You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August, 2007.
Okay here goes…
I haver never met anyone who mourned the death of Diana, beyond what you might expect following the death of any public figure.
I don’t know anyone who signed a condolence book. I don’t know anyone who travelled to her funeral. I don’t know anyone who admits to having shed tears.
I am sick of being told by the media that the whole country ground to a halt. I am tired of being told that my fellow countrymen were “united in their grief”.
To make it absolutely clear: I didn’t grieve. Nobody I knew did. Nobody I have ever met did.
Two boys lost their mother. Undoubtedly sad. Like any other death I wish it had not happened.
It is symptomatic of the media mind control that I actually feel anxious about writing this. Like I am coming out of some kind of closet. But I am tired of being told by the BBC how EVERYONE reacted over this. It wasn’t everyone. I doubt it was even a majority and it certainly wasn’t me.
Now we have Ten Years On…
Please, cover the anniversary. Celebrate her life. Honour her memory. But stop lying about the scale of the mourning.
To put it in context I remember a dark cloud over me the day Tony Wilson died. His life touched mine because I had the best nights of my life in his club, dancing like a loon to the music he found, recorded and promoted.
But I am sorry, that is as sad as I get over someone I have never met.
Once more carrying on the theme of late night Skype chats about what is to be expected of Newcastle, it wasn’t so surprising that Greggs eventually came up in conversation.
For the uninitiated, wiki it and you get this info:
Put simply it sells all things pastry and the odd bit of bread too.
Everyone here in the North East takes Greggs for granted. It’s always been around. It’s where your first pasty came from and it’s never let you down when you’ve wanted some cheap stodge ever since.
But at some point it seemed to explode. Suddenly it wasn’t just in Newcastle but right across the UK. Also the dirty blue turquoise branding we had grown up with was replaced by a new swish orange and blue look.
This came with a Soup Nazi style queuing system that regularly proves its worth during hours of peak pie demand.
But anyway, in order to forward info to my Skype chatting friend, I Googled Greggs and the wiki explanation above came up. I kept on reading and noticed this nugget of information:
Actress and model Milla Jovovich is a well-known fan of the store and its pasties, and has gone on record to say she would be willing to become the “face of Greggs” in a new marketing campaign if the firm approached her, though no such approach has yet been made.
Now, as you know, I have been out of town a while so this is probably common knowledge I missed but…WOW.
Anyway, a little more searching and you find out who got her hooked:
Elsewhere on the net there is talk of pie-loving-Milla becoming the official Greggs pastry-pusher but it appears never to have happened although she actually seems to be touting for the job. This is from Aussie paper, The Age:
Well for someone who otherwise has never quite understood the concept of food porn there is an image that does it for me entirely. But the journo is right, Greggs haven’t bitten. One quick look at the website sees it sadly Jovovich-free.
Personally I relish the opportunity to blame my descent into complete obesity on Miss Mila and her persuasive pie pedaling.
For the record the pic above is from flickerererer Southern_Comfort who is not alone as a serial Greggs snapper. He’s part of Greggs Pool that has 37 members including blue me who made this work of genius.
Elsewhere a quick trawl on Facebook finds the Greggs Appreciation Society
Greggs, we salute you.
The best thing about travelling?
Well it doesn’t work for short trips, but if you’ve been away for as long as I have, then you see it all very differently when you return.
I am rediscovering how beautiful Tyneside as I see it with fresh eyes.
In the meantime, I’ve been talking a lot over Skype to ourwoman who is following me soon. Our conversations often take the form of the places we’ll go and what we’ll see when she arrives.
Searching for links to pics to send, I came across this set by Ray Byrne. They are beautiful. I am truly jealous of his talent.
The shot above is also one of Amble Harbour, a place I spent many of my summer holidays as a kid.
I’m looking forward to getting out to the North East coast for bracing walks. After Vietnam and Nicaragua the air seems so pleasingly sharp and cool. Summer is not how I remember it.
Believe it or not, I’m cold.
So, I have been out of the country for three years.
In that time I have been pretty much cut off from UK change. Not entirely perhaps, there has been a couple of flying visits, I have had a few emails from friends and family and, not forgetting of course, there is the internet.
But you still miss out on so much.
Some things did sneak through. The Libertines for example had started to make ripples in the music scene before I left. At the head of them was singer songwriter Pete Doherty.
Now for reasons I only have the slightest grasp of, the very mention of his name makes otherwise laid back people all but spit on the ground in disgust. Okay so I know the basics Kate Moss, drugs etc. But I have honestly never so much as seen him on TV. I’ve only heard the music.
Talking of music, it all sounds a bit odd. We’d already started to turn the corner from a boyband low before I split and that had to be a good. When I was leaving the Scissor Sisters and The Streets were huge.
I come back and to my ears everything sounds like the aforementioned. Either camp, glam and overproduced or cock-er-ney, cor blimey guvnor stuff. Lily Allen, her music rather than her celebrity persona, managed to appear on my radar but I return home to find that she too has a few sound-a-likes.
Somewhere along the line Oasis seem to have become loved again. I heard the Killers while I was away and I return to find they made it from heroes to zeros inside a couple of albums. Thank God The Darkness have gone.
On TV I keep coming across Russell Brand and I can’t work out why. He’s seems as omnipotent as he does talentless and downright unlikeable.
Honestly, I turn my back for a minute and they’re allowing tossers on TV. Where did he come from? And why did they let him near a mic? I don’t get it. What is his talent?
Other changes are already entirely accepted practice. The cigarette laws may be comparatively new but what is amazing is just how widely they are adhered too. I went to a football reserve game and stood on an old fashioned terraces the other night. I looked around and there wasn’t a single furtive smoker. I was amazed.
Nobody claimed ignorance and smoked and had to be told to put it out. Everyone is either scared or have bought into it 100%. I also recently visited the once smokey Chillingham Arms Pub and it was like some European-style coffee shop. I’m almost sure that is a good thing.
Other changes? Polish people - ie smiley, well educated, motivated people working in places that used to employ pissed off, rude, British kids with less than limited enthusiasm.
Plus lots more Asian kids in the Universities. Fabulous. Newcastle could never really claim to be multicultural, but I like this. It makes the whole place seem to much more colorful. More international. Less dowdy and stuck in its ways.
There are other smaller changes. Chip and Pin is a new one on me but seems both easier and better. I am embarrased to admit that I actually had to Google to find out what a BlackBerry is.
Everyone is a little more eco aware which also has to be admired. Is there less SUVs on the road or am I imagining it?
Of course we have a new PM and that makes it easier for me to come home. But I also like the low profile of Brown. I’ve often argued that the media is celebrity obsessed and overlooks politics and hard news. But it changed. Blair became the celebrity. Now I am actually enjoying just how invisible the government is.
Possibly in reaction to all this, the political blogosphere now has right wing bloggers too in what was previously a predominantly left wing domain. I’d begrudgingly admit that should be positive, although there seems to be less debate and more squabbling.
Terms like astroturfing and sockpuppet seem to prevail and there’s much more anonymous posting and general behaviour that I only ever used to see on football message boards.
Talking of football, my team are getting in on the act. New owner, new chairman, new manager, new captain, new players and Kieron Dyer, football’s premier nob head, is gone.
Socially speaking, nights out are actually being organised using Facebook.
There will no doubt be a million more changes that I will chance upon and I guess they will form the bulk of this blog’s content.
Strangely I don’t feel like I missed out. I mean, Pete Doherty, Lily Allen and Russell Brand - who needs that? But discovering it all at once and without the drip drip of media is a little strange.
Having such little pop cultural understanding feels odd. This is how high court judges must feel.
But I am comfortable with being home and weighing it all up, for the most part, the changes, the ones that really matter, seem to be for the best.
Maybe I am yet to encounter and deal with more subtle changes.
As an ex VSOer in Hanoi who, on occasions, saw the otherside of volunteering in Granada, I’m with them 100% on this one.
From today’s Times:
“One of Britain’s leading charities has warned students not to take part in gap-year aid projects overseas which cost thousands of pounds and do nothing to help developing countries.
“Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) said that gap-year volunteering, highlighted by Princes William and Harry, has spawned a new industry in which students pay thousands of pounds for prepackaged schemes to teach English or help to build wells in developing countries with little evidence that it benefits local communities.
“It said that “voluntourism” was often badly planned and spurious projects were springing up across Africa, Asia and Latin America to satisfy the demands of the students rather than the needs of locals. Young people would be better off simply travelling the world and enjoying themselves, it added.”
Yes, yes, and yes again.
I’ve written on this subject before and you can find it here.
While carbon footprint seems to be the latest buzz term, I accidentally seem to have fallen into sub-eco ways without really trying.
You see the thing is, three years ago I got rid of pretty much everything. A trunk full of CDs went to parents, as did a few pots and pans but the rest was dispersed between friends, dumps and charity shops.
It was so much harder than I thought it would be. Not mentally - I was glad to become possessionless, it was a strangely pleasant feeling. But the physical task of clearing away was hard, hard work.
A van was hired - there were at least a dozen trips to the tip. There were so many leads to electrical items long since gone. Boxes for items that never needed repackaging. Paperwork by the boxful that I thought, one day I might just need but, in the end, never did.
And it all went. Very slowly. In fact the evening before I was due to fly I was still emptying that house. Its new owner was due in the next day.
On a much smaller scale I repeated the scenario when I left Hanoi. My hair clippers, for example, are now the front line defence for Blue Dragon’s war on head lice. No doubt my speakers are pumping out sickly Vietnamese love songs in a KOTO office somewhere.
Of the rest, well that is easy. Sheer poverty promotes recycling in Hanoi. I dumped bags on the street and five minutes later there was a crowd of conical-hatted ladies cooing over their find. My big western sized clothes are, no doubt, already reduced by buzzing sewing machines to Vina sizes.
Eventually I left - the possessions I still owned in two large bags.
Leaving Granada was less difficult. There’s a happy kiddie with a new bicycle. Our Spanish teacher has two new hammocks, a blackboard and a fan. A second hand clothes shop received a donation.
And here I am again back in Newcastle.
Now one of the strange things about leaving behind consumerist modern Britain is you become the worst of the breed when you return. All those things you couldn’t buy when abroad you rush to buy. So far: a new mobile phone, headphones for my Ipod and a camera.
Soon it will be a car too (not so green there).
But I’m determined there will be a point where I draw the line. I may be settling here for the foreseeable future but I refuse to bog myself down again with crap I don’t need.
That big box of CDs, that are still at my parents, can go. It’s all on my Ipod anyway. New music purchases can be downloaded. So can films. Books can be borrowed and then swapped.
While the fact that I am reducing my carbon footprint maybe just a coincidence, perhaps I have happened upon a better way of living. Maybe “light living” is the way to go.
Less stuff, less money spent, less debt - well it makes our lives just a little lighter. More mobile. More free and I think, ultimately, happier.
We’ll see how I am going in six months or so.
Not sure what to make of this?
Can’t work out whether the name and tagline are tongue in cheek, ironic or scarily serious.
Contemporary grooming rituals created for the modern man
Hmmmm.
I guess they must have customers but I can’t imagine anyone being able to go through the front door without either being unable to keep a straight face or being absolutely petrified. It’s also situated in Gosforth, which although quite posh, doesn’t normally have this kind of vibe. Now in Jesmond, well maybe.
Seeing this place, and wondering who goes there, reminded me of a recent conversation with a fellow thirtysomething here in Newcastle. He works at a call centre with lots of bright young things. I didn’t ask how it came up in conversation but he reckons that most of his male young colleagues admit to shaving/waxing their pubic hair.
I was shocked. The gay guys’ penchant for “back, sack and crack” I had heard of but is this now widespread?
Really?
It appears that maybe contemporary alpha males do groom more than I thought. Or at least young ones do.
I’ve never felt so glad to be an aging beta.
This made me laugh.
Excuse the slightly crap mobile picture. I should explain what you are looking at.
There was a broken window at Jesmond Metro station. I caught a train from there following a couple of late afternoon beer garden beers.
It had one of those emergency glass patches clagged on. You know the type that are little more than a holding job until proper reglazing.
Anyway, in the glue was clearly spelt out:
SMB
NUFC.
For the uninitiated that’s Sad Mackem Bastards followed by Newcastle United Football Club.
Or to explain further, the next city’s football team (Sunderland), in derrogatory terms, followed by ours in full.
All beautifully written out in glue.
I guess you could call it grafitti, if it wasn’t so obviously written by the people whose job it is to clear up after vandals.
Anyway, the new season starts on Saturday. Away to Bolton and I’m strangely optimistic. When I first considered leaving Tyneside, I feared that Newcastle United would break the habit of my lifetime and actually win something and I wouldn’t be there to see it. I was assured by more sensible people that there was absolutely no chance of this.
They were right. Too right. We only got worse. So much worse.
But we’ve a new manager. A new chairman and new players too.
Whisper it quietly - but my optimism for the new season might just have had the teeniest influence on me heading home.
Except that would just be stupid.
When we decided to leave Nicaragua, the plan was hatched to continue to stay only as long as it took to get a job elsewhere. After all, it was cheap living and we could spend our days perusing the internet for that perfect position.
But then one came up. In my home town and the more I thought about it the more it made sense. Suddenly, with the possibility of working back in the Toon, came thoughts of all those things that I realised I did miss after all.
So the job was dutifully applied for. One of those long long application forms that says: “Do not attach your CV“. In other words: “We think we have thought of every single question it’ll take to find out everything about you. Gosh there’s quite a lot but would you mind awfully answering them all?”
And so I did. And heard nothing for a while.
Then I got an email. I had made the shortlist. I hinted that a Skype interview might be an idea but then, well,I realised it didn’t exactly show enthusiasm so I volunteered to fly home.
Long story short: several thousands miles, several hundred pounds and one interview later. I didn’t get the job.
They were good enough to give me feedback. Seems they think I am too much of a free spirit. I’m a little out of the loop too, apparently.
Which is all a little annoying because pre my recent adventures I had a dozen years of experience and office time.
I’d also just spent three years learning more about the possibilities of PR than all those other years combined.
I’d spent time dealing with CNN, BBC World, the Herald Tribune, Lonely Planet, ABC, the (then) British Deputy Prime Minister, various Australian cabinet members, the Vietnamese Communist Party, the New York Times, and even, on one occasion, the White House.
But they wanted someone who knew the business editor of the local paper.
Deep breath. Calm thoughts.
So I’m home now. No point flying back and spending even more of my diminishing cash.
I must admit I hadn’t really anticipated failure in the job interview. My mind had been racing ahead - a flat, a car, a season ticket for the football. The nine to five again but making the weekends count too.
I always always always, enjoy the most incredible luck. A new job? No problem.
And now here I am - hemorrhaging cash on British prices and endlessly job hunting.
There’s one post I am very interested in that is still waiting to shortlist. There is another one on the horizon that sounds great too. But, for the most part people seem to have gone on their summer holidays. The PR industry, it appears, is largely gone till September.
I’ve spent only two weeks on the dole in my entire working life so this is all starting to get just a little bit scarey. But something will come up soon, right? Right?
* Pic is the little men from the Haymarket area in Newcastle - which have also become my new banner. The Tyne Bridge just seemed too cliche. When I last lived in Newcastle they appeared, having been expensively created. They were universally hated and it seemed they’d soon be gone. But I’m back and they, apparently, never went away. I think people might just be warming to them. I think I am.
I thought this would never happen.
It seemed like I’d be on my adventures for the rest of my days.
And then, all of a sudden, it seemed like the best option.
Our last stop, Nicaragua, unfortunately just didn’t work out. Underemployed in my volunteer post and with a non-existent social life it was time to move again.
Then suddenly I wanted that move to be to Newcastle. Back home babies were being born. I hadn’t met three people in my own family.
I wanted stability. I wanted normality. I wanted to be back with old friends I could ring for a beer. I wanted fish and chips. I wanted cold, and sometimes even wet.
So I am back here for the time being at least. Ourwoman follows soon.
Oh and I have my Newcastle United season ticket back.
Now I just need a job. More about that soon.
