Once I realised I was a ghost, I became much happier.

[alexsarll]

Is there any particular reason I should be in London on Friday, Saturday or Sunday?

With council tax set to rocket, what (aside from the ace libraries) are Islington spending my money on? Well, they're cracking down on the illegal fag sellers on Holloway Road, which seems fair enough - except that from this page, they seem more concerned with ads aimed at the buyers than at taking down the sellers. The sellers are not exactly subtle - surely frequent, massed plainclothes sweeps would do the job? Oh, and there's the Finsbury Park Area Action Plan (not, incidentally, at the url given on the paper copy they sent out, which omitted the final .asp) - which, reading slightly between the lines, is clearly a manifesto for turning Finny P station into a ghastly, unwieldy mini-me of the mall-stations like Hammersmith. Still, if you've been sent a copy, do be sure to return the form with your comments - I have little faith that they'll take any notice of what we actually want, but if we don't participate in this sham we lose the moral right to complain about it later. Speaking of which, all those of you who endorsed the arrival of the serpent buses on safety grounds? A colleague saw someone trapped in the door and dragged along the road yesterday, an utter impossibility on the Routemaster.

Last night, I read The Life Eaters by David Brin and Scott Hampton, an elaborate blasphemy against the Old Gods in comic form. It's not true, but it's still quite a good read.

Does it unnerve anyone else that in all the posters for Sinatra at the London Palladium, there's no mention that the star of the show is slightly...mortally challenged? I mean, yes, you might think it's obvious, and I might think it's obvious, but I remember a Varsity music *editor* who tried to get an interview with Nick Drake...on which note Darker Than The Deepest Sea: The Search For Nick Drake by Trevor Dann

The dreamy, dark and folk-tinged songs of Nick Drake are part of the critical canon nowadays; he's a fashionable name to drop in interviews, or deploy on film soundtracks. But as is so often the case, this fame was strictly posthumous; the life Dann recounts is a depressing slog of repeated commercial failure and ever-deepening personal problems, climaxing in a drug overdose which may have been either a tragic accident or an unsurprising suicide. Dispiriting as it is, Dann's book also feels somehow slight, not so much through any fault of the writer (who, if not a great stylist, is competent and commendably thorough) as through the nature of the 26-year life it recounts. The singer Robyn Hitchcock (like Drake, a key influence on REM) is quoted as saying "Nick Drake's music brushes the ear" - similarly, Nick Drake brushed the lives of those he knew. At best, one interviewee after another repeats variations on a theme of how you never really got to know Nick, and he always seemed detached from life. At worst, he comes across as the Pete Doherty of his day, 'untogether' even by sixties standards, the blame for most of his problems very much on his own slender shoulders.
As the book recounts, Nick Drake is the sort of artist who breeds obsessive fans; his oblique lyrics can support myriad interpretations, and something in his vocal style makes the listener feel he’s singing just to them, that he understands. Most people would be better sticking with the music than reading this book; it’s more likely to detract from appreciation of his work than enhance it. There’s little new here, and less of that significant - except one late, distasteful and rather random suggestion that Drake may have been abused as a child, offered without plausible support.

My favourite new band name: The Strange Death Of Liberal England.

Comments

[666inmyheart.livejournal.com]

Is there any particular reason I should be in London on Friday, Saturday or Sunday?

Club Mental is on Saturday Barry. I hope you remembered to put it in the Guide! We need all the help we can get because it appears that NO ONE LOVES US.

xx

I'm sure I've said this before, but...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I make sure that things go in the database, and then can make sure they survive the initial cull for the Guide. Their fate after that is entirely beyond my control.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

I must buy some decent Nick Drake recordings to Gloom with. As an aside, an Oxford Union President did try to invite Ayrton Senna as a guest speaker in my time.

I'm coming round to your view on bendy-buses, but it's because I'm a racist.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I like Nick Drake (although that book put me off a bit), but I really can't see any of his stuff working in a club!

Explain your working on the second point.

[johnnybrolly.livejournal.com]

Bendy buses are rubbish, unless you are a fare dodger.

• We all know about their unwieldly nature in traffic, and how dangerous they are to other road users, particularly cyclists


• Because you can enter by any door, people do, and then, seeing as they didn't have to pass the driver, they don't bother paying. Get the 36 from Victoria to Camberwell, and take note - at least half the people on there don't pay. There will never be enough room for a ticket inspector to do his job on that route.


• On a double decker every passenger goes past the driver. Thus the driver has a rough idea when the bus is full. On a bendy bus he hasn't got a clue, and cannot control overcrowding. Man, those bendy buses can get really crowded


• Because you can enter or exit by any door the driver has a lot more to take notice of at bus stops. Interesting to see how many people have been injured on bendy buses. My girlfriend hurt her leg getting on one, and my dad has a compensation claim against a bus company after hurting his back and cracked a rib when a bendy bus stopped rather sharply while cornering and threw him to the floor in the back section of the bus.

What are the plus points again?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Bendy buses are fine if they are nearly empty and used on non-busy routes. As soon as they approach 1/3rd capacity they become extremely unpleasant to ride on, and any accessibility benefit gained by adjustable floors/wheelchair/pushchair space vanishes immediately.

This is purely from a passenger perspective - I'm not going to touch the pedestrian/cyclist viewpoint, it's a different argument.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Even under those parameters and those optimum conditions, it's still bloody irksome if you get held up at traffic lights just shy of your stop. And I always find myself feeling vaguely fume-y; it may just be from being closer to the ground, but I could still very much do without it.

[thermaland.livejournal.com]

I don't know about safety, but the N29 route which used to be SHEER HELL with double-deckers is vastly more tolerable now. One good thing with them is that bus drivers can no longer stop you coming on board if the front of the bus is full but there is space at the back, exactly like what happened to us Saturday.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I got a bendy 29 home on Saturday, and though I will grant that the lack of exclusionary power is a boon at the Camden stop, it was still a deeply unpleasant experience.

[darkmarcpi.livejournal.com]

I like a few bands who hold Nick Drake as a key influence, but I have always found his music a little underwhelming. Same goes for both Buckleys.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, I tend to find the opposite - I like Nick Drake, but almost anybody influenced by him makes me want to kill and kill and kill again.

[my-name-is-anna.livejournal.com]

I always think that about the dealers in Camden eg: surely a plain clothes policeman would only have to walk up and down the High Street for about five minutes?

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

I think this about Brixton tube, and again - I'm sorry to come over all fascist, but they won't do that, because

Legitimate reason a) They'd rather have the dealers where they can see them.
Rubbish reason b) It would really screw with the racial mix in their stop and search and arrest statistics.
Reason c) that I haven't thought of yet.

[p-dan-tic.livejournal.com]

they did this once in the summer last year after an MP complained that his son was offered drugs repeatedly while he was out with him in camden - I'd like to see tem do it OVER AND OVER again.....

[p-dan-tic.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which, all those of you who endorsed the arrival of the serpent buses on safety grounds? A colleague saw someone trapped in the door and dragged along the road yesterday, an utter impossibility on the Routemaster.

just because injury is possible does not mean injury is more likly

again bendy busses *are* safer - statistically, but again I'll remind you that the real reason bendy buses are better is that they are fairer to less able bodied people and people with children

but that again we know that statistics or fairness have little place in barry's world if he is inconvenienced slighty

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I was not the person dragged along yesterday, nor either of those johnnybrolly mentions above.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

>they are fairer to less able bodied people and people with children

Fairer than Routemasters. But not modern double/single deckers with low floors. Bendy buses are overcrowded and have less seating. The 25 route is horrendously overcrowded, and almost every time I've travelled on the bus I have seen pushchair-wielding mums/elderly people pushed out of the way or simply not let onto the bus at all by the selfish citizens of Tower Hamlets.

[my-name-is-anna.livejournal.com]

I think was someone my grandmother knew, who was killed after falling out of the exit on a 253 when it was a Routemaster, and fell under the back wheel.

[publicansdecoy.livejournal.com]

Where's the Life on Mars review?

-x-

Cross-time Britney? I wouldn't mind travelling through her vortex.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Extremely good, but left hanging to such a degree that I'm realy waiting for next week's conclusion.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

Hey! that was going to be my post! Well not really, but yes, on Saturday the cigarette sellers were out in force, standing underneath the very posters that cost us so much money and the local paper declarations that they are bullying the local flower seller. I've seen undercover police entrap them, force them to give back money to punters, pin them to the wall and arrest them and they've been back the next day. I've seen Pcs patrolling past them. I saw a black maria pull up 6 ft short of them sirens blazing and ignore them all. I usually just hit them out of my way with my shopping (they often clog my path back from Waitrose). Odd thing is...the only purchase I've ever witnessed was the plain clothes stooge.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

But WHY were they out the next day when they're clearly guilty as virtue?

[angelv.livejournal.com]

Oooh I like that Dilated Peoples song a lot. But it does go on about one verse too long.

Doesn't matter if I don't write cheques, I write rhymes.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it does slightly, doesn't it? Similarly, the album is v good and almost avoids Hip Hop Album Syndrome - but they just couldn't resist having some lame skits and one track too many which features their mates.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's a mispunctation, and the name of the show is "(Live, )Sinatra, Live!"

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

There's real Hammer Horror possibilities here...Sinatra Has Risen From The Grave!, perhaps.

[goodman-beaver.livejournal.com]

Hang on...Sinatra's dead?

True fact: In the mid-80s, an Elvis compilation came out to mark his "30 years in show business".

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Once you're under contract, nothing gets you out...