Meet the new blog…

… same as the old blog.

Well, not quite the same. This one is on my own site, for one thing.

A new blog, though: just what the world needs, don’t you think?

As this is the first entry here, I can’t help but feel a certain… pressure, let’s say. Because, after all, in years to come, when this blog is one of the most popular sites on the internet1, millions of people will look back through the entries, and pay special attention to the first one. Obviously its content is critically important. Unfortunately, its content is rubbish.

Well, its content was going to be rubbish: or rather, about rubbish; about the guy who was fined for dropping rubbish into a bin.

But many people have written about the stupidity of that, and in any case, the council in question have already, and predictably, gone back on their foolish decision.

Instead I thought I might write about the hat woman. But actually that’s too boring to go into. Pubs with “no-hat” rules, though: truly madness walks among us. Actually, the scary thing about that story is that there are pubs with CCTV cameras inside them. Truly we are the most watched society in the world.

Maybe that should be the theme of this blog, if it needs one: the madness of modern society.

I’d hate to come over like some old grouch, though, railing against modernity: “It wisnae like that when ah wuz a wean, by the way jimmy.”

Or not too often, at least. No, instead, like most blogs — like all the best ones — I’ll just write about whatever the hell I feel like.

Modern weirdness, though: I just heard about the recent trends for “internet suicides” in Japan; and the fact that the US Nasdaq exchange has made an offer to buy the London Stock Exchange. Apparently there are shares in the Stock Exchange: it’s a company. For some reason I find this immensely surprising. I would have thought (if I had ever thought of such a thing) that it was some kind of public body, like the Bank of England. Apparently not, though. Life’s strangenesses, I think, will be a recurring feature here.


1. this is meant to be humorous, by the way.

The Many-Angled Pub

I went out for a drink with some people from work last night.  We went to a place in Covent Garden called The Porterhouse.

It’s a very curious place.  It extends across three or maybe four floors.  Or maybe only two, but with lots of mezzanines.  It’s full of alcoves: everything, it seems, is an alcove.  I have no idea, for example, how many bars it has.  And in fact, I didn’t go to the bar all night.  That, though, is because they have something that is remarkable in a British pub: table service.

Yes, it’s very strange.  waiters come and go, collecting glasses and trays, but also, when asked, taking orders and returning — very quickly — with trays of beers.

So I spent the night drinking Caledonian 80/-.  A taste of home, perhaps, but a) it was bottled; b) it was too cold to taste right; and c) it’s been such a long time since I drank it back home that it hardly counts.  And I always preferred McEwan’s 80/-, anyway.  Oh, and pizza.  They serve food, too, and claim a woodburning oven.

It was a good night.  But that pub.  You know the old computer game that used to say, “You are in a maze of little twisty passages, all the same”?  It was a bit like that.  But mostly it reminded me of the house in HP Lovecraft’s ‘Dreams in the Witch-House.’

Oh, I suppose the angles weren’t really that wrong; that the walls were quite straight. But there were definitely too many rooms, and bits, and stuff: if not angles.

Book Notes 5: Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

I read a review of this book in The Guardian years ago (this one, I think). It sounded absolutely fantastic, and I’ve wanted to read it ever since. But I only got round to buying it recently.

I was aware, of course, of the danger of approaching a work with unreasonably-raised expectations, so I tried not to. You can’t make yourself think “This won’t be very good,” when you actually think, “This should be pretty good.” The trick, therefore, is to convince yourself to have a slight seed of doubt. I’m not totally sure how well that can ever work, though.

I did enjoy the book, however: it starts with a light, easy style, and has an endearing central character in Sumire. Continue reading