Author Archives: Phil Ryan

About Phil Ryan

Phil Ryan is a writer and musician. He gets about a bit.

Londoners Life – Overheard by Phil Ryan

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My new column is starting to write itself. This week was nearly from a guy shouting into a phone outside West Hampstead tube. He had on an exaggeratedly baggy slightly shabby black suit. I noted his white shirt was stained in places around the collar. It looked like tomato sauce. His general demeanor could be summed up as sleazy. So here’s just one priceless fragment from his ten minute one sided conversation while I was waiting to meet a friend? He was using a wired earphone set clutching the little microphone near to his mouth. “So I’m in the club when boosh this geezer smashes a bottle over this other geezers head. I don’t know what to do, do I? I mean I’m not trained like you. But I’m security right. So I shout stop that but they don’t. And now it’s really kicking off. So I legged it. Yeah I know I’m not supposed to but these geezers were going at it man I tell you. I nearly shit meself (much of this was punctuated by effing and c’ing) I know but I didn’t have a clue Robbie not a clue brother. I’m not cut out for this door work really I’m not. I’m a coward d’you know what I mean? No really brother. My pants were damp you know what I’m saying?”

However it’s not that conversation. Compelling at it got. It’s this one. I had to go into town the day after the Olympic ceremony. So I’m grabbing a cup of tea locally when at the next table I hear this:
Plump middle aged well-dressed woman with bouffant hair and similar looking companion. “Well I was offended. I’m sorry but it’s just not on” her friend looked anxious “Really but I like Paul Mcartney he’s wonderful”. Her friend bridled “But what a thing to sing about” her friend looked taken aback. The bouffant hair lady shook her head vigorously “We put up with a lot but how they let a man like that get away with such offensive language I just don’t know. If that’s supposed to represent Britain well…..” her friend looked seriously contemplative “What did he say?” the bouffant woman’s voice rose to a very loud whisper. “He sat there calm as you like and sang Hey Jews. Can you imagine it on live world television. In front of millions. Mocking us” her friend’s voice changed “Sorry did you say he sang Hey Jews?” Bouffant lady whispered loudly again ”Yes I nearly choked on my biscuit. I shouted by Alby was upstairs. Calm as you like he was the cameras were very close and you could see every word coming out of his mouth. Hey Jews this hey Jews that. I’m surprised people didn’t boo. What a thing I mean what a thing” Her friend sounded uncomfortable now “Er I don’t think that’s what he said dear” Bouffant woman was into her stride “I turned it off I just couldn’t bear it” her friend coughed “No darling the songs called Hey Jude. It’s a boy’s name” Bouffant woman suddenly sounded slightly confused “What?” her friend gently continued “Yes dear it’s an old Beatles tune called Hey Jude. (She enunciated the words very carefully emphasising the D) Kimmy learned it at school last year in the choir. It’s Hey jude” Bouffant woman made a disbelieving sound in her throat “Oh. Well his hair looked terrible”

Thank you god. Perfect.

Londoners life – Overheard by Phil Ryan

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This week’s offering from my new delve into the London psyche. I’m collecting bits of chats and conversations I overhear as I drift around this great city of ours. And I’m finding utterly compelling bits of stuff that leaves me marvelling at what goes in in some people’s heads. I was sitting in a café off Bond Street with a friend waiting for the rain to stop so we could go to a meeting. My friend had to deal with an email so I fiddled with my phone skimming through some photos I’d taken. The place was virtually empty and outside the rain misted up the windows. I glanced up when I caught the fragment of conversation from two young looking guys one carrying what looked like a Cello case who were sitting about two tables away. I guessed they were from the nearby music school. I slid sideways in my seat the better to hear them. One of them was holding up Metro newspaper. The taller guy started shaking his head.
He snorted “Cuh. Look at this. They’ve got an Orang-utan who can pick out three tunes on a little electric keyboard. It’s some experiment by this group of scientists in Japan” his friend smiled “Well they reckon they’re the closest primate to us in terms of intelligence don’t they?” he furrowed his forehead “Or is that chimpanzees?”
The taller guy paused briefly “Um I’m not sure it might be” his friend waved a hand “But it’s clever though isn’t it. Imagine some creature like that actually being able to grasp the concept of music. To use those big old hands so delicately” the tall guy nodded in agreement “Yeah I suppose. It says here the large primate known as Zango has been practicing for three years and can now clearly play three well known nursery rhymes apparently from memory” his friend smiled “Wow that’s so cool. Amazing huh?”
The taller guy let out a long sigh “Nah. It’s not that clever really. I mean it’s not as if he’s writing his own stuff. It’s all covers isn’t it” his friend let out a laugh “What some bloody great monkey knocks out twinkle twinkle little star and you want him to whack out a hit? It’s a monkey not Adele?” The taller guy seemed to ignore the joke “But come on its just a trick it’s not understanding what it’s doing it’s like a performing ape in a circus. So it’s not really playing is it? It’s a repeated task. If it created a tune then that would be something. Yeah then it would be a real story about music” He sipped his tea thoughtfully. His friend chuckled “You don’t want much do you” he paused and delicately nibbled his muffin “I bet you Simon Cowell would manage him if he could”
Then my phone rang.
London is such a great place for this sort of thing. And now I’ve warmed to my new challenge it’s surprising what I’m picking up. I’ve stopped short of trying to record people on my digital recorder. I just make some notes. Often on my paper or a napkin. But some of the lines are just priceless. I’ll leave you with one I caught in a queue at the cinema. “Oh yeah they put stuff into the popcorn when they’re showing violent films. Calms the punters down”
I wonder.

Londoners Life – Overheard London by Phil Ryan

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Londoners Life – Overheard London

Well I’ve had a good go at reporting on life in London. But to be frank it’s just got to be permanently annoying – broken only with those occasional uniquely great London moments. And I felt I kept being negative which was pointless and of no interest to anyone. But recently I’ve come across something I’d been aware of before. Those half snatches of other people’s conversations. And so I’ve started recording them either by writing them down or leaving some notes in my phone. Just to try and remember them. I feel like a snooper a little. But sometimes you can’t help it. A phrase. An expression. The volume. It grabs your attention. So I figured I’d be more open to those that really caught my ear.
Here’s the first one.
It was one of those bright sunny days interrupted by a downpour of rain. And thankfully the rain had vanished leaving a bright blue sky and bright sunshine. I’d stopped to take a picture with a view down a twisting little alleyway in Covent Garden about 3.00 in the afternoon. It was an old fashioned looking lamppost in black iron with three gleaming bright red phone boxes framed in the shadowy mouth of the bottom of the alleyway. There’s was a tiny pub halfway down it and I saw two guys in their fifties leaning against the wall with pints in their hands. They both looked South American. Tanned skin, jet black hair and that kind of clothes look that you recognise. White shirts. Black jeans. Silver bits on their boots. Fancy tooled belts. So I walked past them and then paused to take my pictures.
Here’s what I caught. The voices were clear and sharp in the cool air.
“So he gets his wish” the other guy nods slowly “They bury him in Cuban soil?” “Yeah that’s what happens. It don matter where you die they bring you back and you get a burial up with the big guys” he nodded again “Really with the big guys”. The taller guy pulled a face “Sure they look after the party guys. He was big in the movement you know. A big Party guy. His old man or sonthing. But the deal is they shipped his body back from Caracas I think via Fortaleza an this other guy he say via Bogota too” the other guy whistled “Sheesh that a long way an so much money huh? Just cos he was a party guy?” His friend shrugged “It’s how I’m saying it. They get to spend eternity in the soil of their home country. It’s like a symbolic thing you know like the Atecs an that shit. Its connections you know what I’m saying. Don’t matter where. If the party say you come home you get to come home. Cuba is the end destination no matter how you fuck up. It’s like they ignore that other stuff you know. Varga he say it’s being going on forever” The other guy scratched his head “But what’s so important about it, you know you’re dead who cares what happens to your body?” His friend shook his head “It’s the Party right. They saying we can get to you. Dead or alive. And if you been with them and even if you thousands a miles away they’ll treat you with honour and bring you back. Stick you in Cuban soil. Like a homecoming or sonthing yeah. Marble grave stuff. Priests. The whole shit you hear. The whole shit” the other guy took a deep breath lost in thought. “Fuck man I be lucky to get a wheelie bin” And they both started laughing in that deep way old friends do. They convulsed and fell against each other weeping and I left them to it.
When I got back home I googled for a while to help me recall my hazy grasp of Cuban history. Che Guevara. The revolution. The fall of Batista. The Communist party. Fidel Castro. The missile crisis. And I thought of the two guys in the alleyway. So far away from it all. Talking about some dead person. Some person who’d been brought back to be buried in the soil he ran on when he was a child. Evidently somehow known to the ruling dictatorship. And despite him dying so far away from his native soil they’d brought him home.
The things you overhear huh?

Londoner’s Life 30 – by Phil Ryan

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London is filling up – it’s official. Day by day it’s a combination of the vaguely improving weather and the tourists. All I can say is I’m seriously trying to avoid Central London most weeks now. I’ll stay out on the periphery. The tubes are becoming pretty unpleasant as well as curiously unreliable. And by that I mean it’s like they’re going to mess Londoners around until the Olympic weeks and then they’ll go for a breakdown free period by throwing our money at the problems in bucket loads. There was a great article in the Evening Standard where some TFL lackey mused about the ‘possibility’ that some customers (we’re not customers we are passengers!) MAY HAVE BEEN overcharged. So now they say they will allow us to check our journeys online and see where we’ve been ripped off. I wonder how many people will be able to backtrack their weekly travels with pinpoint accuracy plus how do you prove you were overcharged? And try to imagine how this will work during the Olympic cattle train period. Hm.

But London is full of other activity right now as to give one example – the foodie season slides into view. You know those events with chefs and foreign food suppliers creating dishes no-one ever cooks at home but wishes they could. And if you ever needed edible proof of a financial divide in our London communities you’ll note the explosion in ‘boutique’ foodie shops that sell only olive oil or cheese happily trading in Kensington and Hampstead whereas Cricklewood and Dalston get a new Lidl. Various food festivals are scheduled for parks and exhibition centres giving a slight lie to the ‘recession’ theory. By that I mean there is of course those who are ‘recession’ free. I think these are the same people who seem to be able to afford the ever insanely spiralling housing costs. Is it me but never a week goes by now where I don’t see huge demolition sites popping up across London all carrying artists drawings of ‘a new selection of fine apartments’. They are cramming these places into every nook and cranny they can. And the average prices all start from £850,000. I noted at least four in town where the starting prices were £1.5 million! Huh? I guess London isn’t doing a badly as I thought. But where is this kind of money coming from? It must be from the same folk who buy wind dried Bolivian Llama cheese with pistachios and vintage pear brandy.

The food styles as ever usher in the latest fads – and the new ‘hookah’ shisha cafes seem to be fitfully springing up everywhere but I get the sense they just won’t last. The food is secondary to the sitting there blowing bubbles out of a table lamp as far as I can see. A new one opened up recently in my area (we already have one) and it just looks tacky and slightly seedy. All the cafés interior lights are red for some odd reason giving the customers the appearance of sitting in the recreation of a womb or a nuclear submarine during an emergency dive. There’s a huge flickering TV that no-one seems to be looking at. And the music is that curious thudding Arabic meets disco style that screams how trendy and cosmopolitan our patrons are. This ignores the fact that they are killing themselves with a highly carcogenic substance as they puff away like beagles on acid. But they are clearly trend setters. On the Edgware Road I understand it as it is officially part of the Gulf States up there. But in most other places it just looks vaguely out of place. And they all seem to have a temporary air. There is something vaguely inevitable about it. I give my new local one about three months. Style eh?

Finally the papers are full of it. It really is strike season in London with a vengeance. Almost every Transport group is faced with demands for more money from its staff (the Olympic effect) plus other obscure groups are now getting in on the act. My favourite group being the Traffic Wardens. These guys (who I personally can’t stand) are I understand badly paid as they gleefully extort money with official sanction from all London councils.

I know they are people and they are only following orders and I know they have targets to hit. BUT. No-one likes them and it’s not just a London thing. And it would be ironic if they went on strike. Because people still wouldn’t like them! Even though, we might get some relief from the extortionate parking charges that are now a staple of every London Borough. The sad fact however is that when the strike ends the Council will just charge motorists even more to make up their losses (see Camden Council the biggest bunch of hypocrites on the planet) Like many London Councils they have a ‘green agenda’. This involves ripping off motorists, lying about it, er that’s it. But hey ho that’s how the cookie crumbles nowadays. And no matter how ludicrous the charges get (I personally pay more for my residents parking permit than I do for my car tax!!!) We have no choice. No car means tons of inconvenience and a loss of personal freedom for thousands of us. But do Londoners get upset. Yes they do. Will it ever change? No.It’s a London thing.

Londoner’s Life 29 – by Phil Ryan

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Londoner’s Life 29 – By Phil Ryan

Boris won. Ken lost. So that’s the Mayoral nonsense out of the way. I popped into my local church and put my cross in the boxes. Curious really, a kind of religious voting experience. But it was probably a futile gesture as nothing much will change. Everything will stay expensive. Nothing will get cheaper. And the weirdo fringe candidates like the BNP and Liberal Democrats attracted hardly any support in the end. So what was the point of them all? It was Boris vs Ken. And think of all the money they both wasted. But hey that’s democracy so I guess I shouldn’t complain. In London we seem to lead the way in fairness and openness. That is unless of course you’re trying to get into the country via Heathrow. Yes London’s premier airport is leading the world now in queues. It’s our Olympic year and London is saying welcome and come on in. You’ve flown for a few hours and now as a welcoming exercise we’d like you to stand in line for three more tedious hours and shuffle along like drugged penguins. Our staff have all been employed only if they are miserable and intolerant. Make any kind of fuss – even slightly raise your voice and miraculously we have loads of staff to escort you to an interrogation room. Hm. And I love our chip and pin type passports with their hi tec machines plus their human components. Last month I flew back from France. Confidently headed for the chipped passport gates but before I got there a very kind lady stopped me and explained how to use them. Hm.

Isn’t the point being that it’s a machine with clear instructions. So I listened to her briefly and her two colleagues who came across to assist her! I didn’t want to seem rude so instead of putting my passport on the reader I politely let them waste five minutes of my time and then I did what I was intending all along. I put my passport on the reader and looked at the camera thing. The gates opened and I ran for the Heathrow Express. Over manning or what? Meanwhile the other queue snaked back out of the corridor. Welcome to London.

My favourite new bit of over hyping Olympic nonsense was the pure London moment when the army went to Bow to put missiles onto the roofs of tower blocks to find many already had them. Just kidding! But seriously the kids are more armed than the army round that way. Pity the terrorist who wanders into Bow, he’s done for. Personally I think it’s a scam by Barratt’s Homes or even the Government. I mean imagine if they do shoot down a plane. Where does it crash exactly? Bow or Canning Town somewhere. It’s a regeneration project essentially dressed up as security. But we lurch closer to the joy of the Olympics with each passing week. My most chilling moment was watching some bland nerk from Transport for London (TFL) colloquially known as Totally ********* London. He stood in front of the front of a station and calmly asserted that there would be 3 million more tube passengers using the system EVERY DAY during the Olympics. What? Have any of them actually been on the tube? It is going to be a nightmare. But then only a London official could make the following statement. He went on to say that today they were launching a poster campaign and get this ‘encouraging Londoner’s to find different ways to get to work’. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh. Different ways? What Hot Air balloons, jet packs, levitation. How about roller skates? It’s like they’ve collectively all dropped some acid. They have abandoned any grasp on reality. But hey ho! This is London and TFL and anything is possible apparently. Come the games it’s essentially going to be the world’s largest and sweatiest mobile game of Twister!

But it’s not all bad news. It’s the Queens Diamond Jubilee celebration soon (god bless her). A procession of golden boats and pageantry and an opportunity for street parties. So here in London it’s a chance for another holiday as remember its bank holiday season. Every other week seems to be a holiday. Which on the one hand is great. On the other the train companies calmly make every weekend a train free zone. And from what I see on some of the weekend jubilee celebrations the train companies will do their level best to stop you getting there. No wonder Londoners get so resigned to their travelling fate. However at my local London Overground station when I head for the platform the staff now excitedly tell me we have trains honestly lots of them look go and see! It’s quite touching in a way.

Finally trend news moment. It’s now the complete rise of the east with the Sushi places I’ve mentioned before. But now I see a blossoming undercurrent of new British themed gastro pubs or ‘eating rooms’ as they trendily call themselves. It’s suddenly organic sausages and Kent potatoes and gravy. And whilst I cautiously welcome this type of place (all very 50’s in decor but British 50’s mind you so coooool) again the prices are very scary. I went to a new one plugged in the Evening Standard and paid eighteen pounds for some chops. Not very recession friendly. Conversely I notice most of them are signed up to that Taste Card company (as am I) Discount food seems the only way they can get people in at the start of the week. Remember folks it’s a double dip recession so watch those pennies. And choose carefully. Although is it stopping us going out to these places? Are people baulking at the prices? No not really. It’s a London thing.

Londoner’s Life 28 – By Phil Ryan

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Londoner’s Life 28 – By Phil Ryan
Well its Marathon week so the news has been full of people pounding the streets for various good causes. And despite the goodwill towards them the London fight back against charity Chuggers seems well and truly under way. Quite a few London councils are actually banning them and I’m with them. To me the most worrying aspect is people (dumb people) who gaily hand over their bank details to some smiling young person who they’ve never met in the middle of the street. Hello? Security issue? I guess a picture of a beagle having a fag makes people put their brains in neutral. But to be honest I know charities are suffering so they need every trick in the book they can use. And I know in a recession it’s difficult. Sadly the street hustler’s in bright tabards scenario is the worst one they use so I’ll be glad to see the back of them. And London does seem to be the charity capital of the universe somedays, especially in the centre of town. My strategy is to brightly smile at them and sweep past them at two hundred miles an hour. Alternatively if I’m bored I try to borrow money off them.
In my on-going investigations into the plethora of trendy new blocks popping up all over town I’ve come across so many that seem to be like outposts in hostile territory. I guess it’s part of the continuing gentrification process that is affecting places like Brixton as I recently mentioned. But some of the strangest I’ve come across are in parts of docklands. I found one gleaming tower ringed by low rise endless council blocks. It was weird. It stuck out like a sore thumb. It had shiny plate glass doors and a guy in a uniform complete with a peaked hat on the door. There were those two green shrubs in pots they always have and it looked like it had beamed down from a spaceship. God knows what the locals thought. Although I did notice a charming group of track suited wearing youngsters each with obligatory pit bull leaning on the little white wall outside the place. A lovely view to come home to for the new London designer block dwellers. And realistically gentrification of this particular area entirely predicated only on some kind of nuclear war. But it did point to a wider issue of how the developers are shoving their monstrosities in every odder places. The London Evening Standard is now full of pages advertising places such as Hendon Heights and Dollis Hill Point. Huh? The text is unbelievable. Desirable living? In Hendon which smells of death and misery. And Dollis Hill with the sound of gunfire and police sirens. I suppose on viewing you just have to close your eyes until you’re safely inside the building. Very desirable. Hm.
This week I found myself in Kingly Court off Carnaby Street at a TV series launch from Synced Films and I was amazed by the mix of fantastic shops and crazy designer outlets. So before the launch I had a nose around. My favourite place being a lovely shop called Best of British a place full of British designed products. The prices were actually reasonable much to my surprise. And the quality of their stuff was brilliant. Plus I found a great hat shop! ( I’m partial to Panama hats occasionally in summer but only when I’m in Europe and going to linen suited summer events) And again the prices were affordable. A very unusual thing in such a place in comparison to many other such designer malls. And the bars around the place were heaving. So much so that I realised I had again stumbled across the mad and on-going London phenomenon of going to a trendy bar but then standing outside it on the pavement. Odd eh? You pay over the top prices for drinks but never actually get to see the interior of the place you’re paying through the nose for. We have one in West Hampstead. People have to go past the standard guy on the door to get entry. But then re-appear to stand outside. I guess it’s a style thing.
Finally looking forwards it’s just a 100 days to the Olympics. So that’ll be a nightmare of overcrowded public transport, prices going up in in every bar and restaurant with ‘Olympic specials’ and a blizzard of PR puff pieces in every media outlet. I see a recent survey showed half of London doesn’t give a stuff about the Olympics. Surprise! But hey ho we’re stuck with it. As for me I’ll be travelling a lot during the games. The rest of the time I’ll be working away at home in peace. It’s all about planning you could say. So let the nightmare commence. But do any of us care? No not really. It’s a London thing.

Londoner’s Life 27 – by Phil Ryan

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Well the last weeks in London have been characterized by terrible weather. A huge disappointment for London retailers when everybody went away on Holiday for Easter and of course the ever pointless Mayoral elections. My favourite little story however was how much Oyster Cards steal people’s money. It’s incredible, a po faced TFL official blamed customers inability to touch in and out correctly! But then when you start looking into it because we are so trusting we all assume even when we do ‘correctly’ touch in and out the right money will be taken. WRONG. It’s a bit of a lottery apparently. There were thousands of tweets and emails with various folks pointing out that they had random sums (almost all large) swiped from them (no pun intended) It seems you have to check your travel history. The best way is to set up an online account and then track each journey – how very convenient. But the sums erroneously taken head into the tens of millions which is staggering. System error kept cropping up from various commentators. So now we travellers must understand that the beep doesn’t mean the money we expect has been taken. It probably means some money or some amount has been taken.
So now you’ve been told.
The current dip in the housing market is being written off as spring related. But in truth apart from the mortgage companies making it virtually impossible for young Londoners to get any money from them the prices continue to rise. HUH? How does this work exactly. Every month a new ghastly London tower block – sorry – designer apartment complex pops up with a fancy marketing brochure and is apparently snapped up. By who exactly? Well it’s more bad news I’m afraid. The rental sector is now easy pickings for rich non UK-based individuals and companies who are cash rich and able to negotiate block deals. They see rental as an easy way to hide and store their money. It’s a better bet than lousy interest rate banks and savings companies. And of course it just keeps rents artificially high and secondly shuts out local people from living and buying in their own areas. So when you look at a block where a few people have paid staggering sums for some concrete and glass designer shoe box the chances are that most of the block was already purchased at a knock down rate. Building companies like the deal as they often sell ‘off plan’ ie they draw up plans – sell the idea to rich foreign backers – and then use their money to actually build their latest blight on the landscape. No one builds houses anymore. Where’s the profit? Where’s the funding going to come from.
Hm.
On a cynical but weary London note I see that the citizens of Brixton are complaining of the rampant gentrification of their area. Locals are watching as their manor is slowly overpricing itself. And pushing them out. Of course the local Council love it. They get rid of the people in the once poorer troublesome areas and their folk. They can overpriced the Council Tax as houses and flats jump into higher tax bands. My favourite comment was from one guy who went into what used to be his local café and was offered bruschetta and olives! Poor sod was looking for egg and chips but now it was very ouef a la frites at £10.95 with hand brushed Brazilian honey rolls.
Right onto happy news of a sort. It’s coming up to a bumper year of London-based events. So Londoners can effectively play night and day for many months. The Queens Jubilee is the first of many events designed to promote Great Britain PLC (a minor division of the Qatari Investment Corporation) and thousands are supposedly flocking in to see the river pageant and take part in the street parties. Then comes the biggest corporate event of the decade. The Olympic Games (four tickets available to Londoners) will spin-off into endless Corporate junkets and promotions. I mean to say the food sponsor is McDonalds! Irony or what. Who’s in charge of customer relations Robert Mugabe? But it does mean London will see some incredible sights so we have to try to take a small crumb of comfort from that. I’m told the West End theatres are dreading the time – but I think locals will go to the theatre (if prices drop below those affordable only by having the income of an oil millionaire) So lots to look forward to.
And finally on trends. We’ve seen the Sushi restaurants, the tiny dogs and the tiny car invasion. But now we have the discount card and promotion explosion. London seems to be awash with ‘offers’. Every newspaper in town now has its own loyalty reward card – and the offers brigade are growing like wildfire from Groupon, Wowcher, Taste Card, Wedge Card (this one the only genuinely decent one) But it seems our capital is full of 50% or get one buy two type offers. I’d hate to run a small business in this new half price landscape. You have to join in or get left behind it seems. My local restaurants all participate in various schemes. So now locals go in and shamefacedly push their cards and coupons across the table. But times is hard and every penny counts. And do the people need to save? Yes they blooming do. So we all hunt for bargains wherever we can. And does it make us feel awkward. Yes it does. But do we care? No not really. It’s a London thing.

 

Londoner's Life – By Phil Ryan

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Londoner’s Life 26 – By Phil Ryan
Yes Spring is here and so are another two hundred Sushi restaurants BUT the bigger London trend is the ballooning amount of Shisha Restaurants/Cafes. It’s slightly strange now seeing people sitting puffing away like goldfish on acid as they stare silently like cattle at their colleagues. The interesting twist to this is the latest news on how harmful it actually is. Many people are unaware of the health risks from smoking the flavoured tobacco, which can be as damaging as cigarettes if not more so, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) have now said. The number of cafes offering “shisha” tobacco pipes has risen 210% since the smoking ban came into force, a leading cancer charity has warned. Weird huh. It smells so nice and seems so exotic but although it looks harmless enough it actually kills you. Quicker than cigarettes. So next time you feel the urge to look up to the minute and multi international give the shisha a miss and opt for the baklava. The Arab spring here clearly dominated by people coughing their lungs up! On a completely unrelated but still medical note how about the news that some London markets have been selling a funky looking new bracelet made of Jequirity Beans which are a kind or red and black pattern looking beads on a string bracelet. The trouble is they poison you. Yup I’m not kidding it turns out they contain a deadly toxin that is absorbed into the skin. Apparently it doesn’t take much of the toxin either. You couldn’t make it up could you? The London Ambulance service have sent out warnings to trading and standards offices across the capital. I suppose it’s one way of keeping the tourist numbers down.
Meanwhile us Londoners have been bracing ourselves for more Olympic nonsense with the news that some London boroughs are doubling or even quadrupling parking fines in quote ‘sensitive areas’. After Westminster Council’s parking fiasco and collapse but final strike at locals by painting miles of double yellow lines everywhere (despite promising they wouldn’t limit parking) it seems that Councils are really determined to destroy as many London small shops and restaurants as they can. Here in my own area the local Council have ignored the dying traders calls for assistance by effectively tightening the noose of over- zealous parking controls ie free money for them based on flogging us our own road space back. Sneakily they’ve put the prices up without mentioning it and they’ve extended the restricted hours near shops. Plus we don’t have the occasional traffic warden (sorry Parking control assistant sheesh!) No we have hordes of ten or more in gangs. I think the collective noun is a misery of traffic wardens. And of course with the so called Zil Lanes jamming up London during the Olympics we can look forward to the worst traffic issues in living memory. I’m off out of it. Really I have my flights booked. And on my last Olympic point the debacle about Legacy rumbles on. What will the Olympics leave Londoners? Well I can tell you. More super rich property developers. A giant shopping Centre. Er that’s it. Oh yes of course I was forgetting all of this funded by London tax payers for the past years. But at least Lord Coe and the cronies will all do well.
My favourite new topic is the price in London of theatre tickets. I love the theatre but it ain’t cheap. The average West End ticket is now above fifty quid it seems. And here’s a quick example of that. I wanted to see a show at a well known theatre and happily I found a coupon in the Metro newspaper – a two for one offer. So I called them up and found that it came with various restrictions one being that on weekend performances (when I wanted to go – the two for one offer applied only to the £69 seats – yes think about that THE £69 seats) Still I did get a good deal I guess but what? I still paid over £35 plus for a ticket. And don’t get me started on the old comedians well-worn routine about the price of food and drink in theatres. Now whenever I go I see it’s like a well dressed picnic. With savvy Londoners having bulging pockets where they sneak stuff in. Sadly it spoils the cut of a suit or a dress (if you like to dress up a bit) but it makes economic sense if not fashion sense.
Finally I leave you with the opening news of London’s newest Airport. London Southend. Yes you heard me. Southend that place about an hour and a half outside of London or two hours by car. It seems we’re now calling any new airport London. Just like London (Cambridge) Stansted or London (Brighton) Gatwick. The train ticket to get to these London airports are now often higher than the actual plane ticket I kid you not. The London Heathrow Express stands out as the biggest rip off at £19.00 for a 15 minute journey. And my favourite bit. They have a First Class section! Really. 15 minutes of First Class travel how pathetic do you have to be to take that option. I mean just how good can that experience actually be. (I recently went to Dundee First Class – that was 6 hours going at no miles an hour – then you see the difference plus you get free stuff – Although as you pay a lot more it’s not technically free really) Still I guess at least you get there eventually. So now Londoners can whiz up to Southend and fly away from these polluted London streets. If they fancy the trek. But do Londoners worry about this sort of thing. No. Do they care that our airports aren’t in London. No not really. It’s a London thing.