Must Have

The last word in mobile phone technology HERE. Be patient through the intro, it's worth in when you get there!

Once again, thanks to Arctic Ghetto.

DIY: Hardwoods

Never throw surplus timber away; it will always have a use.

Just keep the curtains closed: she need never know.

Devil Children: Exclusive

As my partner returned from doing good works in Cambodia (although why they couldn't get the kids to paint that school I don't know), I dutifully unloaded the disc onto iPhoto, and noticed something in the corner of a landscape: yes, on closer inspection it's a couple of small demons!

They walk among us!

Meanwhile: now our old-style winter has returned, with sub-zero temperatures and high pressure, I have returned to the old-style sinus inspired migraines. I forgot how important global warming was!

Vegetaria: The Street of No Meat!

I was exploring the backstreets around Euston today, for purely recreational and educational reasons, of course, when I happened across Drummond Street NW1. Apart from the plethora of Asian sweet shops, it appeared to be predominantly Indian vegetarian restaurants.

Naturally, amongst the herbivores, I stood out somewhat, with my demonstrable vigour and florid, robust pallor, and I chose to move on to avoid drawing attention to myself. However, should I ever be asked where to by nuts and leaves, I now have my answer.

(Later, on the tube, I saw a very tall vicar. London's like that)

Alexandra Palace

Metropolitan Police Declare War On Live Entertainment

Bored of shooting innocent people, the Metropolitan Police have hit on a new scheme to effectively make the live music scene in London untenable.

In a clumsily apparent bid to collate a database of all those involved in the creative arts (perceived by the police to be non-conformist weirdos), they have abitrarily created Form 696

Basically, if the landlord of the pub doesn't fill out the form two weeks in advance, providing the personal details of EVERYONE performing at an event, the gig will not be allowed to take place.

No, I'm not making it up: read about it in The Independent

So don't expect to see Eric Clapton spontaneously stepping on stage to jam with anyone: if he hasn't declared his interest 10 days in advance, he ain't going anywhere!

Cromwell anyone?

"I See You Were At Heidleberg!"

Apparently, an article in The Guardian introduces research that men with facial scars, are 5.7% more attractive to women!

Well, Hello Ladies!

Recession: London Transport Concedes Defeat

On ambling through Kings Cross Station this evening, I noticed a sign by the ticket offices proclaiming:

This Ticket Office Now Accepts € Euro Currency

Bonjour!

It's Boris "Six Thousand Bicycles" Johnson!

You'd think that the Mayor of London would have a little too much on his hands to start running a little sideline like this.

Interviewed about "Boris' South Bank Cycle Shack", a hastily assembled shed beside the London Assembly, Johnson explained:

"One of fellows at my club came up with the most wizard wheeze! Apparently, his uncle in the city got a shipload of Chinese bikes in exchange for some rare Tigers or something, er Bears? And er, we thought, what with the economy going tits up and everything, Johnny Foreigner would be coming over here exploiting the weak pound and we'd exploit them!

And by the time I've finished with public transport, and brought congestion back, the old bicycle's going to be the only way to get around London! Look, watch me do a wheelie!"

£5 an hour, apparently, £7 for a bicycle with the tyres inflated.

Low Esteem Marketing Technique

As I entered the supermarket tonight, I was approached by a young woman adjacent a garish sales display, who asked:

"Would you like to take part in a questionaire? IT'S NOTHING SERIOUS!"

Accountancy On The High Seas

The audacious hijacking of the Sirius Star throws up several questions: Where is James Bond when you need him?, and, Should we be re-assessing the dialogue on "Talk Like A Pirate Day"?

Indeed, they don't appear to be saying; "Ahar, Jim lad, me hearty!" anymore. No, it's more like "Give us several million dollars to maintain our opulent lifestyle please", if the BBC's profile of Somalia's Pirate Town is anything to go by.

Yes; they have accountants!

Money Spider Correspondence

Obviously, with the recession on and all that, we're all turning looking for sound advice on how to make ends meet.

I know some of you will be buying self-help books, or even spending money on "financial advisors", but is that really necessary? I'm just looking around on the internet, and I've found LOADS of good ideas.

Take this one for example at geekologie, where the genius David Thorne realised that he could pay a $233.95 bill with a self-created drawing of a spider.

I was particularly inspired by the line:

"Thankyou for contacting me. I am currnetly away on leave, travelling through time and will be returning last week.

Nice to know in these hard times that ingenuity is still in vogue.

Reg Varney: Old Man

Well, I wasn't surprised to hear that On The Buses icon Reg Varney had died, but I was astonished to discover that he was Ninety Two!

That means that when he appeared in On The Buses, playing the "bachelor", living at home with his mum, chasing skirt, he was actually IN HIS FIFTIES. Yes, this icon of the Swinging Sixties had been a full grown 26 year old adult when John Lennon was born!

There was always something uncomfortable about OTB's depiction of ladism, in that both male leads were physically repulsive, and too old for the role: BUT FOR FUCK's SAKE, HE WAS OLD ENOUGH TO BE A GRANDAD!

Artifact

Time for a charity shop run with the clothes, and I've finally surrendered my silk slug tuxedo, (purchased in a long gone used clothes shop in Bournemouth, c. 1982), from which this clothes hanger emerged.

I don't know what sort of hotel the Sunny Cliffs was, but it was tasteful enough not have "Stolen from..." engraved on it's property.

From an age when nicking stuff from hotels was frowned upon and not encouraged as part of a marketing strategy.

Covent Garden

Cildo Meireles: Crunchy Underfoot!

Well, I went to the Tate Modern for the Rothko, chose the double ticket and discovered the Cildo Meireles exhibition, which was far more rewarding.

Don't get me wrong, I love Emperor Rothko, and have done since I first saw his blurry brushstrokes at the Tate when I was a youth visiting something like the Salvador Dali back in the 1970s, and it was interesting to see the Seagram stuff in a context within which the artist approved of, yet it was the other exhibition that caught my imagination.

I have to admit, that I've never heard of Meireles, and have never been a fan of Latin American art, but this stuff was a great experience. It's tactile and immediate, doesn't require too much thought, which does it for me!

There's one piece, an environment full of fences and barbed wire, where one gets to walk around on sheets of broken glass which was exactly what I would have wanted back when I discovered art back in the 1970s.

I recommend it; go. And do the last exhibit in your bare feet (not broken glass: quite the opposite) it's a sensual treat.

Mr Armstrong, I Presume!

Back in the 1990s, my neice and I were at an exhibition charting the history of Porsche motors at London's Design Museum, when we happened across a prototype Volkswagen Beetle. As we read the blurb, we both stopped; looked at the car; and then looked at each other.

This was Adolf Hitler's VW, and there was the photograph of him sitting in it.

Such proximity to an artifact in which everybody's favourite fuhrer had actually touched was quite daunting. Such links to history are (and should be) daunting to us mortals, and in a folkloric way, a tangible path into the past.

The same neice had another Hitler moment, when told that the irascible old man that she had just served at the bar was actually the former Prime Minister Edward Heath, a man that had attended a Nuremberg Rally, and had at one point stood a few feet away from the forementioned shouty dictator.

I mention this because I had a similar moment this evening whilst cleaning the toilet whilst listening to Radio 2, where Mark Radcliffe was in conversation with LA hipster Sid Griffin, when the ex-Long-Ryder mentioned that he had shaken Neil Armstrong's hand.

Back in my muso days, a mutual friend introduced me to Sid, and we would have no doubt exchanged a hearty firm-but-fair handshake ourselves, and twenty years later I'm a little struck by the simple notion that I shook the hand of a man who shook the hand of the first man on the moon! To a kid of my generation, there is no greater historical totem.

Unless you count an old acquaintance of mine, also a former son of LA, who found himself urinating next to Nelson Mandela in a South London toilet. Yes, they shook hands. In a toilet.

Look, if you're going to meet a historical figure; pick your moment.

(The guy I actually envy the most, yet another LA resident, never met Neil Armstrong or Nelson Mandela—or Hitler—but he DID get to sit in the command capsule of Apollo 11 before it got sent off to the Smithsonian. Now that is cool.)

Oh Lordy! Get The Cash Under The Mattress!

When I was sixteen, I was on a flight home from France when the pilot (hilariously introduced as Captain Pugh and the Crew!), came on the intercom and announced in his crisp authoritative tones that there was a little rough air over the Massif Central, and that this might make the trip a little bit bumpy, but nothing for us to worry about.

An understatement if there ever was one.

The hour that followed gave us all an insight what it was like attempting to nurse a damaged Lancaster over the German skies through flak. How the wings stayed on, no-one will ever know, and I don't know what was more unlikely; that the plane reached it's destination at all, or that any of us dare step onto a plane again.

(Actually, I found it exhilarating, but then, I do).

I only mention this as I have just heard on the news that the government are warning us that "the recession will last into 2009".

Hmmm; that's us all walking around in barrels until 2020 then.

Senior Service Sausage Ship Repels Pirates!

Ahar! According to the BBC, our lovely boys in the Royal Navy have been blowing away Buccaneers on the high seas!

HMS Cumberland —named after the UK's favourite sausage— gave the Somali Captain Pugwash the onion gravy treatment in Yemeni waters.

Banger-tastic lads!

Ouch!

The Shoebox has been soldiering on all week as though it didn't have a wisdom tooth extracted on Saturday morning, and that it hasn't got flu. Therefore my head is not the most hospitable place in the world at the moment.

When does the pain go away exactly? (And I have had enough surgery to know pain, and I'm still in pain.)

However, I suppose it could be worse!

Use Your Imagination Evening Standard!

You know, the Evening Standard could have made this so much more interesting.

For example:

QE2 Runs For Office!

or

QE2 Runs A Marathon!

or (my favourite)

QE2 Runs A Nightclub!

See; if an amateur like me can do it, surely the hacks at the Stannit should be able to.

Recession Proof?

As the recession begins to get traction—ie: the recession that has been with us for over a year that no-one wanted to admit is finally too big to ignore—I finally get to say "I told you so!" about a LOAD of stuff.

I'm not an economist, but the credit bubble that capitalism has encouraged since the deregulation of the 1980s has given our economy the implausibility of a perpetual motion machine. And I have been saying so. Sooner or later, everyone will owe too much to pay back, and we'll all be fucked.

But apparently I was naive about the way the world of capital worked*, and that the bankers and financiers knew what they were doing. Until now. Now I'm being told that no-one could have known!

Anyone who has been plagued by my company in recent years will have experienced the tedium of me pointing to things in the high-street and saying "that's not a recession-proof business!"

One of these "indicators" was the plethora of over-priced coffee shops that have infested our precincts in recent years. I am therefore not surprised by the overdue news from the BBC that Starbucks are running out of profits.

Next will be Premier League football. Too expensive for too little. Bad news for Murdoch.

* Once upon a time, in 1988, after I suggested that Manchester United under Alex Ferguson would dominate the 1990s in the way that the previous decade had been dominated by Liverpool, an Arsenal fan replied "If you think Man U are going to win ANYTHING, you clearly know nothing about football!"

Archie Versus The Overnight Cat

As I dropped off my partner at the airport last week, her parting words were "look after my babies!"

What she meant was "make sure the Tomcat doesn't incur any more injuries".

So what does he do? I let him out just half an hour before the prescribed time (at HIS insistence, and at the expense of MY SLEEP), and he has to go get himself into a ruck with the overnight cat, (ie: the un-neutered Tom who owns the allotments during the dark hours). The thing is, just before she left, my partner was relieved that the cat had just about managed to re-grow the hair back over his LEFT eyelid, from the previous scrap he had the last time I let him out after hours!.

I may try the old boot-polish trick on him before she comes home, but I fear that the Tomcat's feline housemate may lick it and suffer boot-polish poisoning, which would only exacerbate the situation.

"Darling, the cats are fine: the Vet says there's hope for both, we just have to wait and pray!"

Soho

Conspiracy Corner

The great thing about the internet is that anyone can make predictions, and at some point in the future, those speculations can be held to account.

Therefore, the Shoebox, having studied the very same internet, is now able to bring you the most accurate predictions possible following the result of the American Election.

OK, Brace yourselves: the Shoebox predicts the following once that Barny Obamarama gets his communist/terrorist hands on power:

American industry to be nationalised.

The White House to be painted Red.

Tax rate set at 99%.

School day to begin with children singing "The Internationale" whilst the American Flag is burned.

Congress to be suspended and Capital Hill to become the world's largest mosque.

The Self-Employed, (and that includes Joe the Plumber) to be interned in Oregan concentration camps.

Right to Bear Arms rescinded, with weapons confiscated from the cold dead hands of patriots.

Immigration quotas to be abandoned.

Texas, California and New Mexico surrendered to Mexico with compensation to the Mexican Government!

Disneyland to be invaded and colonised, with Fidel Castro declared President for Life.

O.J Simpson, Osama Bin Laden and the Unabomber guy to be pardoned and given prominence in the new Cabinet.

Terrorism legalised.

Apple Pie banned.

Fox News to fact-check.

Oh, yeh, and that's just the start.

Come back in six months and tell me I'm not wrong!*

*Obviously, if any, or all, of these predictions prove to be untrue, the Shoebox reserves the right to declare that this is not so, and that the failure of any, or all, of these events to actually happen are merely a deception on the part of the powermongers, and EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO BELIEVE!

The Furtive Nudist Exposed!

I was washing my hands in the Gents this morning when M***** G*******, who is known to me, entered the lavatory with a small towel folded over his arm. He simpered in discomfort at our encounter, with his customary blushing self-consciousness, before stepping into a cubicle, where he locked himself in.

Now, who needs a towel in a toilet? What was it for?

Is M******* G******* a compulsive nudist? Does he disrobe, and stand there with a towel draped over his forearm in the style of the practicing naturist?

Why? And for how long?

(Come to think of it: what are the nudists doing with those towels?)

However, M******* G******* has nothing to fear, as, due to a draconian court order (following a minor misunderstanding), my mirror-on-the-end-of-a-stick days are over, so we may never know what he is up to; but I'll never be able to see him in the same light again.

Sordid, the whole thing.

The World Turned Upside Down

First India joins the space race, and then Spain goes and shuts down a church for being TOO NOISY

I thought that the whole point of the Latin world was making as much din as possible. No longer apparently.

According to sources

Some neighbours said that the music was so loud at times their furniture vibrated

Whatever next? Maybe America will vote in a Black Man?

Ray Lowry

On the news of the death of John Peel I felt that a door had shut on a rich part of my past.

I felt the same sense of loss when I read that Ray Lowry had gone.

Inspired by his cartoons, I once turned up at Bournemouth's Midnight Express in 1982 with a rockers quiff and "Too Drunk To Live" on the back of my bikers jacket.

We have lost another one-off from the golden-era before post-modern wank and we are all the poorer.