Noroc and Salaam Alekum

I've spent two out of the last three weeks out of the country. Fortunately, I get occasional bursts of travel as part of my work so three weeks ago I had 5 days in Romania and I spent last week in Egypt.

Romania, or more specifically in my case, Bucharest, is a great place to visit. My colleagues in the Bucharest office are without doubt the most hospitable and fun people in the whole organisation. There were also four colleagues visiting from the Paris office. They are also exceptional fun so we had a great week. I counted the stamps in my passport and this was my seventh trip to Bucharest and I hope there are lots more.

Whenever you mention you have visited Romania you get one of two reactions. People start (trying to) make clumsy jokes about Dracula or they mention gipsys. I've even seen colleagues on their first visit there try these sorts of comments as some sort of icebreaker with the Romanians. They are usually answered politely with a courteous smile or occasionally a suggestion that perhaps these are not the sole characteristics that define their country and its people. I love going there and would recommend it to anyone. Can't wait to go again. Fantastic climate, fantastic people.

Egypt is a tougher nut to crack. Egyptians seem rather more cautious on first meeting and one gets the impression they expect a Western visitor has arrived with a lot of preconceptions about them, mostly negative for some reason. In my experience, after three visits, that's not the case. I encourage colleagues to go there because Cairo is so different to any city we're normally accustomed to. It's a frantic, sprawling and often bewildering place but utterly safe, certainly no more dangerous than some parts of London at the wrong time of day or night. Revisit cars you only dimly recall from your childhood by hopping into a local taxi - agree the price first though, none have a working meter. In the tourist spots you will be hassled to buy stuff, especially in areas like Khan El Khallili (the massive market) or around the Pyramids, but respond in a friendly manner and you soon realise they have a fantastic sense of humour. Yes, they want you to buy something but they're smart enough to realise they are probably the fiftieth person in the last hour that's asked you the same question and they have to survive on their wit and charm to keep your interest. The people in the office open up pretty quickly as well and any suggestion of initial mutual distrust is soon gone. Try to speak a few words of Arabic - it's a real icebreaker as you try to pronounce a simple phrase which to a Westerner simply sounds like you're trying to cough up your breakfast.

The Final Kitchen Blogpost

OK, it's finally over. Electrician #3 returned today to fix the light he broke on the last visit. He'd drilled through a cable that wasn't supposed to be there. This has left me with two rather ugly holes in the living room ceiling and a hole gouged in the wall which is tactically obscured by a Mark Rothko print - No. 10, 1950 - if you're interested.

I've managed to play with all my new appliances. The AEG washing machine appears to wash clothes quietly and efficiently. The mini Bosch dishwasher is a hoot. The Neff oven, hob and grill all appear to work exactly to requirements - but getting used to
those will take a little time.

My concerns over choice of tiles (I have no design or colour co-ordination skills) have been vindicated by various compliments from the neighbours and the granite still looks utterly, utterly beautiful.

So below are a few before, during, and after pictures.

Mortality

Within the last few hours I've heard my next door neighbour has died and a very good friend for the last 25 years has had a heart attack.

Phillip, my neighbour, was a compact jolly man. He was getting old but I regularly saw him on the stairs as he jogged up and down the three flights to take the rubbish out. I always joked he could get up the stairs faster than me. He always wore immaculate white trainers and had a witty comment about something in the news or some recent local event. His health started to deteriorate very quickly a few years ago and one night I had a knock on the door from his distraught wife as Phillip had fallen and couldn't get up. I went in to their flat and manhandled him, as only an amateur can, back up onto the bed. A few days later he went into long term care and that was the last I saw of him although I often asked his wife Betty how he was as she went every day to visit him and spend the day with him. He died earlier this week and was buried on Thursday.

I've known my friend Colin, for over 25 years. We were flatmates in a terrible houseshare in Forest Hill. Everyone in the house got on fine, comrades in adversity really, as the landlord was a tedious little prat. The kind that leaves notes about the place while you're out.
We've all been friends ever since. He was running for a train on Thursday evening and suddenly collapsed. Next he knew he was in St. Thomas' Hospital being told he'd just had a heart attack. He called me from there a few hours ago. The prognosis sounds good. He had two blocked arteries which have been probed and have been deemed repairable without any invasive surgery needed. He has to take it easy for a while. We celebrated his 50th birthday only a few weeks ago. He's always been active, is definitely not overweight and is only a moderate drinker and never a smoker.

It's only times like this you start to think about how many people you know have actually died and the numbers get pretty frightening. My mum is one of three sisters. They all married. Of those three couples, one sister and all the husbands have died. Of the four who died, my father was the only one who got past 60.

My mother fortunately is still in robust health and shows no sign of fading at 70. That's probably got a lot to do with her lifestyle. Once she got rid of me and my brother she decided to keep horses instead of kids and has had, at any one time, between two and five horses on the go, so to speak. She's always done all the mucking out, grooming and all that stuff herself, as well as towing them around in horse boxes to go eventing. She can still chuck a 25kg sack of pony nuts further than I would care to try or bundle half a ton of recalcitrant horse flesh through the stables and out into the field for the day. Perhaps I should find myself a hobby like that or take up munro bagging or something as apart form the gym a couple of times a week my lifestyle is pretty sedentary.

In Which I Gain a Double Oven and Lose Some Lighting

So, this refurbishment is, as I have probably said before, is a series of battles. Some you win, some you lose, and some you get a bloody nose but come back fighting the next day to be victorious.

The last two days have been a mix of all the above. Yesterday the granite was fitted - it's gorgeous and the single most beautiful thing in the kitchen so far. Electrician #3 arrived today to fit a new cooker circuit, consumer unit (that's a fuse box to us normal people) and fit the lovely double oven.

The new cooker circuit went in OK and the double oven was fitted, eventually, after we hacked up most of the back of the unit. Unfortunately, at some stage one of the cables to a living room light has been hacked through. So I have a partially darkened living room in which I cannot read. The RCD (circuit breaker) is also over-sensitive and may be prone to switching off the entire flat at a moment's notice. Electrician #3 has spent 14 hours here today and will have to return next week to try and solve the above problems.

Electrician #3 has also pointed out the poor quality of workmanship of electrician #1 whose work I had suspected for some time was rather makeshift. I don't want #1 to do any more work, but he will have to come back as it is not permissible to locate sockets and switches directly above a hob which is what he's done.

Tomorrow, more kitchen units are assembled. I still have to choose tiles though. All appliances are purchased.

Maybe I will have running water in the kitchen by the weekend....but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Easter Snow

I'm just back from a weekend up North - the North of England that is - Yorkshire to be precise. That's where I'm from originally. Well, actually, as a small child it was Yorkshire, then they moved the county boundaries and it became Cleveland, but the area is also often referred to as Teesside, so that confuses everyone and people who don't know the area assume you're from Newcastle anyway so it's always a bit of a drag to explain it. So I'll stop now.

Anyway, my Mum still lives there, a few miles from the coast and the aptly named North Sea. Weather comes from all sides and, despite being a few miles inland you can taste the salt in the air when it gets particularly wild and the wind is in the right direction. When snow arrives, you'll generally get a decent amount, and it tends to stick around for a few days and doesn't turn into a sodden slush by mid-morning like you get in London. Lots of the North is like this, but since the media is London-centric in the UK, snowfall in the UK is always reported in the news with the same degree of shock as nuclear attacks or the suggestion of a Labour tax cut.

So, before I get too political, here are a few pictures of the village of East Cowton last Sunday. Granted it's not a big snowfall, but come on, it's Easter dammit, and I think it looks especially pretty and picture-postcardy.

It's also nice to get away from the flat for a few days as I still have no running water in the kitchen and the dust levels are getting really unpleasant. The granite is being fitted today.

Progress

The electrical gloom of last week has hopefully been resolved. The problem was that there was no locatable cooker circuit in my flat. You need a 30 amp plus circuit on which to run most modern double electric ovens. You can probably get away with a lower rating but you run the risk of the fuse blowing midway through cooking your Christmas dinner or something. These circuits should exist but as I had a gas cooker before, it was not required and had long since, probably before I even moved in, been entombed in a wall and lost. To find I now needed to install a new circuit just after the kitchen was decorated and half the units fitted was a bit of a shock as it would probably mean fitting a complete new circuit requiring much burrowing into my newly decorated walls.

A panic to find a trustworthy electrician before more construction was done was undertaken. And I think I've found one. He's the third electrician I've needed. One to wire up the new boiler, one to install lighting and sockets, and now a third to install a cooker circuit. The good new is that all the cable can be surface mounted and hidden discreetly in coving or at ceiling level and hidden by units. The work hasn't been done yet, but the spark #3 arrives next week to install it.

Also next week the granite worktops will be fitted. In order to fit granite, you must first template it. This involves part constructing the kitchen to the point where the future locations for the worktops can be accurately measured. You can't just trim a slab of granite on a whim if it doesn't quite fit- it's got to be measured once, cut, and you have to get right first time. All the units, sink and supplies must be in place but disconnected. I have had no running water in my kitchen for over a week. The templaters did their work today and return next Tuesday to fit the granite worktops. After that, the cooker circuit can be added, the oven and hob installed, the sink and tap can be plumbed in, the tiling can be completed and the rest of the units can be fitted and finished.

I feel I've crested the majority of problems. There's the potential for many things to go wrong, but I feel none of them will be insurmountable.

Highs and Lows

As my kitchen and plumbing refurbishment continues and the cash and the will to live ebb slowly away, there is the occasional high spot. They are few and far between and one must treasure them like a pearl in an oyster before you choke on the little bastard.

This week's high, which has been counter-attacked by deep, gloomy depression over electrical issues, is the arrival of my kitchen tap. It comes in its own soft, fuzzy-felt, monogrammed, drawstring bag. Gaze upon its cruciform splendour. It's the only good thing to happen to me this week. One day I may see it in situ.

I am Good.....apparently....

How evil are you?

A Great Book Related Meme

What a great idea for a meme. It goes as follows.....

• Take the book you are currently reading
• Turn to page 123
• Skip five sentences
• Post the next three sentences in your blog

So, here goes with my three sentences...

I believe it has never been used since Johnson's death in 1784.

There is an interesting picture, attributed to Reynolds, of Jonhson's (sic) black servant, Frank Barber. He was a Jamaican slave who received his freedom in 1752, became Johnson's man-servant, and apart for (sic again) a short period, served him faithfully until his master died thirty-two years later.

Who was responsible for proof-reading this manuscript? I hadn't noticed any mistakes reading the book until now and then I find two in three sentences. Anyway, it's an interesting book - In Search of London by H.V. (Henry Vollam to his pals) Morton. A Pevsner style book on London written fifty years ago, very evocative and, if you've spent any time in London, addictive to imagine how places you thought you knew might have actually looked half a century ago.

Tattoos and Tiling

Crouch End has now got its own tattoo parlour. I'm not sure how their market research concluded Crouch End has the right population demographic for tatts but I look forward to Amy Winehouse visiting the area soon to reccy the place out.

In other news, the flat refurbishment continues. It's slow, but not that slow, and as long as things continue to progress I'm reasonably happy. I'd worry if things stopped, but that hasn't happened yet and there's no sign of that happening. Walls have been replastered, the floor has started, and electricians arrive next week to put in lighting, extra sockets and to wire up the plumbing properly. The bathroom will have to be done next as, despite their best intentions, the plumbers had to wreck a lot of it to lay in new pipework for the heating. Latest photos herein....

My kitchen has now almost completely moved to the living area. I am perfecting the art of living off coffee and sandwiches and still go through the motions of trying to keep the place clean but I just find that trying to clear up the dust and rubble only really agitates it and it just resettles over everything fifteen minutes later.

Boilers ands Ladybirds

Look! I have a new boiler and the cast-iron drainpie which I once though might become a feature of la cucina is now steadily returning to the darkness which it has occupied these past 40 years or so. That was the last time any work was done in this kitchen.











If that was not enough, these last few weeks I have been under attack from swarms of ladybirds that seem to know how to get into my flat. I would supply photos but they are so numerous that I have finally just resorted to just hoovering them up every evening. Seriously, I don't make a habit of killing bugs but this is out of control. They buzz round the lights, I pick them out of my bedding, the bath, my toothbrush, they converge on windows. I'm sick of the blighters and they keep on attacking in waves every morning. A little internet research suggests this is not an unusual problem.

Time Passes Very Slowly

Time passes very, very slowly when you're sitting at home, waiting for a plumber.

Kitchen Refurb. - Day 2

John the Kitchen is definitely a grafter. He's been back today and has industriously plastered neatly where the holes and roughly filled plasterwork were before. He's left it clean and tidy, as he's now away for a few days until the plumbing and heating guys do their stuff. He even 'phoned just now to ask if it was OK that he had left the plastic sheeting he'd laid over the carpet to protect it while he hauled rubble and my demolished kitchen through my flat and down two flights of stairs.

The Grand Kitchen Refurbishment Begins

This is how my kitchen currently looks. Nice innit. Work has finally begun. New boiler, pipework, kitchen units, cooker, granite worktops, slate floor, trendy lighting.....but when you see it like this you wonder how long it's going to take and how something this horrible will even ever metamorphose into the chic picture I saw in the brochure.

Optimistically, it's going to take three weeks - and these things never go to plan - because I'm having several things done at the same time and the pictures here are just the opening salvo. Today, John the Kitchen has been ripping out units, demolishing an old larder/cupboard, taking up the horrible lino floor and filling in the cracks in the walls. Everything in my flat has a fine coating of red brick dust. I know there's no point in trying to keep anything clean for the next three weeks. I have a dry taste in my mouth as a thick dust lingers in the air.....this had better be worth it. Hang the expense, it's just got to be right at the end of it all.

More to follow......

Make Your Mind Up!

So how are we supposed to pronounce this guy's name? Even the various employees of the mighty BBC seem unsure. In one day of listening to radio and TV I variously heard:-

B'rack O'Barmer

B'rack Obermarr

Barrack O'Barmer

Barrack Obermarr

Barrackobarmer

The different versions were not from people with regional accents or from people being voxpopped in the streets. These were all from native Brits. - BBC reporters whose normal accent was pretty much standard English.

This is what they should be teaching in schools...

I defy you not to find this funny.

Ken Livingstone

I've just watched Dispatches on Channel 4 about Ken Livingstone - the Mayor of London. I've never seen such a bunch of bitter, small-minded, under-achieving and jealous interviewees as they managed to dredge up. They were either political opponents or disillusioned ex-employees so they're hardly likely to be impartial.

Ken's not popular with a lot of people, and I can see why. He winds me up at times but some of the criticism levelled at him was just piss poor. They accused him of employing advisers with whom he had worked with in the past. So? He is perfectly within his right to do that. They do appear to be of a pretty extreme political stripe but Ken didn't write his job description, and it is his right to employ whomever he chooses (within reason).

They had a bleat about congestion charging. The only mistake Ken made with the Congestion Charge was that he didn't make it enough - it should be £50 per day, every day, including weekends. I drive a car, live 4 miles from Central London and have never paid the charge because apart from a couple of weekends I've never had the need to drive through the Congestion Charge zone.

They moaned about buses. Apparently there are too many. For fuck's sake, what sort of a complaint is that? More people apparently are using the buses so they go slower. Well just think what things would be like without the extra buses and the congestion charge is the only reasonable response to those fatuous arguments. I remember the day the Congestion Charge was introduced. The media had reporters posted all over London, braced to report on the inevitable turmoil they had predicted would unfold. What happened? Nothing. All they noticed was, surprisingly, rather fewer cars on the road.

The role of Mayor of London was invented, specified and budgeted by New Labour who were confident they'd just shove Frank Dobson (remember him?) into the job and they'd have the whole thing stitched up nicely whilst proudly announcing how democratic the process was. They didn't anticipate Ken winning and New Labour have been smarting ever since. New Labour would love to see the back of Ken but the reality is, despite all New Labour's quiet skulduggery in the background, he's still popular. I think with Boris Johnson, there's a reasonably strong candidate up against him, even though I actually don't think Boris' heart is really into this. He's far more politically ambitious.

Ken provokes strong feelings with lots of people. He's a little too keen to grandstand with controversial political figures than I'd like, and I don't really see what he's trying to achieve, within the definition of his job, with that sort of activity.

Channel 4 - if you're in the business of doing hatchet jobs, you should be able to do a better job than this. You should be able to find plenty of people who have genuine reasons for wanting Ken out other than simple jealousy but that was the only reason I could detect from the bunch that was paraded on this show.

Happy Birthday, War has Begun

There was a TV programme on Channel 4 tonight - 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse (sorry, no link) - it was all about the most critical point of The Cold War between the USSR and the USA. A combination of activities by various western powers contrived to make the USSR believe that a nuclear attack was imminent. There was a major NATO exercise going on - called Able Archer - which simulated nuclear armageddon, there was a lot of electronic traffic between the US and the UK and Reagan was making some very provocative speeches about the "evil empire" in the USSR.

It seems, the only thing that kept the USA and USSR from launching every goddamn missile they had at each other was the Soviet spies, despite enormous pressure from their bosses in The Kremlin, could find no compelling evidence that the West had actually launched anything, there was only the indication that a lot of things appeared to be in place and that Able Archer might be a smokescreen for the real thing.





This all came to a head on November 8th 1983. By an interesting quirk of fate (I've always wanted to use that phrase) I know exactly where I was on November 8th 1983. I was in a bar/pub called The Old Rangoon on Castelnau, Barnes where everybody bought me drinks for the whole evening. It was a hoot. These are the photos. The rather luscious frizzie blonde sitting next to me was called Ginny. She was a lovely, deliciously curvy gal, great fun, and to a young rather naive chap like me was just a whole mess of excitement. She was working as a nanny next door to the large houseshare I was living in at the time in Roehampton in south west London. This is still the shared accomodation of which I have the fondest memories. A great bunch of people, we had a ball, Andy, Rosie, Tony, Chris, Phil, Karen, Murray, Jeannine, Terry, Yvonne and many others - what a crowd, I love you all and think of you often.

And only now, have I found, thanks to this C4 documentary, that the closest we ever came to a full on, flat out, kill us all, nuclear armageddon, was on my 21st birthday.

Take the Next Left

My mum, who was 70 last year, got a TomTom SatNav for Christmas. She spent a good few hours chuntering, as is her nature, about how little she needed a device like this. Several of us tried to explain the benefits and I think we finally at least convinced her that she should at least try it out. She has repeatedly complained over the last six months that since my brother moved recently, she always get lost in the mish-mash of urban motorways, ring roads and confusing dual carriageways that surround Manchester so there was a good reason for giving it to her.

It did however, in my usual lightweight way, get me thinking. This is technology that has I think, finally come of age. Apart from a few stories in the press about giant trucks being led up farm tracks, sat. nav. devices do now appear to work. They may not take you the route you know, or intuitively feel is the right way, but they will get you there. When you suddenly decide you want to go somewhere unexpectedly or just feel the urge to speculatively follow an interesting looking signpost, it'll get you home from there afterwards. Maybe not by the most direct route but you probably wouldn't know anyway.

I used one on a holiday last year. I was in an unfamiliar part of Scotland and I had to find a new golf course every day. It navigated me perfectly through some substantially sized towns, on to the correct road on the other side of the town, and then on to the golf course.

I'm pretty sure they will be a standard fitting in all cars within the next decade. Shortly after that, I'm pretty sure they will be, de facto, essential. Governments will no longer consider good signage on roads is required and it therefore will become increasingly poor. When the older generation - who still navigate on paper and love to argue about the merits of the B449 over the new bypass - complain, the government will have formulated some patronising answer about embracing new technology. The compulsory SatNav in your car is going to be monitoring where yoou're going in oder to calculate your road charges (another inevitability) anyway so you're going to have to have one.

The next generation will be one that does not spend their geography lessons learning how to read a map and another useful skill that was once considered essential, will fall by the wayside.

This might prompt another post regard skills we used to need but are no longer required.....

Ouch!

Thanks to The Devil's Kitchen for pointing out this particularly terrifying device.

* exits room clutching groin in imagined pain *