The Indian Bean Tree

I have always loved trees, yet it has become a perennial disappointment that I can never remember their names, I mean species. So it will come as no surprise to you that my favourite of all trees is the Indian Bean Tree, a tree whose name falls easily on the ears of of an idiot, and whose leaves can be spotted, even at some distance, by a regular contact lens truant.

I first fell in love with this tree when I ricocheted through the tourists at Piccadilly Circus into the throng of expensive suits that marches up Piccadilly. Rushing to a work placement, I nevertheless clocked the tranquil churchyard, noting the way it sat nonchalantly back from the busy thoroughfare in front of St James's church, wishing I could linger.

I returned later that day to eat my lunch, resisting the urge to trace with my finger the initials of George VI that sit proudly in the intricate wrought iron gates, and passed through into the gloriously empty churchyard. It was only after I had ravenously devoured a sandwich - one which, in truth, deserved greater attention, given its pressed by virgin thighs price tag - that I was humbled to find myself sitting in the company of greatness.

Not two metres away, turmeric yellow leaves the size of horseshoes created a stunningly full, heavy-laden dome of foliage above the vintage trunk. On closer inspection, the leaves were heart- shaped, and looked a little like the exuberant misshapen hearts that kids draw in other kids' exercise books, relishing their first taste of rebellion.

Adding to the tree's splendour was a green medal which hung casually around the trunk. It confirmed the tree's status as a "Great Tree of London", if indeed further confirmation were needed.

The tree looked impervious to the sticky bustle of the busy street beyond the gates of the churchyard, as if soothed by the wisdom of age. Later that day I found out that it had achieved its standing under the sub category of "oldest", although I'm sure this particular tree could have satisfied any of the indicators of greatness on their website.

Given my growing affection for it over the next couple of weeks, I was delighted to find that my parents had planted an Indian Bean Tree in their garden. I can't wait for the opportunity to see the tree in flower, something I have not been fortunate enough to witness on my lunch breaks.

My parents' tree is growing well and, at under six feet, has already accrued the distinctive leaves. I have also been able, much to the amazement of my dad, to drop snippets of horticultural wisdom when the tree is mentioned. Just don't ask me to recognise a chestnut tree!

Market Mutterings

16:00 Ridley Road Market, Dalston.

Walking home through the market, armed with a paper bag full of veg, I was blissfully aware I was actually part of the scene. Unlike the ones moving fastest in the melee, the ones with the ubquitious orange florescent glow of polythene Sainsbury's bags cutting into their hands, hot- stepping through the market, their guilty eyes firmly to the ground as they hurry through the stalls.
As I passed the run down Mr Bagels - incidentally, the first bagel shop I've seen with a slot machine - and approached the butcher's on the corner, praising the civility of market trading in my head, a lady who looked like Quentin Blake's illustrations of Mrs Twit, but wearing Dunlop sportswear, tapped me on the shoulder.

Lady: Fifteh pee....I'll gis' yer a blow job.
Me:......... Neeeew thenkyew (my shock decapitating my ability to pronounce basic vowels)

Poisoned Mutton and Squealing Pigs

I found these two fascinating articles in "Late Extra! Hackney in the News" by David Mander. The book is a collection of articles and photographs taken from over 200 years, and provides an absorbing insight into the history of Hackney and its people, from the pages of the local newspapers.

London Magazine, 17 May 1787

A remarkable instance of the hand of Providential justice was exhibited last Monday at Hoxton. On the Saturday previous to that day, a man took the diabolical resolution of destroying his wife and children; to pepetrate which, he bought a leg of mutton, and rubbed it over with a considerable quantity of arsenic; so done, he took it home, and told his wife to dress the mutton on Sunday, and as he did not expect to be at home, he desired that she and the children might eat it, without waiting for him. On Sunday the mutton was dressed, but he was not coming home, his wife, not wishing to eat it without his being at dinner, made some yeast dumplings for herself and children, and left the mutton uneaten. He did not return that evening, and still the leg of mutton remained whole; but on Monday he came home and brought with him a few flat fish ( as supposed to save the appearance of guilt, expecting his family to have been poisoned). On seeing his wife, he, somewhat agitated, asked her, if she and the children were in health, and being answered that they were well, he asked whether they had eaten the mutton? The wife told him it had been dressed, but he not coming home they had made their dinner on dumplings and the mutton they had not touched. At that answer he appeared much vexed and surlily ordered his wife to dress him some of the flat fish. She immediately dressed him three, and he sat down and eat [sic] them. Directly afterwards, in great confusion, he asked his wife in what she had fried the fish, and on being told the dripping from the mutton which had been dressed on Sunday, he exclaimed 'Then I am a dead man.' He then made a full confession of his wicked intention, and in two hours afterwards, expired in great agonies.

c. 1788

An uncommon method of inhuman sport and which is to be celebrated weekly during the winter, was exhibited on Wednesday afternoon near the Shoulder of Mutton and Cat. In Sun Tavern Fields, viz a pig clean shaved, and soaped upon the tail, was turned out to be caught by any person, who holding it by the tail and throwing it over his head, was entitled to a gold laced hat, which was elevated upon a pole. Many attempts were made, but none of them effectual within the time of running, owing to the competitors pulling each other down etc. However the shrieking of the animal, and the halooning of the company, caused much diversion, to the disgrace of the brutes concerned.

The Number 38

The only redeeming feature of the Number 38 at 9am on a Tuesday morning is when it pushes through the crowds of the Junction tailed by an empty twin. As I took my seat, I was content that I had won my daily battle of morning madness in Dalston.

I had performed Ayrtonesque manoeuvres to outwit the hairpin of the dole queue at the Post Office, a Zidane turn past the stallholder chasing a watermelon making a break for freedom from Ridley Road Market. I'd even made up time from a tailback behind a wall of two rhino-sized ladies transporting their daily intake of their own body weight in Iceland Bags down Kingsland Road, creating a bottleneck that stretched all the way to Stoke Newington, arriving at the bus stop having skipped across Balls Pond Road with a blatant disregard for self preservation in moving traffic.

Content that the frantic game of grumpy musical chairs had less velocity with the options on offer, I took my seat in a leisurely way, nodding to myself in approval at the seating arrangements.

I first caught sight of my aisle neighbour when someone accidentally knocked him as they passed. He jumped up, "Cunnnttt", the last syllable stretched as long as his half-extended tiny legs could hold, buckling back into his seat as he crossed his final 't'.

He was wearing the signature footwear of a lunatic, those shoes that look like special issue, the type that make you wonder where you get them in adult sizes, the laces pulled so tight that the eyelets look like angry eyes.

He looked like a frenzied combination of Pee-Wee Herman, Mr Burns, and the banjo-playing boy from Deliverence. He was wearing a baseball cap with its dilapidated leather strap pulled as tight as his laces, producing a protruding cushion of flaky scalp. I watched as he eyeballed his free paper, a Steptoe grimace spread across his face. `It quickly became apparent that he wasn't actually reading it, pinching the pages to turn them with ear waxy long fingernails, which oozed cuticles that had the appearance of nicotine stained Polyfiller.

Suddenly an almighty cough erupted from opposite me. I looked up to see a smartly dressed Indian recoiling from a seemingly blood-draining inner explosion. It was swiftly followed by another that nearly lifted me out of my seat. He was in his fifties, immaculately turned out, sitting with his hands resting on his knees. Next to him sat his wife, in equally splendid Indian formal dress, looking calm and, perhaps somewhat resolutely - though there was no hint of it in her expression - staring out of the window, her gaze never faltering despite the velocity of the eruptions next to her.

I could feel my shoulders tensing with each gap of silence. I couldn't help but imagine, with my limited yet vivid biological understanding, that the silence was the phlegm sticking to his lungs before dripping and filling his air passages.

My eyes then wandered nervously over the shrinking aisle, as I noticed first that the lunatic had crossed his legs, and then that he was tapping thin air furiously with his foot. As we pulled past Angel tube, the Indian gentleman let out a rib-splitting cough, causing the lunatic to protrude a vulture-like neck over the aisle to stare at him. His aged skin was almost completely hairless, his lack of eyebrows accentuating the wrinkles that looked as if they had been filled and left stained by Iron Bru. Dark hairs protruded from in and around his nose, like angry black thorns standing in line. He kept on staring. For two more stops his tiny eyes pierced the coughing Indian, motionless, his mouth hung open. During this time, the Indian's wife continued to look calm, gazing through the window, admiring the rain polished pavements of Roseberry Avenue while her husband caught explosions from within on the palm of his well-cuffed hand, his neatly trimmed moustache twitching like an angry cat, before returning to still serenity between each outburst.

My eyes were again nervously drawn to the lunatic, who was now facing me from across the aisle, his eyes transfixed on a tissue in his hands. He meticulously started to extract the contents of his nose with his long, long fingernails, laying out each find like a piece of cold meat ready to be seasoned. Now I was aware of the term, "searching for rubies", when you subconsciously check the contents of your tissue post blow, but he was lining his grotesque treasures in single file.

As another cough whistled past me like a stray bullet from an air gun, I frantically searched for my nearest exit. As we passed Grays Inn Road, I knew I only had a couple of stops left. Jumping out of my seat, I performed a mini high jump kick to avoid the newspaper and tissue that spilled off the lunatic's lap, brushing against me. I saw the tissue land treasure side down and stick to the newspaper on the floor. As I stepped off the bus onto Clerkenwell Road and freedom, I saw the bus pull away, and thought to myself how much I'd like to see the look on the face of the person who innocently picks up that free newspaper.

Raleigh Burner - The Test Drive (Part 2)

Much to my delight the Raleigh Burner fit like a glove -You should get one, Ronnie.
Charlotte beamed in childish delight as she cut a figure of eight in the street, her teeth gleaming, drawing an unusual similarity to the Sun Pat kid as she skidded to a stop outside the front gate.

The next few days were spent with me tip toeing down the stairs, not wanting to concede defeat in the rising probings about the present not being an entirely selfless act. This lead to me failing in finding suitable examples, such as " Well if that was the case....erm....well wotshisname would never have given...you know, her.....that... and that wouldn't of happened."
I also kept getting caught out- having to respond with guilty cries of, "Nothing...Just checking the front door's locked..."-my response too quick, and the echo of the hall doing nothing to hide my guilt, as I admired the bike in the hall in the darkness.

It was with great pleasure I was rung the following morning with what I would normally consider the definition of mundane, boredom at its most intense. I was asked the kind of question which paralyses my jaw, and makes me want to slowly slur to a jolty standstill, and drop the phone. I was asked to reunite my friends with his keys he had left round here before he went to work. Resisting the urge to ask if he had dropped them before, after, or even at the same time as vomiting on my carpet the previous weekend, I agreed.

It was at last a genuine reason. As I guided her out the front door I watched the gleaming white wheels catch the sun. Aware I couldn't sit down on the Raleigh Burner and cruise, I figured everyone looks big on a BMX, besides everyone will be too busy looking at the beautiful, hypnotic, polo-white alloys to notice me.

As I left the front gate swinging, clinging to its post looking like distressed Mechano, I peddled off down Graham Road, whistling as I glided under the railway bridge. Feeling a picture of youth, I imagined Ribena pumping through my veins, those black and red Filas on the peddles (maybe original F13s?) that Mum took back to the shop because they turned my socks blacks when it rained( despite my desperate pleas, and mid-tantrum declaration of allegiance to black socks) . I imagined myself rockin' those black baggy jeans, with the red or green backpockets that every older brother had in the nineties.

I glided past the chip shop where a lovely Indian couple work tirelessly in stove like conditions, amid mobile ring tones, and kids who view the shop as there stronghold. I cycled past, reaching the corner by the Spurstowe pub, and peddling in slow motion so I could hear the old Jamaican dude who leans on the rail of the estate opposite. His strong accent creating sticky, syrupy tones , talking to no one in particular and answering his own questions by laughing contentedly every few minutes.

Then to my delight, as I peddled through the gloomy post war estates, built after this side of London Fields was heavily bombed during the war, I had my Rocky moment. Kids playing in the gulley's of the estate blocks began to run beside me to the end of their block. I hopped off the kerb excitedly, swaying awkwardly on landing, forgetting just how small the bike actually was.

Picking up pace once more I turned into the cycle path that leads to London Fields. Suddenly, for the first time, I was in traffic. It was only then that it dawned on me. My panting grin being wiped from my face instantly, this was the worst kind of traffic. Elegant foreign exchange students, mostly Scandinavian and beautiful, all riding bikes that would be found in a Disney produced Dickensian London.

My fantasy had been shattered, I looked, well ridiculous. I suddenly felt like an elephant on a unicycle at the zoo, as I balanced on top of the tiny BMX, having to pedal furiously to stay vertical. I could feel the bemusement I caused each passing cyclist, as they looked down on me (literally) from their sophisticated, adult bikes.

I dropped off the keys, and then sheepishly cycled home, still I'm pleased to say in awe of the Burner, but embarrassed when faced with company. Just as I reached the home stretch, I saw a small Afro Caribbean girl up ahead, no taller than the arm of a chair, leaning on her elbows and tummy on the wall of her front garden. She watched me approach, and with perfect timing as I passed , she pointed at me and laughed, shouting, "MY Gosh! You too big for DAT bike!."

Raleigh Burner (Part 1)

Football shirts, Mohawks and Raleigh Burners were three things that would make me stop dead in my Cica velcro trainers. Replica shirts due to Italia 90 completely consuming my seven year old mind. Punk rockers because of the hair, and the burning envy at the lack of bath time. Raleigh Burners, well the beauty of them them made my NHS glasses steam up, and my mechanical sweet bag to mouth limb malfunction.

So when slowly descending into desperation in front of my laptop on a dreary January evening, skimming hopelessly through EBay in search of a present for my girlfriend's birthday. A birthday which sits incidentally, just after Christmas. We had to move our anniversary because it was just too traumatizing.

I was just reaching breaking point. Friday afternoon maths lesson posture. Displaying to my computer through the art of body language just how disgusted I was to be sharing this time with him - my left arm spread across the desk, left ear folded and pressed against my shoulder, head horizontal to screen, while plodding noisily at the keyboard with the index finger of my left hand....when all of a sudden, up she popped.

I'm sure if I still had NHS bottle tops (instead of the acute pain of vanity, commonly known as contact lenses), they would of steamed up and cracked. Instead I blinked hard, yelped and tried to remember the opticians utterly liberating advice of- wait for it, look up and blink slowly.

The shiny frame the colour of blueberry slush puppies after swimming. The Roy of the Rover red and yellow racing stripes. But most of all, the gleaming white plastic alloys blurred into vision.

"I have to have it", I declared. "No, she has to have it", I corrected myself. She'll love it....what's not to like? Leaning back on my chair and folding my arms to try and push through the deal. I then consoled myself that even if I couldn't get my Jiminy Cricket legs under the handlebars, at least I could look at them.

It could be somewhere to hang out- by the Raleigh Burner in the hall. Somewhere I could linger between the bedroom, lounge and toilet. That's the useful thing about halls I thought.

Without further hesitation, well apart from a brief daydream of a few kids giving chase, which quickly escalates into a crowd, chasing and cheering as I freewheel through rubbish strewn streets, and bish, bash bosh, I'd ordered the eighth wonder of the world.

She was arriving within five working days from Stoke on Trent. When I checked the items I'd bought(won!) on my EBay account the next morning, I was dazzled all over again. Luckily it was too early for the painful reaction that brought the first time -my contact lenses were still lying in wait in the bathroom.

But then the panic began. With no clear guidelines to the size of the frame or wheels, I found myself staring at the garden the photo of the bike was taken in. Is that short grass and a tall fence...or tall grass and a short fence? I cursed the bike's former owner for his flippancy, while purring reassuringly to the Raleigh Burner on the screen that she was coming to a good home.

The following days were spent having discrete liaisons with my.....my girlfriends new bike in my inbox. Gazing at the wheels, trying to block out the looming Homebase fence in the background. I felt a bit like a lonely businessman who had just bought a Russian bride, blurring his eyes so he won't discover any unsightly moles on her profile picture.

With no reply from the seller regarding the bike's size, my nights were interrupted by hazy, panic ridden nightmares about those tiny BMX's with stabilizers, upside down in skips. I woke up startled in the darkness. My girlfriends eye line is roughly that of Ronnie Corbett's. Was I the same size as Ronnie Corbett when I was eight?

(To be contd....)

New Piccadilly Cafe

On Denmar street, just behind the tourist melee and the glaring lights of Piccadilly Circus, sits a treasure of an old fashioned cafe. The glow box sign of the New Piccadilly Cafe is just visible from the end of Shaftsbury Avenue, and has been a beacon to actors, playwrights, and students since the 1950s.

The look and feel of smart leather booths and smooth Formica surfaces makes it easy to glide back to the era when this cafe first opened. The menu is refreshingly simple, and offers the kind of home-cooked food that causes sentimental stirrings in the palate. A menu that has nourished beatniks and jazz singers, mods and rockers, struggling actors and homesick tourists has changed little to the present day. My favourite is the spinach and cheese carbonara (£5.50), delightfully stringy gorgonzola served with homemade pesto and parmesan served in kitsch glassware.

At the counter hums a bright pink coffee machine. Owner Lorenzo Maioni is reassuringly authentic as he polishes glass tumblers in the background, admiring his waiters' work from behind the billowing steam of the candy coloured machine. Waiters are over-attentive, the interior is cosy, the walls lined with promotional posters for West End productions, both in the coming week and over two decades ago. The wall of postcards from satisfied customers from all over the world confirm the cafe's status as a much loved piece of London's history.

If you're lucky, on a warm summer day you might find the place nearly empty, just an actor learning lines and a City old boy eating his regular meat and two veg dish, tried and tested over decades. Or on a winter weekend, craving warmth, you may find it bustling with people and laughter behind its steamy windows.

This is when you not only see that Mr Maioni is excellent at what he does, but also feel a slight deflation that the New Piccadilly Cafe is not only your secret to hold. I often see smug students taking their parents to the cafe, keen to show them that they have uncovered the real London. It always does the trick. It's the sort of place that, once discovered, pulls you towards it; any step near St James Park, or a mere glimpse of the increasingly grotesque Leicester Square, and the cafe cries out to you.

Today, however, the bewildering rise of land prices in London means the cafe is facing a fight to keep going. But, forty years after he took over the helm from his father, Mr Maioni seems philosophical about the Piccadilly Cafe's future, as though it is a question he is so used to answering that it rolls off his tongue.

"We will always have to fight, being as small as we are. But we will work it out, we always have."

He has no desire to see the building listed, as other historic cafes like the greasy spoon in Bethnal Green have been recently. If that happened, he reasons, his selling options in future would be severely curtailed.

But, for now, the cafe sits as a romantic reflection of how cafes used to be and, having seen through the fifties, the swinging sixties and the last few decades, I hope this gem of a place is allowed to continue and flourish as a rare outpost of old fashioned hospitality.

Dark Days

Director Marc Singer

Certificate 15

Running time 84 minutes

Year 2000

At first, all you can hear is the noise. Somehow the 16mm seems to shake, although of course this would be impossible to detect in such darkness. However as the lights thunder round the last bend, the headlights unfurl the steam from the sewage that clogs the damp stanching air beneath New York City. From the onset, this fascinating, humbling documentary unearths a world never before explored. 

Beneath Penn Station and the banks of the Hudson, exists a homeless community who have deserted the streets of New York, to live in a makeshift underground shantytown. 

"No one in their right minds come down here," says Tito, one of the inhabitants who had been living in the tunnels for six years.

This is yet another reason why this documentary is so astonishing. Its director, Marc Singer, a disillusioned Londoner, who arrived in New York with the intention of spending a few years exploring the city, supported by pay from occasional modelling work, overhead a conversation about the tunnels in a bar in Greenwich village. 

Intrigued, he went looking for the ramshackle community. After several unsuccessful expeditions, he finally found the small shelters made from what the rest of New York left behind.

"It's a dump down there, pitch black, rats running around everywhere, garbage, and smells that make your eyes water. When I first went down there, I was amazed and awed; I had so much respect for everybody and I kept thinking, 'Could I have done this? Or would I have let myself go to pieces?"

This beautifully construed documentary was born from Singers desire to unearth the lives of these people, and make a difference. Dark Days certainly does this, and its refreshing creative angle enables a documentary free of the usual techniques used to pull at viewers heartstrings. Devoid of brash voice overs hammering away moral ideals, Singer created a free flowing documentary that simply gives a platform for the homeless to speak

The drug addictions, family tragedies and rejection are all obvious factors in the downfall of the inhabitants. However with the patiently shot footage, Singer has steered clear of leaving his own impressions on the viewer, and lets the voices and personalities be revealed.

From Dee, a crack smoking mother, who lost her two children in a fire, to young Chris who collects cans twelve hours a day, to raise enough money to live above ground on the weekends. Instead of  just uncovering the depths of humanity in New York, Singer unearths the unique sense of unity formed in the most depressing surroundings imaginable.

Ralph, who managed to give up his crack addiction, talks of his daughter being raped while he was in jail for burglary offences. He has never forgiven himself for not being there to protect her.

These painful stories of the inhabitants broken lives, are dispersed amongst the daily fight for survival. The friendships and characters of the tunnels are unearthed not through the interviews, but the acceptance of Marc Singer when he moved down into the tunnels, and there openness to talk in front of him.

Dark Days is a truly inspiring piece of work. By emerging himself in such squalid conditions, and putting no boundaries between himself and the focus of the film (He even assembled a film crew from the inhabitants) Singer maintained creative control, and in doing so, touched and ultimately changes the lives of the people the big apple forgot.

Best View of London

 

From LCC News 01/07

Highgate Hill N6

(Nearest tube Archway)

The steep ascent up Highgate Hill is one to test nearly every city dwellers calf muscles. As I reach a midway point I can't help but wish that the first cable car in Europe, built between Archway and the top of Highgate Hill, might creep up behind me. Alas, the last one to crawl up the hill was over a century ago, so the chance of this occurring seemed as slim as that of  Dick Turpin, who took "holidays" here from Essex,  riding up and asking me to join his Highway gang.

Beyond the lines of Georgian red brick housing that stretches down below you, the city looks alluring and mystical. It is easy to imagine Dick Whittington performing his statutory thigh slap, his plan to return cemented on hearing the bow bells chime.

Other highlights in Highgate include the cemetery - a visit to Karl Marx's grave, and perhaps if your brave enough, that of the recently deceased Alexander Litvinenko. This could be followed by some shepherd's pie with homemade bread, at The Bull on North Hill road.

Primrose Hill NW6

(Nearest tube Chalk Farm)

Just north of Regents Park, within earshot of the occasional mating cry from London Zoo, Primrose Hill offers a breathtaking view of London's emerging skyline.

As I reach the summit, I manage to refrain from letting out a Pongoesque howl into the wind. Instead I stand, slightly star struck, not at one of the "Primrose Hill Set", emerging bleary eyed from the bushes (admittedly your more likely to see Les Dennis than Kate Moss these days), but at the late afternoon sun bouncing back off the dome of St Paul's. It is easy to understand why anti-aircraft guns were positioned here in 1940, for its a truly panoramic view of our capital. Today, the towers of Canary wharf stride into town in the distance, and the Telecom tower looks like London's lynch pin, above the greenery of Regents Park in the foreground.

It is worth waiting for the sun to slip behind the hill, prompting the lights of the city to be switched on.

To complete your afternoon, a stroll through Chalk Farm, where the shops have managed to remain largely independent (Thanks in no small part to the husbands hedge fund or bloodline) The Sunday Roast at the Lock Tavern is a staple favourite  in this part of London. The Yorkshire pudding alone is worth the wait for the table, and the roast potatoes more than make up for the "too cool for school" locals.

Parliament Hill

Parliament Hill, situated in the grounds of Hampstead heath, provides stunning views of London. The hill was famously referred to as, "traitors hill". During the English Civil war it was where the loyalists regrouped. Loyal to the English parliament, it is easy to understand why they chose this vantage point, with such intimate views of the capital.

This view is also believed to be the inspiration for many of Coleridge and Shelley's romantic prose, and was also regularly admired by Karl Marx on family picnics.

After your eyes have engraved the view to memory, a walk through the lanes just north of Hampstead heath tube could complete your afternoon.  Hidden amongst the leafy mansions is a gem of a public house, The Holly Bush. 

Comedy Store Players

LCC news 02/07

Down a narrow staircase just off Leicester Square, "The Comedy Store",  is the perfect antidote after another drizzly weekend in January. If your student loan didn't quite extend to some winter sun, I highly recommend this weekly show to blow the Christmas blues away.

The show has been running for over twenty years, on Wednesdays and Sundays, with the original member Mike Myers, bringing an idea which has been popular stateside to Britain, before departing to Beverley Hills on the back of its success, to star in a certain, Wayne's World.

As everybody took there seats, it seemed many in the back rows were, like myself, new to live improvised comedy. Between mouthfuls of very reasonably priced bar food (Goujons and chips £5.50) I heard people whispering to the first timers, "Think...Whose line is it anyway..but...more.......I don't know...British?"

The smokey, jovial non-intimidating atmosphere was further endorsed by seeing all the comedians drinking and chatting with the audience before the show. All this contributed to the comedy beginning at a frantic pace.

The first comedian to take the stage was the energetic Andy Smart, with his gold jewellery and Hawaiian shirt; he is twice as quick as your funniest uncle.

He quickly explained the proceedings and asked for the audience to shout out strange objects.

"Tampons!?!....You must be great at parties," the first roar rippling through the audience.

This became the backdrop as the show continued with relentless pace. 

Paul Merton certainly lived up to expectations. With hair slightly wilder that the Have I Got News for You studio allows, he looked in his element in this intimate environment. He quickly won the first round of "improv" , a game where they created a story by taking it in turns to say a few words when nominated.

Josie Lawrence, of fame from Whose Line is it Anyway?, was fantastic and added another dimension of comedy with her presence. The audience in tears as she imitated a North Korean lady explaining how nuclear warheads are constructed, with Paul playing the role of her translator.

Jim Sweeney was a pleasure to listen to, with an awe inspiring wit and an unusual warmth. Richard Vranch was fantastic on the piano, and his turn of phrase was deadly. Along with Andy Smart, Lee Simpson was a comedian I hadn't heard of prior to the show, but he left a lasting impression.

It was clear early on in the performance that the success of the night also depends on the role played by the audience. This slightly nervous energy, which I had been apprehensive of before we arrived, only adds to the enjoyment. You find your even more ready to laugh due to the slight tension created by improvised comedy. You enjoy the relief that the joke has worked, which makes you laugh even harder.

The show exceeded even my highest expectations. The energy, talent, combination of personalities and cosy environment, created the perfect lift, before the week had begun. For some winter sun in the capital, I'd certainly recommend the Comedy Store Players.

Wednesday & Sunday £15 (NUS £10)

Open Goal

Press Gazette, 1 November 2007

Free football magazine to target stadiums

A new monthly free football magazine, Open Goal, with a target distribution of 250,000 is to be handed out at every Premier league football stadium from January.

The 48-page, glossy, A5 sized magazine, will be the latest in a number of big free magazine launches this year. Others include London Weeklies Sport and Shortlist.

The new title's circulation is double that of top-selling football monthly Four Four Two.

Entrepreneur and founder Richard Stonehouse, who is backed by Newcastle based investment group NStar, is also editing the title.

Stonehouse said, "Media buyers have realised that 'free' does not mean a devalued product. The internet, and the success of the Metro since it arrived from Sweden prove this."

The magazine aims to reach 36 per cent of each ground's average attendance. Stonehouse said that Addidas, Reebok, Sky and 888.com are among the high-profile advertisers already to have signed up with the new title.

He added:"We managed to distribute 20,000 copies (of a trial issue) at the Arsenal versus Bolton Game. Our second dummy issue was also extremely successful at Old Trafford. where a further 25, 000 were distributed.

"Modern stadia such as the Emirates are fantastically designed, and make distribution extremely easy. We also pay our staff to pick up dropped copies, of which, I'm pleased to say, there were very few."

When asked whether the new . free title might perhaps tread on the toes of the long standing programme seller, Stonehouse said: "We had no problems, and I do not foresee any problems.

"We can exist side by side with programme sellers, both because fans are going to want to read about their own clubs, and because our product is entirely different to anything on the market.

"I am a subscriber to Four Four Two and enjoy the magazine, but it is a bit morose sometimes. Open Goal is much more chatty, less formal, we want more pub talk and passion to fill our pages."

The first dummy issue can be viewed as an e-magazine at www.opengoalmagazine.net

Neighbours

I find it bizarre that there are so many people in our capital that we can easily picture and recollect, hold so many opinions on, and yet not actually speak to. The lack of ice breaking in London, leading us to rarely converse with strangers on the tube or bus, only adds to the unease of speaking to people in our often-changing neighbourhoods.

The pressures of working life to the Internet, have been blamed for making us all more reclusive. Another popular argument is the sheer number of properties on short term lets on London's sprawling property market.

According to a recent survey by Norwich Union,  London does not do well in comparison to the rest of the country. . 68% of us are unlikely to know our neighbours, compared to the national average 56%. Only a fifth of Londoners speak to their neighbours once a week, while a third do nationally.

We are also the least trusting, interestingly we share our suspicious nature with Brummies who also top the table with 11% trusting nobody in their neighbourhood.

Since moving to London I have never met my neighbours on move in day. I'm certainly not a rare statistic , a recent poll suggested only one in five Londoners have been welcomed to the neighbourhood on arrival.

It is a unique experience being a student in the capital. Over three years of study, rather than living in the so-called "bubble" of student life, like some campuses in smaller cities and large towns, we live in the sprawling suburbs of London. It is in London, in low cost, close proximity housing , that we become acutely aware of the habits of our neighbours.

Over my four years of study, I have had neighbours which remain a backdrop in charting my memories over the different places I have lived.

My foundation year was spent in a housing estate in Stratford, (interestingly I had no neighbours, all the houses were burnt and boarded up) and then divided between Barking and Camberwell. The campus in Barking, was next to an Asda where local kids rode around on horses bareback in the car park and field,  next to a huge roundabout spitting cars out of London.

My second year was a delightful experience on the neighbour front. Living in a tiny flat, above a Turkish pizza place on Whitecross street, we looked out on a Peabody estate where every Sunday morning you could see  an elderly couple  dancing to big band and swing in there living room.

When I moved into a shared Georgian semi in De Beauvoir town, alarm bells started ringing at the different coloured light bulbs next door.

After a few weeks our pieced together information amounted to ; they were both Vegans, home schooled their children, made grotesque metal sculptures for a living, and washed their brown Volvo with a mop on Tuesday afternoons.

So when I moved from this slightly more upstate address to Hackney, I was prepared for the worst on the neighbour front, but not quite as odd as it has turned out. My current neighbour is in her late eighties, and has adopted twp feral cats as her own. Every hour she shouts for one of them, "Skippy!", pronounced, "Skip-paaaay!!", a bit like a retired pirate.

To illustrate her dedication to these felines, if further evidence is needed, I often see her silhouetted against her back door at two in the morning, hands the size of dishpans, laying out Ice Cream tub lids with rising quantities of cat food, snaking from the garden and through into her basement flat. 

On our first actual meeting, compounding her eccentricity, she offered me "un-elasticated socks and cigarettes" as a bribe. She did so while peering over her fence, offering them in exchange for a cupboard we planned on burning. Interestingly, her hands didn't look nearly as big in daylight.

My sister has a neighbour who at 7pm each evening slams his front door, gets in his car and puts his seat belt on, only to make three revs of the engine and re-parks his red ford as close as possible to his fence on the drivers side. He then gets out the passenger side, checks his judgement, before retreating back to his flat.

Later in her block, the neighbour upstairs begins his ritual. She was worried, quite rightly so, as to what the repetitive thumping sound at midnight was when she first moved in. But after some apprehensive silent listening with her flatmates, they finally worked out vacuum cleaning was his midnight vigil. I've never seen her look so relieved.

According to the Norwich Union survey, only half of us even know a neighbours name. ( I presume I'm included in this statistic, unless the lady next door is in fact called, "Catwoman".)

The appeal of a community atmosphere is very much apparent in our rapidly growing cities, yet while "integration is very much of the moment, it is surprising how many Londoners according to the survey want to move away from their neighbours, rather than get to know them. One in three, which is three times the national average, are willing to move just to escape from their neighbours.

London is home to an eighth of the English population with four people per square metre on public transport, and escalating property prices, valid reasons why Londoners treasure their personal space. We are so wary of people infringing on this valuable personal space that we are quick to jump on intruders. Only until the rat race becomes a bit more humane to the participants will we see social, integrated neighbourhoods. 

Until then I'm going to continue hiding from the neighbours. For the foreseeable future I'm stuck with the antics of "Catwoman",...I wonder what she calls me?

Keds!?!

There are several responses one gives when introduced to a new purchase by a shoeaholic girlfriend. More precisely, numerous pronunciations of, "Mmm...".



The first is a genuine 'Mmm', delivered from just behind the tonsils, along the roof of the mouth before departing through natural lips. It is usually accompanied by a head nod, like one of approval that a child makes when they try a new flavour of ice cream and it sinks into their taste buds.


The second "Mmmm", is dragged out, but only by a millisecond so as to avoid unnecessary complications. There is an unavoidable purse of the lips, a natural reflex, but this can be easily hidden by an imaginary itch to your left nostril.


The third "Mmmmm", is dragged out openly so as to arouse complications that to the virgin eye seem very much necessary. It is important however, to keep the bemused look passive, like a chimp, rather than the provocative face expression one uses when listening to someone you don't agree with mid-argument.


When Charlotte pointed a Ked-clad toe in my direction, a splutter and head pulse over rode any possibility of taking the easy second "Mmm" out.


"Keds!?!.....Keds!?!...How...how...cutting edge", I added dryly.


Studying at LCC I have grown accustomed to seeing strange trends resurfacing from different ages (Disco ball man? Remember him?) , but far removed from the world of blue rinses and Horlicks. They made me think of tiny old women in rows, legs swinging from park benches in Eastbourne, Keds in a legion mid air on the end of thick brown tights.


Keds however, are uniting generations. "They're sooo comfortable", has usually been in reference to the simple designs comfort on well-trodden arthritic feet in walking to the Post Office. Not to shopping trips round London, or clubbing in the nightspots of the capital.


Despite my disbelief, Keds are swiftly becoming invisible in their numbers. My girlfriend buys hers from Russel and Bromley (39.99). Numerous replicas ( None in the Grandma favourite blue/grey leather, I hasten to add) are flooding into our high streets - Office, Topman and Size? selling their own brand versions.


A year on from our original conversation and my girlfriend has gone through three pairs. When she returned to the flat excited to have found the much sought after leather pair in a small Russel and Bromley somewhere south of the river, she bats away my critique on Keds durability by pointing at my beloved sneaker collection and reminding me that if it wasn't for Keds they wouldn't exist (Keds were the first sneaker, designed in 1916).


My reaction to her first purchase was one of shock; a year on and I wouldn't be surprised if the divulging, however loose, of the geographical whereabouts of the leather version, starts a Ked-clad stampede over London Bridge.

April Falls

Exasperated, i had turned off the light on my annual attempt to put into words the beauty of that first glimpse of Spring. I growled the names of each of my primary school teachers who had forced me to write sickly sweet acrostic poems (can you really call them poems? Something that puzzles me at the age of twenty-four as much as it did when i was six.)

I'd feel stuck in the sticky classroom, hours till playtime -smelling the sweetness of freshly-mown grass on the playing fields, or thumbing the autumn goldmine of conkers in my pocket. (I had a contact in Leicester, a family friend) These so called poems have meant that any mention of daffodils makes me write as though I'm pre-pubescent, my milk teeth indenting my hb pencil in frustration.

So it was with extra delight that I woke to Charlotte transfixed at the window. Wearing that expression English people make when they see snow. Her eyes like saucers, tongue lolled in that hypnotic smile that tickles each ear. The "Are you seeing what I'm seeing!?!" look of pure ecstasy you sometimes see one dog pass to another as they clock a muddy swamp up ahead. Before I knew it I was transfixed with the same expression, pawing myself to the window in acknowledgment.

Staying down at my parent's house for the weekend, I could recollect the feeling of praying for the water pipes to have burst and my school's name to be read out on local radio as closed for the day. Elation would be followed by the of swift construction snow ramps , squealing in delight and agony as your sledge, swiftly followed by your rear, slammed against the compacted snow from the three hundred previous attempts.

As that day, and you always know it's only going to be "that day when it snowed" draws to a close - it's almost as if someone claps loudly and, in Home County tones shrills from the heavens "Right, that's quite enough of that nonsense...", before letting the rain return.

There were good times that day - powdery snowballs, every branch on every tree defined with a glinted ridge of snowflakes, a snowman made from three balls in descending size from the base. The funny conversations revolving around the limited knowledge and foreignness of snow to the people of southern England. "It's....erm really thick", followed by dramatic hand gestures as if holding up imaginary toasters, then checking the reflexes of an invisible toddler's kneecaps as they display the snow's distance from the ground.

And bad times - due to having hidden two sledges -whose design may well have attracted interest from a Maclaren spy if they were as fast as I remember them - I thought discreetly, for an impromptu, what must have been under-age pint, the last time it properly snowed. I remember being devestated when I returned and lifted the lid to find they had disappeared from their Sulu-sponsored temporary garage.

Although I now ponder whether I returned to the wrong bin, every time it snows the sorrow at their loss returns to haunt me. Much like the remaining clunky sledge, lured out of retirement in the shed a decade later.

Knowing its limited capabilities, I was determined to give Charlotte as terrifying a first descent of the modest hill as possible. I miscued the projectory in my zest however, and ended up face - planting. Revealing the mud underneath the snow, sliding on my eye socket and cheek, covering my back, boxers and jeans in freezing mud. I came to rest like an upturned tortoise, swimming in my over sized Parka at the bottom of the hill.

The next morning I woke, and that magical , almost fluorescent white light no longer filtered through the window. I knew she'd arrived before I slouched to the pane to survey the damage. I thought of her sitting up in the clouds, smiling as she looked out over her bi-focals at the grey below. I saw our massacred snowman. Maybe Mrs Sludge doesn't like writing about winter.

Overheard

2.00am Tunbridge Wells. I was woken by an accent that was so posh it sounded like he had a pyroclast scraping up and down his throat with each vowel.

Boy: What a totally maaaad night! Henry was annihalated! HA, I'm pretty smashed too!

Girl: Yeah....

Boy: YeeAAHH! WOOOO! What a night! YeAAHH! So you as smashed as me Jenny?

Girl: No.....cold.

(I presume boy is now hugging her or playfighting)

Girl: Not THAT cold.

Boy: So......you like my new leather jacket? Awesome huh?

Girl: Hmmm

BOY: Guess how much it cost!?!

Girl: Don't care.

Boy: Go on! Guess!

Girl: I really don't care.

Boy: Go on!

Girl: No.

Boy Two HUNdred and seventy pounds!

Girl: ....I recognise that....Ha! No it didn't!....My brother tried it on late night shopping. Its from River Island!

Boy: No it isn't! Check out the lining!

Girl: It's the same lining!