Ceridwenscauldron

I understand Michael Jackson's CDs have been flying off the shelves and the various download charts are full of his back catelogue.

Now I'm not knocking the guy, he was a talented musician, but surely if you were a fan you'd already own whatever Jackson tracks you wanted already so why are people buying the stuff now?

Its like if say Lemmy or Ozzy died, I have already got everything of theirs that I want.

Don't get it.

I went for a wee walk today and found this rather wonderful building

Its in Hollen Street which backs onto Oxford Street. The building dates back to 1887, but Henry Heath had been making posh hats since the Regency. Of course its not a hat factory anymore, but home to various creative offices, where no doubt they appreciate the rather lovely lettering outside.

Anyhow if you take a walk around the corner into Oxford Street you see this ornate pile above the Officer's Club shop

This is where Heath's hat shop was. It was designed by the architects Christopher and White and if you look way up you can just about see three stone beavers

Cute you may think, until you investigate the beaver's role in the Victorian hat industry!

If you want to find this building its opposite the 100 Club.

I just watched a fascinating documentary on C4 about the Alpha Course. For those of you who may not know the Alpha Course is a run by various churches with the aim of converting agnostics into believers.

My views on religeon are probably quite self-evident from my previous blog entries, but I have known a number of people who have done these courses and seemingly got something positive out of them so I watched the show with interest.

The part where the course fell down for me was when the leader started talking about he phenomena known as speaking in tongues. He explained it as being similar to when a child learns to speak they often speak nonsense before becoming coherent, so that when you speak to God a similar thing happens. What utter rubbish why as an adult would you speak gibberish when speaking to a higher being when you can already express yourself in a language which as an omniscient being the God would be able to understand.

I think this has just served to convince me that the Alpha Course is nothing more than an attempt to indoctrinate the gullible and lonely into something that seems to me as illogical as ghouls, fairies and the Loch Ness Monster.

We are very lucky living so close to the forest because we get lots of visitors in our garden and today I spotted some new ones.

He's a long tailed tit and quite a young one I think. He turned up with a bunch of his mates and some blue and great tits

who treated us to some acrobatics

as they hunted for insects and I was pleased to see Mrs House Sparrow too.

not pretending to like x-factor winners

Just saw Kasabian in BBC3

Going back in time to an album from 1975

As some of you may know I'm a great fan of this fellow

William Morris as seen on a detail from one the the cottages at Kelmscott near his country home. The Pre-Rhaphaelites were the rock n' rollers of Victorian Britain always shocking society, knocking back the Chloral hydrate and the laudanum and shagging, but also creating some of the most iconic art and design work ever to come out of the UK. So when I discovered that the first shop occupied by Morris and Co was just down the road from where I worked so I decided to take a look.

Of course the shop at 449 Oxford Street is now a now a tacky souvenir shop,

but as you can see it was set in what must have once been a very splendid parade of shops surmounted by some marvelous red brick premises with ornate cast iron railings. Shame to think that its now peddling tea towels and plastic copper's helmets.

Anyhow over the road is Selfridges department store which is celebrating its centenary.

Designed by the American architect Daniel Burnham the store is the second largest shop in the UK after Harrods and was one of the first steel framed buildings to be built in London. Harry Selfridge was a bit of a showman as well as a shop keeper so when Bleriot flew across the Channel for the first time in 1909, he put his monoplane on display inside the store. More than 12,000 people went to see it and no doubt most of them bought a few bits and pieces as well. Later in 1925 John Logie Baird used the store for the first public demonstration of television while in 1938 a seismograph on the third floor monitored an earthquake in Belgium.

The exterior of the shop is in the Art Nouveau style. Designed by Francis Swales it includes this rather lovely figure above the front door. But then I have always been partial to brassy women!

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On the way back to the office I caught sight of some interesting buildings down Mayfair's Duke Street, so taking a brief diversion I found this fantastic late Victorian Church.

This is the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in Exile and was consecrated thus in 1968. Unfortunately you can't get inside because part of the ceiling has fallen in. It was built in 1891 by the architect Alfred Waterhouse for the Congregational King's Weigh House who flogged it to the Catholic church in 1968. Perhaps the most famous buildings he designed wee the Headquarters of the Prudential in Holborn and the Natural History Museum in Kensington. Waterhouse was the brother of Edwin Waterhouse the accountant who went on to form Price-Waterhouse-Coopers, shame I'd rather it had been JMW Waterhouse.

No one ever believes me when I mention this place so here it is in all its creamy beardy goodness about mid way down London's Oxford Street,

Mind you when we have looked for we have generally been a bit pissed, not that I ever eat a cream puff you understand.

If I turn right out of my office, cross Oxford Street and keep going I get to here.

This is Soho Square and the bloke in the middle of the picture is Charles II. He was originally put there in 1681, when the square was called King's Square after him, as part of a water feature. Since then he's been in the wars a bit. In 1875 he was moved when the square was renovated by Branston Pickle magnate Thomas Blackwell who gave the statue to his mate Frederick Goodall. Goodall fancied having Charley on an island in the lake in his garden. Which is where he stayed until 1938 when he was returned to the square as one of the conditions in the will of WS Gilbert's widow, Gilbert (the lyricist to composer Sullivan) having bought Goodall's estate in 1890.

The Square is home to lots of media companies and the Football Association as well as to two rather nice churches. This is the French Huguenot Church.

Originally founded for the French Protestant refugees in 1550 this splendid building was built between 1891-3 and is the only remaining Huguenot church out of 23 that were recorded in London in 1700 after the Huguenots were thrown out of France in 1685.

Above the door is this rather nice frieze showing the story of how the Huguenots sought refuge from persecution.

On another side of the square paradoxically is the rather fine St Patrick's Catholic Church. Consecrated in 1792 it was one of the first new Catholic churches to be built after the passing of the Second Catholic Relief Act in 1791 (excuse the pictures its hard photographing anything in the square because of building works)

Now in just next to St Patrick's there, is the Manor House. the present facade dates from 1838 when Edmund Crosse and his mate Thomas Blackwell made the Manor House the centre of their pickle empire, since then it has been the HQ for the Post Office Film Unit and is now an office building, but its past is far more fruity.

The original Manor house dates back to 1678 and was for a time the home of aristocrats before being bought by one Thomas Hopper in 1776. Hopper turned it into what has been described as a high class magical brothel complete with a Gold Room, Coal Hole and the infamous Skeleton Room where punters would have the frighteners put on them by a skeleton on wires................. er nice.

I just took the What Legendary Creature are You Quiz on Facebook and was amazed to discover I'm a Werewolf.

Now there is a surprise

Coleslaw is bloody easy to make and you can mess around with it to your own taste too.

Shred some cabbage, grate two carrots and finely chop one red onion, sling it all in a bowl.

To make the dressing take a half finished jar of mayonaise and add a teaspoon full of harissa paste. Mix the harissa and mayonaise together, then fold it into the slaw.

We had this with a Spanish style fish stew and cous cous

When I was a kid my grandparents moved to Broadstairs so I spent a lot of time down there when I was younger, but having never been there on the train before I'd always missed this building which is next to the station.

This is Thomas Crampton's water tower. Water was pumped from an artesian bore up into a tank at the top of the tower and then gravity forced it into the town under pressure. Crampton was a local lad born in 1816 who although no Brunel, was a bit of an engineering genius. Aside from public works like this and the town gas works he also designed railway engines and was responsible for the first undersea telegraph line between England and France. The tower is now a local museum to his memory and the history of transport. Its run by very enthusiastic volunteers and only costs £3 to get in so go see it.

Now another famous Broadstairs resident was Charles Dickens and every year in June the locals celebrate with a festival the highlight of which (which we were just in time to catch too) is the Dickens parade, led by the massed er.....drums of the local Air Training Corp a hoard of Dickensian characters swarm into the town

Of course we went back in time to meet the ghost of Jacob Marley and Scrooge

but we also saw Fagin, Oliver Twist, the Artfull Dodger, Mrs Haversham and many other characters immortalised by Sunday afternoon serials in the 1960s. All good fun for everyone involved and completely free.

so after the walk into town a pint of Doom Bar at the appropriate boozer

followed by a pint of shepherd Neame Master Brew at the Neptune's Haunt where we watched one of these chaps

being shooed out of Chip shop over the road. Pausing only to watch the splendid sight of the Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane of the RAF's Battle of Britain Flight pass overhead we headed for the sea pausing only to say hello to this fellow in the Pavilion beer garden

Taking a walk down onto the pier we were treated to a free show by the Red Arrows who were performing at the nearby Herne Bay Airshow, (see Mab's blog for photos). From the pier you can look back at the town and see up on the hill the house that inspired Dickens to write Bleak House although I can't promise that the Red Arrows will be there when you go!

And below that the white clapboard building is the old Lifeboat station, and to the left of that is the Tartar Frigate where we had the most superb meal complete with wine for only £80 for the three of us. Nick and I had the Monkfish rolled in n Parma ham and stuffed with scallops while Mab had the salmon on a bed of butterbeans, Mab and I were bad and had a raspberry and black pepper creme brulee too. The food was cooked to perfection and the staff were brilliant about making sure we had plenty of time to get the train we wanted home.

"you payin with vachers?" the clerk at Victoria station's ticket office enquired spying the £20 compo vouchers from National Express in my hand after a 20 minute wait in the queue.

Observant one here I thought

"yes that and credit card so can I have three sameday returns to Broadstairs, I understand that I can get a groupsave three for the price of two on that"

"you comin back today?"

"yes" hands over vouchers wondering why I bothered to say sameday.

"You haven't filled in the journey details on the back" handing them back

Writes Victoria and Broadstairs on back of voucher and hands it back wondering why he could not have done that after much fiddling he asks for £5.30, I hand over the cash he hands me a ticket.

"I asked for three"

"I didn't hear you" no you didn't because you were obsessed with the agro of a voucher transaction and not listening to me I thought

That will be £50.60 then for the other two

"No it isn't I was told that I'd get two for the price of three as a Groupsave"

"Oh I will have to process the vachers agin then do you want me to do that?"

Too fucking right you will mate I thought and if you'd bothered to listen to me rather than obsessing about those pesky vouchers perhaps you would not have queues snaking all round the station and we would not have missed the train we wanted.

Still the extra half hour we had to wait did mean that Mab and I got to sample some Banger Brothers smoked Polish sausages for lunch (£3.75) which were cooked before our very eyes and served up in a bun with plenty of onions and dill pickles, much nicer than a tasteless McBurger.

and to top it off when we got to the platform the Orient Express

was on the platform next door boarding for a steam day around Surrey,only the passengers had paid rather a lot more for their tickets.

This is the Potemkin Vodka Bar which is very close to St Peters Italian Church in the Clerkenwell Road, I'd recommend the place for shots, Eastern European beer and blinis. Go early in the evening as it gets very crowded later.

this I guess is a belated thank you to Rampage and a good luck card to Sweetymon.

Hope you enjoy my favourite German artiste

is the accordion as anyone who endured 60's TV will know. however even a song about someone who plays one can't be fucked up buy the divine Ute Lemper

Regular readers will know that I have recently had some problems with our friends at National Express. well I am pleased to say they have now been sorted out.

First off a new Edinburgh ticket has been issued to replace the missing one and £10 voucher in compo received for the inconvenience they put me to, though I fear I only got the compo because of the snotty letter I wrote.

Second off received a full refund for the Glasgow tickets they fucked up plus £10 compo voucher and a letter saying that they were investigating why the Edinburgh ticket office could not sort out the problem with the tickets on the day of travel.

So was the manager at the Edinburgh ticket office fobbing me off when I was told that they could not sort out problems with tickets purchased on the internet? I doubt we will ever find out but hopefully my letter to the chairman of National Express caused as much distress to the Edinburgh ticket office as their refusal to sort out the problem there and then caused us.

As Fletcher said "Don't let the bastards grind you down"

No not the one in New York, but the one in London. As I mentioned before I dropped in on a pal who works in Clerkenwell today and seeing as I was in the area thought I'd follow up my last Shipscook's London post with a brief look at the area between the place where Douglas works and Farringdon tube as it has some fascinating history.

Like of lot of central London the area has had its ups and downs. Until fairly recently it was the centre of the city's print trade and I remember when I started working in PR (back in the days before computers) frequently running artwork to the various printers and typesetters in the area, Whole buildings like the ones here

would be occupied by different printing companies and none of the buildings ever seemed to have lifts! However new technology and a general decline in the print trade has since freed up plenty of quite funky premises for conversion into loft dwellings, architectural practice offices and design studios.

There are still some curious little shops like International Magic here

fighting for survival amongst all the trendy bars and restaurants.

Back in the 19th Century the area started to attract people from Italy who were fleeing poverty and political unrest, so much so that in 1863 the Italian community opened its own church in Clerkenwell Road, St Peter's seen here next to the Italian food shop. The blue plaque on the building over the road is for Hiram Maxim, inventor of the Maxim gun.

St Peter's was designed by the Irish architect Sir John Miller-Bryson and based upon the basilica of San Crisogono in Rome. Unfortunately it was shut when I visited so I could not see the rather splendid interior and had to make do with the mosaic frieze from over the door

Within the portico are two memorials, one to the fallen local Italian soldiers from World War One and just above it is this one

which has a very sad history. When Mussolini declared war on Britain in 1940 Churchill had all Italian men in the UK rounded up and interned, even those who had fled Italy to get away from the fascists. One of the government's bright ideas was to pack some of them off to Canada on the Arandora Star, only a German U-boat torpedoed the liner and about 700 Italians drowned. this memorial is to them.

Today I went to see my friend Douglas who works in Clerkenwell and spotted this Chinese takeaway. Genius name no idea what the food is like though.

"This is more of an assembly job than real cooking" moaned Bosun Gravy as he washed a bag of mixed leaves.

"Cut your cackle and get half of the bag in that there salad bowl" said I as I quartered a punnet of cherry toms and finely sliced a red onion. The onion and the tomato both went into the bowl for a stir about with the salad leaves while I made the dressing with the oil drained from a can of anchovies, a lemon and a teaspoon of Dijon mustard. The dressing is then poured over the salad and given another stir.

This serves three easily Plate up the salad and arrange the anchovies decoratively on top.

To finish grill some of those thin chicken fillets that come in packs of six from Sainsbury, then arrange those over the salad. Top off with a good sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.

To drink oh a glass of chilled Frascati would be lovely.

Apparently the transfer is off now that Real Madrid know they can get a big girl's blouse from TK Max for only £4.95

You know I often think that we get to know places we go on holiday to better than our own home town, so I thought that since I work in the middle of London I would go out and explore our mighty metropolis, instead of reading crap off the internet, at lunchtime. So this is the first in my series of reports called Shipscook's London.

Some of you might know that I have an MA in the history of Science so I thought I would go and take a look at a site of very special significance in the fight against disease.

This is the John Snow pub in Broadwick Street.

So who was John Snow?

well he's the chap who worked out that cholera was caused by bacteria from water polluted by human waste. You see back in the early 1800's most physicians believed that diseases were caused by something called miasma or to put it bluntly bad air. So when there was an outbreak of cholera in Soho in 1854 no one was surprised as there was not only lots of waste going into the Thames but cesspits below most houses and loads of horse shit on the streets all contributing to the great stink.

Snow though wondered why outbreaks of the disease were concentrated in certain areas so by a process of elimination that would have done Sherlock Holmes proud he discovered that most of the cases were concentrated around Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) and one group of people were strangely immune. These were the brewery workers who only drank beer. Putting this together Snow worked out that something was contaminating the water from the local pump and managed to convince the local council to remove the handle forcing the locals to use a different well thereby clearing up the problem.

So this here is a memorial to Snow,

its not the original pump though as that used to be just outside the pub named after him. Funny thing is though Snow never touched a drop for most of his life, still we have him (amongst others) to thank for helping to get London a decent sanitation system so I will have a drink for him.

The pub itself is one of those Sam Smiths boozers that does not do Old Brewery Bitter on a hand pump. I think that's a shame since I can't stand their keg beers and lagers.

This is a middle eastern salad made with bulghul (cracked) wheat and just the thing for barbecued meat.

It took a few goes to get right as the knack is in judging the correct amount of bulghul wheat to use the first time I made it I ended up eating it for days afterward.

Ok for two people fill a half pint glass about about a third full of bulghul wheat, chuck it in a pan and add about twice the volume of water and bring to the boil. after about eight to ten minutes the wheat will have absorbed the water and bulked out. Set aside.

While the bulghul is cooking chop a small red onion into tiny bits along with about eight cherry tomatoes, and a whole bunch of mint. Bung it into a bowl and mix with the bulghul and some shredded cabbage, you don't need much cabbage though. Instead of the onion you can use chives or spring onions if you have them knocking about in the veg rack. Then sprinkle a pinch of sumak over the top. I also added a couple of finly chopped pickled chili peppers for a bit of heat

For the dressing mix the juice of one lemon with some olive oil, pour over the top and give it all a good stir.

Perfect with kebabs.

A long time ago or so it seems I worked in St Albans. Since this wasn't exactly where I wanted to be at the time I think of them as my wilderness years, but maybe that is being a little unfair to the place.

Aside from the Roman ruins there are some nice pubs and this rather splendid park where I made some new friends

There were lots of wildfowl, mostly mallards with a good dose of domestic duck in them, plus some farm geese

who were chilling with some well relaxed pink footed geese

In the middle of the pond is an island which we called Heron Island as there were loads of heron on it

I think most of these were young birds as they did not have the distinctive white head and shirtfront of the older birds

We also saw some tufted ducks

More great crested grebes who like at Kew the other week were showing an unhealthy interest in the nesting coots

and this fellow

We think he is a Muscovy duck, but he is not in my book of British birds, he is a about midway between of Canada goose and a mallard in size.

Anyhow we had an interesting day out and a jolly nice luch at the Fighting Cocks who also keep a fine Landlord bitter, Madonna's favourite tipple so I'm told.

Most of the photos are ny Mab except for Heron Island and the geese.

Wildlife spotted today include

Mallard
Aylesbury
Tufted Duck
Muscovy Duck
Canada Goose
Pink Footed Goose
Domestic Goose
Mute Swan
Coot
Moorhen
Great Crested Grebe
Blackbird
Robin
Feral Pigeon
Wood Pigeon
Magpie
Jackdaw
Partridge
Rabbit

Right one sarky letter to Tim at TFL about April 21 journey and one letter to Boris with a copy.

And while I was writing to Boris I thought I'd ask when he was going to do something about the distributors of London's rubbish free evening papers obstructing the entrances to tube stations as they aggressively hawk their wares. I'm convinced that someone will miss their footing, topple down the stairs and injure themselves before long if they are allowed to continue in this way.

I also suggested that he should have a word in the shell of whichever plod thought it was a good idea to stick sniffer dogs at the top of the escalator at Liverpool Street tube. That's another accident waiting to happen when either someone with a dog phobia freaksout or someone carrying decides to try legging it back down during the rush hour, scattering passengers as he goes. Is it really worth causing mayhem just to catch someone with a spliff in their rucksack. Mind you if they are after explosives its a bit late by the time people are coming up the escalator.

In other news National Express have concluded their investigation (their words I wonder did they ask Gene Hunt or maybe Inspector Clouseau) into how they forgot to put three tickets in an envelope and have now sent me what I ordered, however still no news of their fuck up over the Glasgow tickets yet.

We are now into day two of NUR leader Bob Crow's attempt to bring down capitalism and much of the tube network has fallen into paralysis once again.

Now I am lucky enough to be able to occasionally work from home from time to time and indeed I have a little project on the boil to keep me busy for most of the day. So imagine my delight when Dalek Sec turned up with the post and it had a letter from London Transport.

Eagerly I tore open the envelope to discover a letter from Tim Marsh the ticketing and refunds manager relating to my claim for a customer charter refund for the 21 April see here for my recollection of the day in question

http://shipscook.blog.co.uk/2009/04/21/just-how-hard-does-it-have-to-be-to-get-to-work-5981472/

Apparently I had failed to fill in the claim form exactly how Tim liked it done, I suspect that would be because there wasn't enough space on the form to relate such a full catelogue of horrors. So Tim has asked me to supply some more details in some tiny spaces on his letter within 21 days. Further I was told not to attach any further documents to the claim, probably to put me off making it.

Given the huge disruption on the tube that day I'm surprised that Tim did not remember it all and just pass my refund request on it would have been far cheaper than what he has now provoked me into doing.

Sorry Tim, as I now have your name I'm going to write you a letter about the day and the inadequacies of the complaints procedure and just for fun I am going to copy it to Boris Johnson

There is something fascinating about them isn't there?

One of the recent additions to Alton Towers is a mini Sea Life Centre and they have quite a large pool with small sharks and rays in it Mab took this picture of one of the little chaps.

He's a smoothhound and he could grow up to be a five footer, but these little chaps seemed very friendly though, sticking their heads out of the water to get a closer look at us, one of them even wriggled up so far his pectoral fins were above the surface. I have heard that the Sea Life Centres are encouraging staff to tickle the wee beasties so perhaps he was soliciting a tickle. Mind you there was a notice saying don't touch the fish which didn't stop some of the idiots grabbing for their dorsal fins. I seemed to attract a lot of interest from a couple of dogfish and thornback rays as well and as the dogfish rose and showed me an extremely pointy set of pearly whites I thought I'd keep my fingers to myself.

I spent ages looking at these chaps while Old Nick and the Powder Monkey had their fingers cleaned by some shrimps in the pool next door.

My next favourite place was the Shark Tunnel

Here is a white tipped reef shark, there were a couple of those plus a bonnethead which is a kind of hammerhead, only it was camera shy and a couple of zebra sharks. There were also some rays I'm not sure what kind.

The only thing that marred my fishy enjoyment was the stupid Ghost of the Sea AV presentation that just kept running all the time, I mean come on these fish are so brilliant you don't need some cod pirate chanting something like this

The Ghost of the Sea
The Ghost of the Sea
drank too much rum
so he needed a wee

Regular readers will know I have a very low opinion of most London cyclists.

Well I was delighted to see that cops in Bournmouth are using a handheld speed camera to nab cyclists doing over 10mph on the promenade and then give them a stiff talking to about their reckless disregard for pedestrians.

Typically cyclists have whinged about how its a complete waste of police time and money, but then they would. Mind you anyone who has been hit by one of these selfish bastards will know all about it.

The problem with bikes is that they are silent, which is why they belong on the road not on the pavement and why cyclists should follow the same basic rules as motorists at crossings instead of hurling abuse at any pedestrian who is unfortunate enough to be in their way.

Good for you Dorset Old Bill keep it up.

Now that Alan Sugar has been given a peerage in Boredom Groan's government will hae have to change his name to Lord Non Fat Sweetener to comply with New Labour's healthy eating fitness fascism?

We need to know

The weather over the weekend was pretty rubbish wasn't it?

Feeling a bit soggy while we were at Alton Towers I left Old Nick, Mab and the Powder Monkey on the rides while I got a cup of tea at the fish and chip shop.

"Can I have a cup of tea please?"

"Certainly that's £1.40"

hands over money

"The teabags, milk and sugar are by the machine with the hot water"

Blimey for £1.40 I'd have at least expected them to make it for me.

So by my reckoning the tea bags I helped myself to from the hotel room must be worth £8.40, so who's laughing now

Mwahahahahahaha....twirls moustache and exits stage left.

We have just been to Alton Towers.

We stayed in a Carribean themed hotel and when you you got in the lift it played this

How cool is that?

As readers my recall I put a load of stuff in my eighties trashcan this week and this led to think about the decade before and what I liked and didn't like about it.

The Seventies were an odd decade opening with the naive optimism of the 60s, then everything got turned on its head when the punk thing happened and it ended with the Terror that was Margaret Thatcher. I was 11 when the 70s started and on the work treadmill when it finished so as decades go it was probably the one that had the most impact on forming my character.

A lot of people knock the 70s but a lot of great stuff came out of it like affordable transatlantic travel and the dawn of the DIY attitude that changed we way we make and consume music.

So for me the great things were discovering the pleasures of sex, seeing the Who at Charlton (twice), some fantastic gigs at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm and the Rainbow in Finsbury Park, going to Art College, going to New York for £75, Hammer Horror movies and some fantastic music from Hawkwind, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Alice Cooper, the Damned, the Banshees, Van der Graaf Generator, Spirit, Curved Air, Budgie, the Groundhogs, Stray, the Rammones, Patti Smith, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Slade, the Who and Tom Baker as Dr Who

However here is my 70s trashcan: Genesis, the Sweet, Margaret Thatcher, the Bay City Rollers, David Cassidy, the Partridge Family, the Exorcist (never liked this kind of horror movie) the Osmonds, Malcolm Mcclaren, Julie Burchill, disco music, middle class punks pretending to be working class oh yeah and leg warmers, never liked them

I went out to vote this morning and to say the polling station was busy would be a lie, there were more people behind the desk waiting to hand out the ballot papers.

What a choice of people to vote for, I went for the Lib Dems for the following reasons.

1 They are pro-Europe

2 They are anti ID cards

3 They have not been caught defrauding the public purse by anything like the amount the Tories and Labour have, mind you that is probably because they just don't have as many MPs

I used to support Labour, but can't bring myself to anymore. They are not even Tory Lite using our money to bail out the city, but doing nothing to protect manufacturing jobs at Rover or Vauxhall, eroding our hard won civil liberties, playing up to the racist xenophobia of the Daily Mail leader writers (but getting it so wrong with the Ghurkas) and getting our brave service personel killed fighting two stupid wars just to suck up to a born again religeous nutter in the Whitehouse while all the time lining ther pockets at our expense.

As for the Tories I could never bring myself to support them, but don't you think its funny that people seem a lot less worried by Tory MPs with their snouts in the trough than Labour ones, I guess that is because people expect the Conservatives to be taking backhanders and fiddling expenses.

As for the Greens, many positive policies, but I think they concentrate far to much on punishing people for using resources rather than seeking solutions.

Christian Alliance, obviously not for me, according to them I will be heading for eternal damnation anyway.

As for most of the rest of the parties like the BNP, UKIP and the various English nationalists they are just a bunch of xenophobic racist nutters who will hopefully spread their support so thin that they won't pick up a seat.

No matter what you think though go out and exercise your vote its important to stop the nutters from getting a grasp on power.

Contrary to what some people think I don't hate everything from the 1980s but I always thought puffball skirts were one of the decades worst fashion crimes worse than big glasses (I admit had those), red braces and Timmy Mallett.

Now they are back and rarely flattering.

Anyone see Baaba Maal on Later with Jools Holland? his backing vocalist looked like a neon pink physallis in that short puffball dress and as for the longer length skirts they often make lady's bums look as if they have droopped to their knees.

So in they go to my Eighties trashcan along side: Spandau Ballett, Bananrama, Diana Spencer, Gordon Gecko, Kajagoogoo, Haircut 100, Margaret Thatcher, Phil Collins, Nick Kershaw, Rick Astley, Stock Aitkin and Waterman, yuppies, greed is good culture, Anthea Turner, Duran Duran, syn drums, Peter Yorke and Robert Elms

I see Ryanair posted a loss and Michael O'Leary is on the box saying that he's going to charge for using the on-board toilet as his planes don't need three toilets so by reducing demand for a pee he can take two toilets out and put another row of seats in to reduce fares further.

Well after Ryanair messed me around so much this year I have decided never to use them unless I absolutely have to so he won't be getting his greedy paws on any more of my cash.

And when it comes down to it with all those extra charges for using cards and even for on-line check in combined with the expense of getting to and from the inconvenient location of many of Ryanair's chosen airports its often cheaper to use BA or another flag carrier who will also give you free drinks on board.

And since when has checking in been an optional extra. More transparency and honesty in pricing please.

Back 1814 96,000 people paid a penny to laugh at the inmates of the Bedlam Lunatick Asylum.

Today Britain's Got Talent picks up 19 million viewers.

So what's new

Got home last night to discover an envelope from National Express.

"Oh good" I think "My train tickets have arrived" opens envelope gets tickets out, find seat reservation for three, but only two tickets.

So I ring the customer care telephone number on the ticket wallet, having forgotten that it was a waste of time as it is now 5.45 and everybody at National Express will have packed up their lunchbox and thermos and gone home 45 minutes ago.

So this morning I ring them again, give them the transaction number when asked and explain what has happened

"Oh you will have to send us the tickets with a covering letter and we will investigate it"

"But its pretty clear that someone just didn't put the third ticket in the envelope"

"You will still have to write in"

"Ok that's putting me to a lot of trouble to sort out your mistake"

"Do you have the address?"

"Is it the Freepost one printed on the ticket wallet?"

No of course it isn't its one in a completely different part of the country, feeling a bit peeved I asked

"So will you be refunding the postage as its not a Freepost address and its actually your mistake"

"I'm not authorised to make such a decision"

Maybe its petty but somehow having to pay the postage for sort out something that National Express have made a complete hatstand out of makes me see red. So much for that Core corporate value of "Positive- We find solutions" And just what is the point of that Freepost Customer Care address and for that matter a Customer Care Call Centre that is only open while most people are at work.

I can't see why when National Express cock an order up they can't just reissue the tickets and send them to the customer with an SAE so that the customer can return the birdsnest they made of his original order.

Thank Darwin this bloody nonsense is over at last.

I see that Susan Boyle is now in the Priory suffering from a breakdown after losing to some kids who do a bit of dancing. I can't say I'm surprised after all the poor woman has had front pages on all the tabloids for longer than the Telegraph has managed to eek out the parliamentary expenses story. Never one to miss an opportunity to make himself look daft Boredom Groan has even phoned to commiserate, never mind Gordon you are about to find out what its like to lose yourself soon.

The most peculiar headline I think I have seen was the one on Metro's front page that said Susan Boyle could be the new Oprah. A bit far fetched I thought from my limited viewing of the show since Ms Boyle appeared to have an an incredibly thick accent.

Who was the author of this claim I hear you wondering?

It was no other than 80s poptart Sinitta, famous for such timeless classics as So Macho and GTO. Naturally I thought why look any further for a replacement for the BBC director general Mark Thompson when he goes she's obviously on the money for it.

Here are some ideas for how Sinitta could jazz up the BBCs offerings

7.00 Animals do the Strangest Things; with Hugh Fearnley Whitgingstall, after all he has a nice farm with baa lambs and piglets

7.30 University Challenge; Stock, Aitkin and Waterman take on S club 7 asking the questions Katie Price

8.00 Panorama; Eoghan Quigg looks into the shocking cost of a new scrunchie while whoever won the X Factor last year looks into the transient nature of fame

9.00 The Apprentice with Sharon Osbourne; Shazza wonders what else she can do to to milk her befuddled husband's former career for a few quid now that the TV work has dried up

10.00 The News read by Pepsi and Shirley

11.00 Question Time; hosted by Rick Astley, topical debate with Belouis Some, Peter Andre, some bloke off Big Brother and Maria Whittaker

Those racist idiots in the BNP have put out an election leaflet brimming over with patriotic nonsense.

Pride of place goes to that great British aircraft the Supermarine Spitfire. Only thing is that particular Spitfire was flown by a Polish squadron.

Yes Poles, you know those 145 brave chaps who the BNP would have prefered to have stayed in Poland when the Nazis invaded, who along with Czech (88), French (13) and other foreign pilots who helped to defeat the Nazis in the Battle of Britain. I suppose the BNP would also have turned away all the Norwegian, Dutch, Greek and Danish servicemen who fought alongside British and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen too.

Mind you the BNP hava a track record of claiming that Britain should have stayed out of World War II and that British soildiers built the death camps as part of some kind of demented conspiracy theory.

The same leaflet promotes more nonsense about British Jobs for British people with a photo of three construction workers against a Union Jack backdrop, turns out that these chaps are American, tsk tsk BNP idiots you should have checked the provenance with whatever photo library your designer bought the photo from. The same goes for that pair of happy pensioners who incidentally won't be voting BNP because they are in fact Italians who live in Italy.

And these British Jobs would they be with traditional British fims like Ford, TNT, Honda, Citibank, McDonalds, Toyota, DHL, News International, Renault, Sony, Total?

I think knowing your enemy is pretty important so I read some of the copy on the BNP's website. Any claim that they are not racist is soon blown out of the water when you read about their crackpot policies to do with the repatriation of immigrants and locking down our borders with Europe.

They even think that then UK and Ireland can be reunited outside of the EU - What utter nonsense.

These idiots seem to think that by putting on a suit they somehow stop being a bunch of moronic thugs and become respectable pillars of society.

Well a collar and tie never stopped Hitler from being an evil mass-murdering bastard.