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Today is Blogday August 31, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Blogging , add a comment

And the first I heard about it was when I turned up at the office this morning, and the client asked me if I was doing anything for blogday. Clearly I’m tuned into the buzz of the blogosphere. I haven’t got five blogs to post on, so I’m going to head over to my old blog at Wordpress.com and start hitting the next button. The first five blogs in English and updated in the last few days will get a link.

The ramblings of a lunatic seems to have slowed down a little lately with a post a week or so ago and nothing else in August. He has a taste for rock classics, obviously a student and a football fan, something of a techy.

Gilmera ELT is an English Language Teaching school for teachers in India, and its most recent post calls for the attendees at a course to make comments about it on the post. Many of the students comment on the importance of love in teaching, and not letting preconceptions interfere with how a student is perceived.

The Bodhisattva seems to be a collection of reviews of books which are rather outside the mainstream, but seem interesting, mostly science fiction / fantasy. I landed on a post with numbers 21-30 of the the author’s top 100, recognised none of them, although some of the authors are familiar, and have added a couple to my amazon wishlist. I may come back to this one.

The world starts here is the blog of an enthusiastic Russian student living in Iceland. Rather than the normal angst-ridden posts of most teenage bloggers, this blogger exudes optimism and excitement. It’s catching!

The Reader is a very personal blog of vignettes and anecdotes of life. Its well written and occasionally macabre. Worth reading.

Of the five blogs, I’ll probably come back to two. To get these, I had to wade through about 15 others which were very out of date, plus a few where I couldn’t read the language. It strikes me that there are less of the rambling personal blogs than there were the last time I spent a while hitting a next button and the standard of writing is much higher. Maybe all those rambly blogs are off on myspace or bebo and don’t set up on Wordpress.

Happy Blogday!

Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell August 29, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : London, Reviews , add a comment

It was a quiet Saturday afternoon, and I was contemplating a big night in with the cat when my friend rang to bemoan the fact that we’re both living in the great metropolis, and doing nothing on a Saturday night. TKTS, the office for last minute theatre tickets in Leicester Square seemed to be the answer. She’s not keen on pop musicals, so Daddy Cool and We Will Rock You were off, but we’re both keen on louche comedies about London life, and there were plenty of seats left for Keith Waterhouse’s biocomic ‘Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell’.

Jeffrey Bernard was a columnist for the Spectator, mostly writing about his life in Soho in the 50s-80s, a chronic alcoholic, womeniser and all-round sorry case. The title refers to the line used by the Spectator editor whenever Bernard failed to submit his column, usually due to a serious hangover.

The play is a classic, with Tom Conti in the role originally played by Peter O’Toole. It is set in the Soho pub, the ‘Coach and Horses’ where Bernard spent most of his later years. The set itself is a key supporting player - at odd angles and leaning somewhat drunkenly to the side.

Conti gave an excellent performance, perhaps better in the second half than the first, and had me in fits of laughter over the egg trick. His occasional ad-libs to the audience such as a reference to the balltampering scandal last week were icing on the cake. He is on stage throughout in a piece which is virtually a monologue broken only occasionally by characters from his past coming into memory, and onto the stage, for a few moments before exiting again.

Its a pleasant, light evening’s entertainment, and worth seeing if you have the chance.

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Leave the Jet Planes August 27, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Environment, Green in the City, Politics, Travel , add a comment

The trip to Pisa last week brought me face to face with the new security restrictions at airports and, for the first time, I find myself seriously reluctant to fly.  Guilt has been mounting because of the impact flying has on the environment but travel, and my love of Greece and Italy, have always won.

Its certainly not fear of terrorism that’s done it, but the sheer misery of flying now.  Rather than checking in online, and arriving at the airport less than an hour before the flight leaves, then waltzing off at the other end to bypass the luggage queues and get the first taxi off the rank, on Friday night, I queued for forty five minutes behind people with tiny bags to get to one of three security checkpoints open out of the six available.  I watched people being told to throw away cosmetics, and a little four year old girl being frisked.  The flight was about an hour late.  On the way back, it was a similar story.  Although Pisa airport were allowing normal amounts of hand luggage, they were  not allowing liquids of any form through.   That flight was just under two hours late.  

The DTO, with their over-zealous regulations, and BAA with their obvious lack of contingency planning have done what fear of climate change has failed to do, and, I suspect, destroyed the short break market.  All the airline investment in online checkin and enough handbaggage to go away for the weekend have come to nothing.   The many people who take two or three weekends away a year may not be kicking up a fuss or cancelling their flights, but I bet they’re not booking them either. 

Anecdotal evidence suggests business travellers are also reconsidering, and rethinking the practicality of trains for 4-6 hour trips, rather than just the very short ones.  If flights are consistently delayed, and you need to be at the airport two hours before departure rather than one, Amsterdam is suddenly closer by train than by plane.

Longer holidays are probably not affected.  If you were already going to check luggage in, and going for a couple of weeks, then an extra hour or two doesn’t matter so much.  I suspect long-haul across the Atlantic, where you’re still not allowed to take a bottle of water even if it was bought airside, will become less popular for families.

The Green in me is pleased - air travel needs to be curtailed and if fear of climate change wasn’t enough to stop me then it wasn’t stopping many people.  I will miss it though.

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Another Labour loans scandal brewing August 25, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Politics , add a comment

When opposition and government merge into one, and the mainstream media seem reluctant to challenge established power, a blogger like Guido Fawkes can be essential to keeping the government honest.  I doubt our political opinions coincide, but he’s been ahead of the papers on the loans for peerages scandal and others, so he’s worth reading.

And if this is true, I and many other Green customers of smile, and the Cooperative Bank should be worried. Unity Trust Bank is a small bank, owned by the Cooperative Bank and trades unions, catering to the needs of charities, unions, credit unions and similar organisations, including at least one prominent environmental charity to which I regularly donate.

According to Fawkes, this tiny bank has lent rather more than 10% of its capital to the Labour Party - a loan which, in purely commercial terms, must be risky at best.

When I signed up with smile (part of the Cooperative Bank), it was because of its ethical policy and insistence on ensuring that its commercial customers were not up to anything I’d consider dubious, such as arms manufacture. I suppose if I’d thought about it, I’d have realised that the Labour Party was likely to bank with them, but I certainly wouldn’t expect a subsidiary of that ethical bank to be lending such large amounts of money to the Party given its financial state and the controversy surrounding its loans programme.

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Hotel Santa Croce in Fossabanda August 23, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Travel , 1 comment so far

I’m always on the lookout for interesting, cheap hotels, clean and safe, but with personality and not too expensive. If it can be booked online that’s even better.

In Pisa, I stayed in the Hotel Santa Croce in Fossabanda, a former convent renovated in the eighties and now a delightful hotel. The thick, sturdy walls radiate tranquility and calm and although there are over fifty rooms, there is so much space it seems almost empty. Remnants of frescos on the corridor walls are a nice touch.

My room was basic, and I was surprised to find a TV and air conditioning.  The bed was comfortable, but definitely a single and quite hard.

You’ll wake to the sound of bells for matins from the church attached to the building, but at a fairly civilised 7.30 am, and they don’t last very long.

Pet rabbits graze the grass in the central courtyard while you eat your continental breakfast in the cloisters. The breaksfasts are good, with fresh fruit, cheeses, meats and pastries.

It is about 500m from the river, and two kilometres from the leaning tower. Through venere.com I paid €45 per night for a single with shared bathroom, and breakfast, though this was a quiet time of the year.

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Pisa August 20, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Travel , 2 comments

Pisa


I’ve finally found an open bar and a couple of restaurants, in a square by the river Arno. August is perhaps not the best month for visiting an Italian city, and the many signs saying ‘chuisi fiero’ make looking for that perfect restaurant in an ancient square rather more of a challenge than it ought to be.

It also makes the city and monuments less crowded, and I’ve spent the weekend wandering around looking at the architecture and sitting in the sun.

The famous tower is oddly beside the point. It sits in a large piazza dominated by the cathedral, a huge but light monument to the glory of God and the talents of late medieval Pisans. Together with the Baptistry, the three are a pleasing whole. It’s a treat to see an Italian cathedral with so much space around it, so it can be properly seen rather than hemmed in by tiny streets making it hard to see what’s there.

There’s something about Pisa that appeals greatly. It has beautiful churches and art but is less of a museum than Florence. It’s river seems to bring it together, with noble buildings on both sides and no obvious separation of North and South. People cycle everywhere and water in restaurant’s always comes in a jug. Recycling is big and this is the home of the slow food movement. It’s famous son’s include Fibonacci and Galileo. Political graffiti and posters are everywhere. It seems a very liveable place.

Off to Italy without toothpaste August 16, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Travel , 2 comments

A few weeks ago, in a fit of particularly un-ecofriendly wanderlust, I booked myself a cheap ticket to Pisa, flying out after work on a Friday night and back again on a Monday evening. The only way I can make this flight is if I take my luggage in the cabin, a simple proposition until last Thursday.

Now, I have to figure out how to pack my small laptop bag for the weekend. A change of clothes, a book, mobile phone and lots of washing is probably the answer. It had to be Italy, land of immaculate grooming, when all cosmetics and toiletries are banned.

Someone should set up a toiletries exchange at the airport, so passengers getting on flights can give their toothpaste and deodorant to people arriving. Pump action might be okay, though I can see rollons might not be too popular.

Perhaps its some sort of bizarre climate change karma come home to roost. Still, its better than last week when I would have had only my passport and unwrapped feminine hygiene products in a clear plastic bag.

Depending on the state of Italian wi-fi, I may be off the air until early next week.

Extremely Silly

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , add a comment

Proof that some people have far to much time and technology on their hands.

Warning - the soundtrack is Robert Plant at full blast. If you’re in the office, turn the sound down!

Reduce, Reuse, Freecycle August 15, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden, Green in the City , 1 comment so far

On Sunday, I gave away my first thing on freecycle - a site for everything that’s too good to throw away but not good enough for EBay. Put your ad on freecycle, select a lucky recipient from those who ask for it, and arrange to meet.

The idea is one of those uses of the internet which is so obvious when you see it, and would have been very hard and labour-intensive before.  Freecycle is run through Yahoo Groups, with groups for all the different localities, and moderated by volunteers.   Apart from, perhaps, the main website (link above) they have no costs, and it probably just runs itself now that it has built up enough momentum.
The local group for Camden has about 800 people on its mailing list, and seems to generate 4 or 5 offers a day. There is also a London-wide group, with some 20000 people, but I’m a worried about having an email explosion if I post there.

I was concerned about having a strange bloke come round to the flat, so met him outside at the entrance to the apartment building.  I’m rearranging the bedroom, so a small desk will be the next to go. It needs reassembling, and I can’t be fussed with putting it on EBay, so it will be freecycled as soon as I’ve cleared it out.

Trees, August 2006 August 13, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden, Trees , 1 comment so far



The rain came down heavily this morning and the ground has had it’s best drenching in weeks. In Regent’s park the park is all very dry and brown but the tree’s are still green.

When I first started this blog I planned to photograph this tree every month and see how it changed but I haven’t done it since it showed it’s first bud back in April. Now it’s only a few weeks from autumn and leaf fall.