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Ben Goldacre September 15, 2008

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden, Miscellany , add a comment

My favourite Guardian columnist, Dr Ben Goldacre, has released a book, so tonight a couple of hundred fans packed into the downstairs bar at the Penderel’s Oak on High Holburn to hear him.

If you don’t know his work, look it up.  He does a fantastic job of debunking the sillier myths of medical pseudoscience, particularly taking aim at institutions and explaining how evidence in medicine really works.  Various ‘professional bodies’ in alternative medicine and quackery take regular beatings, a nice balance to the normal ‘wellbeing’ tripe which even the Guardian is inclined to peddle.

His basic theme is that most people can understand science if its explained properly, and it is the responsibility of professionals and the media to do that.  He is particularly harsh on journalists who do science and health reporting without really understanding what they’re talking about.

Despite the overcrowding, and the lousy sound system, he’s worth hearing if only because his is a rare voice in the midst of the gullible silliness which passes for so much health news.  For an added treat, he publishes his del.icio.us feed, so you can follow his wanderings around the web, with frequent gems.

Somers Town, the Movie August 26, 2008

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

Somers Town is not grey.  It has trees, and parks and with the warm honey and red brick of its low rise apartment blocks is as attractive as any densely built inner city area.  The worst of the experimental social housing architecture of the sixties and seventies never made it here, and most estates are small.  Some of us even tend plants in front of our buildings.  Its streets are clean, and safer than surrounding wards.  Filming in black and white makes it all look grimmer than it really is, and I suppose that was the idea.

Shane Meadows’ Eurostar-sponsored sequel to the award-winning ‘This is England’ is set a few years after the first film when Thomas Turgoose leaves for London, and ends up at St Pancras.  Sleeping rough, he is attacked by some yobs who steal his bag and his money.  A local woman  buys him breakfast and gives him £10, before he hooks up with a young Polish lad, Marieck, and they set about hanging out in Somers Town.

The sponsorship is only obvious if you know it’s there.  Marieck’s father is working on St Pancras, and at one point spouts a paean to the wonders of getting to Paris in two hours.  The final scenes, in Paris (ie. after a trip on Eurostar), are shot in grainy colour.

Familiar landmarks abound.  Marieck’s Dad drinks at the Cock on Charlton St, the boys fall in love with a French waitress at the Golden Tulip, and she lives in Levita House.  They steal Tommo some clothes from the Chalton St laundrette and meet a bloke who, somewhat unlikely, rents deck chairs in Purchese St Open Space.  Marieck lives in what seems to be a combination of Oakshott Court and a couple of other buildings.

This is an endearing if rather slight film.  Tommo reluctantly wears checkered trousers and a dress, as the best clothes in the stolen laundry bag.  Marieck’s father is struggling to give his son a better life, while the son spends his days taking photos and not having much to do.  The two boys become good friends, but nothing really goes anywhere, and not much happens.

Other reviewers have commented that as the film is only seventy minutes it is a bit of a ripoff for cinema-goers.  The Renoir in the Brunswick Centre have rectified this by showing it with a short, ‘ A Dog Altogether’, also by Shane Meadows.  If you live here, or are a Shane Meadows fan, it’s worth seeing.  Otherwise, perhaps one for a wet Sunday DVD.

London Bones July 29, 2008

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

In a rotunda on a traffic island, the Museum of London stores the bones of 17,000 former denizens, recovered from burial sites dating from Roman times through to the 19th century. Their names are rarely remembered and even the date of their death is often unsure. Some come from the outskirts, Merton Priory and Chelsea Old Church, but most are from the older parts of London itself, the City, Spitalfields, Holburn.

Twenty six of these skeletons can be seen until 26 September at the Wellcom Collection’s Skeletons exhibition, which had a private viewing last night. Most of the people on display were the victims of awful diseases with symptoms showing in their bones. Syphillis, tuberculosis, osteoarthritis, healed and unhealed fractures, all making me very grateful to live in an age with antibiotics and anesthetics.

A few showed signs of bathrocephaly, where the skull has a step at the back. This can occur for many reasons, including diseases and being born in a breech position, and affected 1/10 of the population well into the nineteenth century but is now very rare. The cause of the change wasn’t clear in the exhibition, though I wonder if it reflects a change in the way breech babies are delivered?

It was a fascinatingly macabre way to spend the evening, arousing curiosity but at the same time disturbing. Looking closely at the skeltons, its easy to get some idea of their lives, and to wonder about them. Those broken ribs had healed, but how did they happen? How did deformities of leg-bones affect the person’s mobility? The private viewing was for members of the Wellcome Collection’s club, many of whom are medics, so there were plenty of people with well-informed ideas.

I’m always a little ambivalent about exhibitions of dead bodies, whether its that sad naturally mummified body in the British Museum, or the proud Pharaohs reduced to spectacle in Cairo, and it is important to remember that these were real people, who lived around here. This is a very respectful presentation and, in an odd sort of way, renders them more human. I wouldn’t mind if that was me, in a few hundred years time.

The exhibition is on until 26 September, free, and well worth seeing. Oh, and if you’re a bloke who doesn’t fancy a prostate check, go and have a look at the skeleton who died of prostate cancer, and then pluck up the courage for a doctors visit.

Chez Georges for a Perfect Chocolate Mousse May 5, 2008

Posted by cathrynsymons in : Cafes & Restaurants, Camden , 1 comment so far

Different cuisines have different signature dishes. By these shall ye know them. They may be hackneyed and traditional, but if they’re good, chances are everything else will be too. For Indian restaurants, its the chana marsala. The chick peas should be firm, not soft, and the flavours pungent with clean tastes of coriander and lemon.

For a French bistro, it has to be the chocolate mousse. If you get one of those gelatine-reinforced, individual “we made it this morning and stuck it in the fridge” things in a Marie Antoinette champagne glass, you know you’ve made a mistake. Ask to check the fridge before you order your starter. They’ll think you’re odd, but it is worth it.

At Chez Georges, which has just opened at 9A Delancey St, Camden Town, the mousse is perfect. Strong with chocolate, yet light and airy, scooped from a larger bowl onto the plate. So rich that cream would be excessive, and absolutely divine.

The entrance looks like a kebab shop, but the main restaurant is downstairs. It was very quiet yesterday, a bank holiday Sunday, but is bound to pick up soon. The waiters are friendly, onion soup, seafood risotto and duck very good, house wine perfectly drinkable, and a Kir Royale is included in the set menu price. £66 for two, including tip. Try it.

And so the Muppet Show starts May 3, 2008

Posted by cathrynsymons in : Camden, Politics , add a comment

It was enough to keep me under the duvet this morning, waking up to see that Boris Johnson, famous for the muppet haircut, riding a bicycle and being very entertaining on Have I Got News For You, is now Mayor of London. The blues descend.

The results make interesting reading. The turn out was a lot higher than last time, showing the effect of a controversial, engaging campaign. There is received wisdom is that a high turnout favours the left-leaning parties, but this time, it seems to have favoured the Tories.

Often close-run elections squeeze out the smaller parties, and that seems to have happened here. In the Assembly elections particularly, and to a lesser extent in the Mayoral ones, the swing to the Tories has been at the expense of the Lib Dems and UKIP, rather than Labour. The Greens held up well, as did the other, less appealing but sadly significant small party. Obviously Ken Livingstone has a large personal following which won’t be swayed by the general turning away from Labour, but its hard to see why that would apply in the Assembly party vote where Labour kept the same number of seats . UKIP has pretty well imploded over the last couple of years, so their disappearance isn’t surprising. Perhaps the lacklustre Paddick campaign has affected the wider Lib Dem vote, while the far more exciting Ken show has at least helped to keep Labour afloat.

And finally, its wonderful to see we have another Green on Camden Council, with Alex Goodman winning the Highgate Ward by-election, and joining the other two Greens on the Council.

Somers Town needs Council Housing, not Scaremongering April 27, 2008

Posted by cathrynsymons in : Camden, Politics , 1 comment so far

Posters have gone up around Somers Town suggesting that the new British Library International Science Site (BLISS) medical research centre planned for the land behind the British Library would be an inner-city version of Porton Down, and an article in the Guardian Education supplement last week sent me off to the local Community Centre on Saturday morning, where staff from the medical institutions involved were available to talk to local people about their plans.

I firmly believe that the BLISS should not be built on that site, because this area desperately needs more affordable housing, and the government should stand up to its promise to build council homes.  There’s a strong local campaign underway trying to make that happen.  However, it hadn’t occurred to me that the likes of the Medical Research Council or Cancer Research UK would be dangerous neighbours.  After all, they’re both already in the area anyway, and there are a lot of other medical research facilities around here.  It’s a major local industry.

Talking for nearly an hour with Sir Leszek Boryziewicz, the CEO of the MRC, completely upheld that opinion.  He is a tall, quietly spoken gentleman.  He introduced himself, I thought, as ‘Les’, saying the s oddly so it must have been ‘Leszek’.  He clearly, but without being patronising, explained the type of research they are likely to do, the sorts of security that would be in place and the risks involved.

A scientist rather than a PR person, he qualifies his statements unless he is absolutely 100% sure of something.  I find that reassuring, though it may seem uncertain.  So, because the committee working out what science would be done in the new centre has yet to report, he won’t guarantee that this will not be a category 4 lab as discussed in the Guardian article, though he thinks it unlikely.  Diseases like Ebola and Lassi Fever are not even dealt with in civilian facilities in the UK - if there was any work with them, it would be in a military facility like Porton Down.   There is no reason for Somers Town to be patrolled by armed police, as suggested in the posters which have appeared.

It is unlikely that the level of hazard here will be any higher than it is in many labs and hospitals around Bloomsbury and Holburn.  The MRC does research on HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and flu, and it is likely that would continue in the new lab.  Given that Somers Town has a very high incidence of tuberculosis that is perhaps something we should support.

Sir Leszek is a man who was knighted for inventing a vaccine against cervical cancer, and likes Ben Goldacre.  If it turns out that we can’t make council housing happen, then I’ll be very pleased indeed to welcome him to the area.

Briefing April 13, 2008

Posted by cathrynsymons in : Camden, Reviews , add a comment

I’m ashamed to say that, despite being in this area for nearly a decade, yesterday was my first trip to the Camden People’s Theatre. I nearly didn’t make it. From the outside, it is a small and uninspiring venue in the unlovely urban desert between Drummond St and Tottenham Court Rd and when I finally ventured in last week to book tickets I was told that the opening night for their latest production had been flooded out, and that tickets have to be bought through the internet.

I’m glad I persevered. Mercurial Production’s short play, Briefing, is an hour very well spent. The play is based on Doris Lessing’s 1971 novel “Briefing for a Descent into Hell”, the story of a man who loses his memory and is admitted to a psychiatric hospital as the Patient. He may be mad, or he may be an agent of an interplanetary civilisation trying to rescue the Earth from humanity’s excesses. He cannot remember his former earthly life, as a Cambridge classics professor, but remembers snatches of his other experiences and has a strong sense of having forgotten something important. The book can be read as a psycho-drama, or as science fiction. I’m inclined to that latter, because it pivots around the scene of the ‘Briefing’ of the title, where the assembled alien agents are told that their mission to earth will be difficult, and that they will forget who they were. This scene doesn’t enter the consciousness of the Patient at any stage, and seems too concrete if the author is trying to keep the nature of this reality open.

The play is true to the novel, drawing the dialogue from it. The cast enter the small, sparse performance space down the side aisle with no separate stage. Most of the action takes place on and around a hospital bed, which becomes a raft in the ocean, and, with the cast, a cliff-face climbed by the Patient.

Where much of the book is unremitting stream-of-consciousness prose as the Patient talks through his memories, the cast use movement and words to take us through the story. First supporting his perhaps fantastical reality, then transforming into the hospital staff trying to ‘cure’ him, they bring the confusion between the two worlds to life.

As with the book, the play comes through on multiple levels. It is commentary on the way we treat the mentally-ill, with the Patient continuously drugged and under threat of electric shock therapy, and the medical staff’s certainty that their own reality is true. And is there madness too in the dire state of the planet, so much worse now than when the book was first written?

This is Mercurial Productions first production, bringing together young actors who are all graduates of the Parisian theatre school, Ecole Jacques Lecoq. James Turpin is excellent as the Patient, somnolent and confused, but calm so that the possibility that the past he partly remembers is the real one always remains open. The ensemble work together seamlessly, at times almost dancing their way through the play.

Briefing plays at the Camden People’s Theatre until 26 April. Tickets are £10/£12, and bookings must be made through Ticketweb who will add a pound or two to the price.

Embedding a Youtube video March 12, 2008

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Blogging, Camden , add a comment

This should be really simple. Just take the embedding code from the video and paste it in.

and indeed it is. The only catch is to make sure you’ve turned off the use of the visual editor for the user so that Wordpress doesn’t rearrange the