning, on an ice rink outside the Natural History Museum. It was as bizarre as it sounds. All the photos I took were useless apart from this which at least has some colour on what was a very grey, wintery morning:
There are a few others at Cricinfo.
Here’s one taken with my mobile
The fun police
By Will 2 years ago, at the end of November, 2 Comments »
A couple of weeks ago I was midway through a big drinking session with my fellow ale-junky Keats. On the Tube, full of the joys of beer, we were standing there with our feet at 90 degrees, in a sort of Laurel’n'Hardy act of stupidity - only the kind of thing you can do when you’ve had a few, and we found the whole thing hilarious. Opposite us was a massive, rotund underground worker - bored, intent on engaging us in conversation - who said “Tsk. Yeah. Not allowed to laugh darn ‘ere no more”. And he’s right. The Tube is an odd second world, where making eye contact is tantamount to asking someone to strip naked and sing like a budgie. Talking to one another, let alone laughing, is not on. It’s not what we do. Mr Rotund was right; here we were, laughing our heads off and receiving scornful glares from scared commuters. “Why are they laughing and talking? Haven’t they read the Tube Etiquette?”
Anyway, this has very little to do with anything. But it’s one aspect of Britain I hate; there is an underlying feeling of fear in London that anyone you talk to will carry a knife and plunge it into your chest. Another instance last week. I’d been to O’Neils by Kings Cross station and was walking back to the tube when a normalish-looking person stopped the lady in front of me to ask for directions. She didn’t stop her frenetic pace, quickening her stride if anything, and the bloke gave up. He stood there aghast, arms outstretched! “You lost?” I asked, and he was. He was just wondering where the British Library was, so I pointed him in the right direction and off he went. I appreciate women might feel more vulnerable in the city than men - and that’s not sexist, even if you think it is - but she was nothing more than plain rude. And this isn’t me being massively naive; I just cannot accept that everyone is a terrorist and is out there to kill me.
Right, now then. Back to cricket. Another crap aspect of Britain is the nanny state and Martin Johnson has found plenty of evidence that Australia are following America’s lead and wrapping the entire country in cotton wool, in a great piece at the Telegraph.
Everywhere you go in Australia, you’re reminded of the American way of treating its inhabitants as though they’re mentally retarded, such as warning consumers of salted peanuts that the packet may contain nut products, or advising purchasers of household bleach that once the bottle is empty it should “not be used as a beverage container”.
[...]
So what can we say about the prospect of an England victory? Well, for one thing their chances are not to be sneezed at. But even more in their favour is the fact that Australia’s cricketers are dangerously close to breaching their government’s own zero-tolerance policy (announced over the public address system before each day’s play) forbidding anyone from holding up anyone else to ridicule, contempt or humiliation.
So if Australia go 2-0 ahead here, their players will all be removed from the premises, ordered to do community service for the rest of the series, and the Ashes – as compensation for the severe hurt to their feelings - will be formally awarded to England.
A positive for England, then…
2 Comments »Where to watch the Ashes…in London
By Will 2 years ago, mid-November, 12 Comments »
A plea for help from Srivaths who writes:
I saw your “Where to watch the Ashes in Hong Kong” post. I have a better
question for you. Where do I watch the Ashes in London? I’m a student from
India and moved in just recently and the sky box(or whatever it is called) is
broken in our student dig. I don’t think the pubs will be open in the mdiddle
of the night. Any ideas?
Damn good question, and I have no idea. Londonshire closes at 11 and woe betide anyone who walks within three feet of the bar. There must be somewhere, though, that can cater for the fans. Naturally you should all buy a crate of beer or decent malt, go home, get to bed, open the laptop and read the marvel that is Cricinfo dot com. But I appreciate you’re not all as sad and tragic as us.
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