Cocktails and Records

Like many people, I am naturally nosy. I am curious about other people’s lives and lifestyles -  what they do, what they think, how they behave – and I’m endlessly fascinated by how  living spaces reflect not just fashion, but people’s personalities and their aspirations.

So it was with some glee that I headed off today to a recently discovered exhibition at the Geffrye Museum. I like the Geffrye’s collections on British domestic interiors at the best of times, but they currently have a photographic exhibition on called At Home in a High-Rise which is perfect for the voyeur such as myself.

Photographer Mark Cowper has taken 46 photographs of his neighbours in Ethelburga Tower, a high-rise block of flats in the London suburb of Battersea, where he has lived for the last 20 years. Apparently, he just rocked up at people’s doors and convinced them to let him photograph their living rooms, there and then – with no tidying up time. Because he took all the photos from the same position in the same room in practically identical flats, the images really do highlight the different ways people choose to decorate their homes.

The introductory panel to the exhibition claimed that the pictures celebrate the diversity of British life and this is true, but they also point to some other more mundane similarities:

1. the influence of IKEA. At least a third of the photos included furniture clearly purchased from the Swedish monolith (yes, it takes one to know one).
2. decades of Dulux ads and home improvement shows telling us to be adventurous with paint colours have clearly failed to have any impact.
3. depressingly few of the living rooms have any sign of books, music or art in them.
4. loads of the residents live in complete pigstyes.
5. but despite this, a surprising number of them are optimistic enough to have white sofas.
6. most people have a bigger telly than us.

Check out some of the photographs here.

I’m in love with a man called Ira Glass. Before we went away on holidays I was moaning on here about my technology addiction. This is partly because of Ira Glass.

Ira hosts This American Life, a weekly one-hour programme on Chicago Public Radio that I’ve been slavishly following via podcast for the past couple of months. For those who don’t know it, This American Life is an hour of themed stories about… er, American life. It’s kind of hard to describe. I could say that it is like how Home Truths on Radio 4 used to be, but less twee. However, it would probably be kinder to compare This American Life to The New Yorker. The New Yorker’s writing is so good you find yourself reading about things you don’t even like; in This American Life the  journalism is so good you find yourself listening to things you never knew that you were interested in.

Over recent months This American Life has played havoc with my life. I almost burnt the tea when I was suckered into a segment about a man who clones his favourite bull. I stayed an extra half hour at the gym to hear about a ghost who plays pranks on guests at a hotel in Wisconsin. I missed a train because I was listening so intently to someone’s story of driving around Utah interviewing schizophrenics as their own life was falling apart. I had to wipe tears from my eyes on the way to work because I was so moved by a writer recounting how, despite being an ardent atheist, his mother’s death has found him sitting in empty churches.

And Ira Glass holds it all together somehow, weaving these disparate stories into a satisfying and compelling whole. He also has the kind of voice that I could listen to forever. This American Life is the perfect radio package.

If you’re in anyway a nosy person who finds other people’s lives endlessly fascinating then you have to listen to it. But get to it - we’ve got 14 years to catch up on.

My folks have been visiting recently. This means that I have been busy over the past few weeks entertaining them with the sights of London. And because they have been here quite a few times in the past, this is no mean feat.

However, my trusty standby for the jaded visitor to London has delivered once again. Postman’s Park, tucked away in a small green corner of the City of London, is one man’s tiled tribute to the forgotten heroes of 19th century London.

If  haven’t already been there, then go and have your heartstrings pulled right now.

Or thank God my school days are over

After a productive morning washing up and vacuuming, I took myself to the movies yesterday to see Palm d’Or winner The Class (or Entre les Murs). Since then the film has lodged in my mind and, like an annoying Robbie Williams song, I can’t seem to free myself of it.

The Class is a French film about well, a French class in a suburban Paris school and it stands out for a number of reasons:

1. This mixed, multi-racial school of kids from poorer backgrounds is not what you usually see in French cinema. Apart from rare films like La Haine, you could be forgiven for thinking that the entire Parisian population spends all its time having steamy affairs and/or arguing about Deleuze at swanky dinner parties. There are no dinner parties in this film. Not one.
2. Pretty much the entire film was shot in four locations: the classroom, the staffroom, the school playground and a school meeting room. Combined with long sequences of painfully realistic dialogue in class, this intense documentary-style focus on the school day serves to remind you just how claustrophobic and awful the place can be. School days are definitely not the best days of your life.
3. And (I have to say it) are schools these days really like this? The kids were appallingly behaved in the classroom. With non-stop backchat, bickering, insolence and obfuscation,  each lesson for them was a battle not to learn anything. My school certainly wasn’t like that and neither were my main sources of school-related information – Grange Hill, Degrassi High, Dead Poets Society and er, The Naughtiest Girl in the School.
4. The 14-15 year old kids in the film may have made me grit my teeth and grimace at their behaviour, but this is because they were entirely believable. How often does that happen when you watch a film featuring so many young actors?
5. The Class has the most subtle and nuanced plot and character development I have seen in quite some time. There are no cut-and-paste stereotypes – you really can’t hate the students, no matter how much you want to and you can’t entirely sympathise with the teacher either.
6. If a bunch of native French speakers don’t understand the finer gramatical points of the subjonctive imparfait then what hope do I have?

Conclusions:  It’s either a brilliantly humane look at adolescence and a tribute to the teaching profession, or a complete indictment of the school system today. Either way, The Class is fab – go see.

We were in York for a long weekend. I have spent quality time in this fine city in the past and it was nice to be back. Although the architecture, fabulous City walls and Minster continue to attract flocks of tourists from all over the world, this time I noticed York’s real appeal for the domestic market – nostalgia.

York has got peddling nostalgia down to an artform. There is something for everyone:

1. Nostalgia for the mythical golden age of Middle England. York has more twee-themed museums and gift shops, ye-olde-worlde tea shops and pubs proudly declaring that they are ‘traditional’ than I have seen in quite some time.
2. Nostalgia for the steam age. Remember when the trains ran on time and you didn’t feel degraded travelling in one at the excellent National Railway Museum.
3. Nostalgia for rose-tinted childhood. Every second hand book shop had a ‘nostalgia’ section filled with Enid Blyton books and old Beano annuals. York even has a shop dedicated to selling dolls houses and doll house furniture. No children were sighted near either.
4. Nostalgia for the 70s. There is a branch of 70s theme bar Flares and at least one 70s themed kareoke nights.
5. Nostalgia for the 80s. Represented by a branch of 80s theme bar The Reflex and local paper over-enthusiam for Spandau Ballet.
6. Nostalgia for the 90s. See picture above. This is probably going too far.

In preparation for the long hot summer which I just know we’re going to be enjoying later this year, I’ve been reading Bollocks to Alton Towers: Uncommonly British Days Out. I dare say that many of you will already be familar with this fab book about unusual tourist attractions in the UK. For those of you who aren’t, then look no further than these selected highlights to plan your 2009 holidays.

Places I’m lucky enough to have already been to and highly recommend:

1. Keith and Dufftown Railway. It’s a railway. It goes between Keith and Dufftown (in north east Scotland, just up from the Cairngorms) and it is a trip down memory lane to the errr…70s. This is because the train, run by a bunch of lovely railway enthusiasts, is an old diesel Intercity which wasn’t actually put into retirement all that long ago. For my part, I loved just being able to buy a mug of coffee and a cake on a plate from the station buffet and take it on train. Proper crockery on a train – fancy that?!
2. Bekonscot. I have mentioned this superb model village before and will refrain from going into it again. If you want to be reminded, see here. It really is a great day out.
3. Dennis Severs’ House. Dennis Severs was an American eccentric who bought up this Georgian house cheap in the 70s when everyone else thought that Spitalfields was a dump. Over the years he turned it into in an art installation, or less poncily, the imagined house of an imagined family, the Jervises. Dennis Severs’ House is the anti-V&A, you could say – Dennis knocked up a lot of the ‘antiques’ himself, little notes and bits of interpretation are stuck in random places, it’s almost pitch black inside, they do virtually no marketing, are hardly ever open, and children and chatter are not encouraged. It’s ace.
4. Cumberland Pencil Museum. My family and I went to Cumbria when I was a tiresome teenager. What do I remember most about the trip? Quaint cottages and stunning scenery? Clambering over drystone walls while out walking the fells? Don’t be stupid. It’s the the worlds biggest pencil at Cumberland Pencil Museum and discovering the fascinating story of how pencils are made.

Places I’m dying to go to:

1. Kelvedon Nuclear Bunker. Although I suffer from slight claustrophobia, it is not putting me off wanting to see the very nuclear bunker where our illustrious leaders would have run Britain from had Russia pushed the button. Apparently 600 ‘key personnel’ could have lived and worked in the bunker and you can see where they would have slept, cooked, washed and wondered what the heck they would do next. Excellent.
2. Keith Harding’s World of Mechanical Music. This collection of music boxes, musical clocks, pianolas and old gramophones seems like the perfect day out for the sort of person who loves museums and music, and who is so talentless that they have to rely on mechanical music for their entertainment. Like me, for example.
3. A la Ronde.  I’ve always had a soft spot for eccentrics and follies, so this 16-sided house in Devon looks like just my kind of thing. It was built in the 1790s by two spinster cousins to house the formidable collection of souvenirs that they’d collected during a 10 year Grand Tour of Europe. The cousins then decorated the interior themselves with shells, peacock feathers and seaweed. It might be a cleaning nightmare for the National Trust, but sounds perfect to me.
4. Port Sunlight. Ever since reading about Port Sunlight in Bill Bryson’s Notes from A Small Island nine years ago I’ve been curious about this model factory town set up by soap baron William Hesketh Lever in the 1890s. Like the Barbican, I admire any place which seeks to combine lofty utopian ideals, social engineering and ’statement’ architecture. At least they’re trying.

And have any of you ever been to the Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee? It’s not quite on my ‘dying to go’ list, but I am intrigued…

For more top days out see: www.nothingtoseehere.net

I rarely win anything so I was surprised to receive an email telling me that I had, indeed, won something.

What had I won? Free tickets to the Tower of London. Well, I shrugged to myself, if free tickets don’t stop me from avoiding one of the worlds best loved tourist traps, then nothing will. So 21 years after my last visit, I went.

And it was great! Cold January days must be the best time to go to the Tower. There was a nice bite to the air (all the better for truly understanding what it would be like to live in a draughty stone tower), the White Tower looked fabulous against the crisp blue sky and even better, there were virtually no queues.

First things first, we went to see the crown jewels. My other half, happy being a loyal subject, marvelled over the tacky diamond encrusted gilt, but they just bought out the reckless republican in me. Oliver Cromwell had the right idea – sell ‘em off and buy something useful with the profits.

We then wandered around the various towers trying to imagine what it must have been like pre-tourism. This was a pointless pursuit. For one thing, I discovered that boggle-eyed tourists have been visiting the place for hundreds of years to see the crown jewels and that despite the very real graffiti by the prisoners who’d been locked up inside, there is little sense of place about the Tower. The Bloody Tower does not feel like a place where people were imprisoned, persecuted and tortured for their beliefs; it feels like a tired building which has 2 million tourists traipsing through it every year.

And I never realised that there were so many new buildings in the complex (that’s ‘new’ meaning 19th century ‘new’) and that so many people still live there. You can’t go to the uppermost floors of Beauchamp Tower, where the Tudors locked up their celebrity prisoners, because it’s a Yeoman’s flat and one of the most interesting buildings, a wooden Tudor building built pre-Great Fire of London, is someone’s house. Excellent.

Because of this, there was a fascinating feel to the Tower that I really wasn’t anticipating – a sense of continuing history. You can’t hope to imagine what it was really like in the past, because there never was a fixed past. The place is constantly changing and is less a story of state power than a history of royal whims, architectural trends and the impact of mass tourism.

Squeezing in time for an ‘authentic’ Georgian onion soup, we spent a good four hours there – enough time to get well and truly sick of displays of armour. But I’d go back. Definitely.

I never really thought much about Richard Dreyfuss – he was always just that bloke from Jaws and sap like Mr Holland’s Opus. But after last night I have new respect for him.

You see, last night I went to Complicit at the Old Vic theatre. Dreyfuss stars in this new play alongside David Suchet (aka Poirot, his albatross) and Elizabeth McGovern (who is unfairly known for material like She’s Having a Baby) and it is a brilliant piece of ensemble acting.

Complicit was written by Joe Sutton, a fan of ‘political’ pieces it would seem, and the play tells the story of an American journalist, played by Dreyfuss, who is facing a grand jury trial. He has written an exposé on the US governments use of torture and rendition after the 9/11 attacks and is now torturing himself about what to say to the prosecutors and whether he should reveal his sources.

Even though this was only the second night preview and came complete with a nervous and apologetic introduction from director Kevin Spacey, you felt that the three actors had put a lot of energy, thought, passion and soul into the play. For a three-hander with virtually no set it was pretty compelling and thought-provoking, although a bit confused in some places.

My new respect for Richard Dreyfuss though comes from not just his acting but his high pain threshold. Leaving the stage through the exit near us after the final scene, we heard a tremendous banging, clashing and the unmistakeable sound of someone or something falling painfully to the floor. When he emerged moments later to take his curtain call, Mr Dreyfuss was covered in nasty red, bleeding cuts. It must have hurt like hell. But did we hear a scream, a swear or a whimper? No. Impressive. 

We found ourselves in the Berkshire town of Beaconsfield this weekend. We were there to visit Bekonscot, a model village built by a bored London accountant in 1929 to entertain his friends. The folly started off as a few houses in his garden but wound up as a series of 6 inter-connected model villages over 1½ acres.

By some strange co-incidence we discovered whilst there that Beaconsfield was noneother than the home of Enid Blyton. And what a perfect coupling. Like Enid Blyton, Bekonscot Model Village seeks to ‘depict an idealised view of life in the 1930s’ – in other words the kind of England where the people who voted for Enid Blyton as their favourite author might aspire to live.

The England where:

1. Everyone lives in thatched roof cottages (even if they are fire prone)



2. Happy families pose by their Aston Martins



3. Fox hunting is fine way to spend a weekend



4. Evangelical missionaries can be found converting the villagers



5. Morris dancers are given free reign in the traffic-less town square

To be fair though, Bekonscot Model Village does have a colliery – its tucked away in the corner on the way out, just past the cable car…