Category Archives: Culture

Londoners Life 6 by Phil Ryan

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Londoners Life 6 – by Phil Ryan

I see the London spirit of Christmas is unrolling now. Which brings me to the real growing spirit of Christmas. Spirit. You suddenly can’t move at the moment in London for drunks. It’s not just me. Even the local paper round here commented on it. Maybe it’s the coming second recession? Getting on the tube on a Friday night after eleven nowadays is like getting inside a can of Fosters with seats. You just breathe in and you’re intoxicated. And take a look at Leicester Square at 12.00ish on a Saturday. It looks like a rehearsal for a Zombie movie. Shuffling shambling weirdos staggering down every side street. Like children’s puppets on Calpol. Admittedly some are the Hare Krishnas but you can usually spot them by the drummer. And as far as I know they don’t drink. Well not when on duty. I often try to imagine the nightly parade up at Krishna Head quarters. Right lads were going out now. Keep a good formation. Plenty of Hare hare’s. Flog those CDs like your life depends on it. Vishnu you were off time last night. Get it together lad! It’s up on the first syllable and down on the next. The rest of you try and look blissed out of your faces. You know the enlightened look. And keep that constant shuffle going. But I digress.

Seriously the drink issue in London is not hard to see. It’s like the 11.30 guy. You see him every weekend. Unconscious on the Circle Line. A line of drool slowly escaping from one side of his mouth. He’s slumped in his usual I’ve got no idea who or where I am position. His snores barely audible. He’s always in a crumpled grey suit. His tie way off at an angle. He’s probably missed his stop four times. But he gets home. Eventually. Somehow. A bit like pigeons I suppose. Some instinct. A navigation device provided by nature. But as a drunk he has to overcome one huge and deadly hurdle. A true London hazard. The hot dog guys.

These charming creatures are usually shifty looking murderer lookalikes and dress in the oddest uniform. Beanie woolly hat. Leather jacket. Jogging Bottoms. And nameless training shoes. They all smoke. Furtively. Most are unshaven and have that curious blue stubble face like a cartoon. Presumably it all comes as part of their training package. Just part of The Hot Dog University of London’s student body elite. Make no mistake. This is food for drunks. But woe betide the innocent tourist they entrap. Their next view of London will be gazing down one of our finest toilet bowls. A view of their hotel they really weren’t expecting. But as I say it’s the drunks who must be their main prey. You’d have to be drunk to be lured into buying one. The noisy sizzling. The heady aroma of onions and rat urine drifting like an unheavenly cloud on the breeze. The hot dogs or unidentified waste product as they’re better known in Environmental Health circles all soaking in the year old grease (as they cook for the ninetieth time). Only the completely inebriated cannot resist. Wily Londoners know this. Drunken ones flock like wasps round a jam jar. And you can often see where after consuming one they have charmingly decided to eject it! I believe the vernacular has it as pavement pizza. Still it beats an enema.
But with the sudden explosion in health food shop/cafes in London that’s often taken care of for you. London seems to have suddenly stealthily filled up with little trendy looking delicatessens on every off high street location. All boasting a small café area inside. You can’t miss them. Everything’s wholemeal. Staff included. And they all smell like an old stable. The shops and cafes I mean not the staff. Usually a cute little bell tinkles when you warily step inside. Like an old fashioned shop. Nice touch. But beware. Smiley young staff in forest green looking aprons stand about trying not to burst out laughing when you ask the price of a titchy jar of Andulisian honey. Trust me. Don’t ask. It’s all pricey beyond belief. But kind of nice in a trendy sort of I have too much money sort of way. I’m sure it all tastes very nice. I’m thinking of applying for a loan this week to buy some Cornish artisan otter cheese and two loaves of Kentish granary and grit bread. Don’t get me wrong I hate supermarkets. It’s just this lot are the other extreme. Food as fashion and a statement about you. Honestly. They don’t seem to sell normal food. Even when you sit down for a cup of tea to get over the shock it’s always Burmese green tea or burlap, wood and dandelion infusions whilst the cakes look like Buffalo excretions dusted with Bear excretions. It’s all about grains. Apparently. Nuts. Seeds. Earth. Natural roughage. Hence the free enema point from earlier. This stuff passes through you quicker than the time a Camden traffic warden takes to ticket a disabled person’s car. But it’s healthy I’m told. Smaller independent shops (which I’m all for) selling locally sourced produce. Look around. They’re everywhere now. And do we buy it. Yes of course we do. It’s a London thing.

Londoners Life 5 by Phil Ryan

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Londoners Life 5 – By Phil Ryan

Winter is here in London. It’s official. The clothes say it all. And right now you can clearly see the London tribes. Clear and defined. In cloth, leather and appliqué. The Hoxton and Camdenite trendies. The monied Sloane’s of Kensington. The shady street dealers of Shepherds Bush. From the ludicrously large Fur Trapper hats and skinny jeans, to the silver and gold Puffa jackets plus obligatory bling. The thigh length Cossack boots to the new Paul Smith stripy scarves. Postcodes struck in wool and leather and nylon as clearly as an assay mark. A friend once remarked that the onward march of the chain clothing store would eventually destroy all individuality in style terms. But be that as it may, just like the swallows flying south each year off to Capistrano following nature’s imperative, the winter looks are as clearly and definitively ingrained at a genetic London borough by borough level.

In Whitechapel it’s the portly types in the Primark Gangster collection crossed with JD sports sale items. In Chelsea it’s the slim model like folk in black Yves St Laurent mixed with Yamamoto. London brands its citizens by fashion and by income so very clearly at this time of year. I’m surprised it’s not on their passports – a second picture of them in full seasonal look. Oh the customs officer would say peering at the small image of them dressed head to toe in Burberry check. You’re from Stratford. Through you go.

And as certain as the winter fashions the other London winter signs are gathering pace. The chestnut sellers are back from wherever they go in the warmer weather. You’ll find them at every piazza or open space. Traditional London winter prices at about 90 pence per charcoal blackened cremated chestnut. Or to translate – £3.00 for three grudging half mouthfuls once you’ve discarded the charcoal and eaten the non burnt bits. And of course the ever perennial pre-seasonal dodgy perfume sellers. Honest guvnor’ this Calvin Klein is genuine. Just a litre for a tenner. The crowds swarming round them like hyperactive bumble bees on Ketamine. Sadly without the sense of your average drone. Stolen or not – no respectable crook is going to give four bottles of Chanel no 5 away for nothing. So come Christmas they’ll watch in baffled dismay as poor Auntie Vi’s face falls off into her soup or the smell from the bottle attracts Zombies from as far away as Peru seeking dead flesh. A little bit of Del boy mixed with Jeffrey Dahmer. Typical. You just can’t trust criminals eh?

But London’s street people are changing. The old perennials giving way to more foreign imports. From Romanian pick pocket gangs to increasingly rabid street preachers. I saw two the other day on opposite sides of the street. One a Yemeni Muslim the other an American Christian Evangelist. Both completely barking mad. Yelling weird slogans about saving us all. Finding our way to their truth. My immediate thought being what and turn into you two nut jobs?

Just like my last column I’m sure I could be missing something here though. Did they have a spiritual truth? But the answer is in fact no. I’m just not convinced my path to eternal salvation starts outside the Car Phone warehouse. With people unburdened by the pressure of sanity. Although, if it has to start somewhere for me, there has to be cakes. And in London right now there’s a new cake shop explosion. I of course refer to the new muffin places. Time was you’d be lucky to get a chocolate one. Now there’s a plethora of new places offering every type you could think of. I saw Passion Fruit and Peanut butter muffins the other day. Although, this could have just been the first day for the new guy. He’s off the medication now and his doctors are hopeful he’ll soon be able to live a normal life. Muffins I ask you. A new fashion. Who’d have thought it? £4.00 a pop or £1.50 per tiny micro mouthful. But I’ve been to five separate boroughs recently and they’ve all got these trendy looking new tea rooms. Or Café’s de The as they like to poncingly call themselves. It’s a studied look. Coolness and kitsch in one. Brushed Oak and steel benches next to pictures of polka dot pinnies and old posters of apple cheeked children at a gas stove.

Cake stands with frilly lace overhangings next to a sleek black ipod docking station. Earl Grey tea caddies next to Red Bull cans or those weird energy drinks you’ve never heard of with extract of ginko root and killer whale ears. And the people who run them? All the owners all look like successful architects with a hint of mental illness. The women. Prada meets a lady factory worker from the fifties. And the men all look like Bertie Wooster meets Karl Lagerfeld via Oxfam. The rest of the staff doe eyed eastern European beauties working for the minimum wage. Of course the word home-made figures prominently everywhere. As does organic. As do eye watering prices. But hey ho. It’s cute. It’s retro. It’s wildly overpriced. But do we mind? No. It’s a London thing.

Catch 21 Productions political interview: Zac Goldsmith

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Here at Frost we think that great minds think alike. Which is why we were excited to come across Catch 21 productions. Catch 21 is a charitable production company which produces videos, events and programmes to help engage young people with politics www.catch21.co.uk Something Frost is also trying to do.

They recently interviewed a number of MPs that were elected this year. One of those was Zac Goldsmith MP. Frost loves what they are doing and thinks that you should watch the video below.

http://www.catch21.co.uk/2010/11/new-mpinions-zac-goldsmith-mp

Catherine Balavage

Londoners Life 4 by Phil Ryan

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Londoners Life 4 – By Phil Ryan
It’s a given that in London you see odd things. City things. Things you don’t see say in the countryside. Urban things. And though they’ve been around a while I saw a thing in town just now that left me speechless. A large man. Standing on a main thoroughfare. Outside John Lewis. In a dayglo boiler suit. An almost radioactive lime green reflective material. The words Computer Sale written all over him. Up each leg. Along his arms. On his chest. On his back. And adding indignity to indignity. On the large sail like top hat he was wearing was an arrow. Pointing to presumably the place holding the computer sale. A human billboard. With a pocket thing. Full of leaflets.

Sadly my initial thought was what must the job interview be like? That said. Oh my god. Who came up with this idea? There used to be guys holding giant signs on poles. They were always listening to something on headphones. Presumably the words “don’t kill yourself” on a constant loop. But the pole was a tangible thing. It said I’m a signpost to the golf clearout. The guy has to hold me or I’ll fall down or blow away. But the suit sign phenomenon. A black hole for human dignity. A nadir in exploitation. It’s just a few steps away from children up chimneys isn’t it? Yes I’ve seen people in costumes before on the streets. There’s a party place near where I live. They do fancy dress. Fireworks. Novelty stuff. Every now and again there’ll be a guy in giant teddy bear costume outside holding a bunch of balloons and dancing around on the pavement. He waves to the cars. We toot our horns and wave back. He waves back. We all smile and feel a little better. Of course I could have this wrong and it could be some earnest protest about the exploitation of bears in circuses. Maybe the balloons are just symbolic. Maybe the party place hires out endangered bears. Perhaps the Giant teddy is begging us to help stop this. His little dance and wave actually blind fury as we smile and wave and drive on. He’s not waving he’s shaking his fists at us. Thoughtless swine. But I like his Teddy bear suit. It’s very nice. Friendly. Evocative of childhood. Whereas the dayglo guys just look frankly naff. And conjure up slavery and low wages. Damn I can’t stop thinking about that Teddy bear now. But as a Londoner my conscience is pricked about ten times every hour.
There’s the smiling young people with clip boards. Fresh faced. Innocent. Optimistic. Students I’m guessing. Saying hello. Giving you a thumbs up. They wear little tabards saying Christian Giving. Starving Children or Africa it’s awful isn’t it. Apparently it’s called chugging. Which is shorthand for charity mugging. They try and stiff you for two pounds a month or someone will die. And secretly they hint it’s your fault. Then there’s the misery tables. Usually the pasteboard ones you buy at B&Q to paper the downstairs lav. But now covered with pictures of beagles having a fag. Monkeys wearing makeup which I thought was quite cute until the earnest young woman put me straight. I gave her a quid. But one truly unique London thing is the anti regime tables. Solemn looking people holding books of people who have disappeared. Down with the nasty regime. They want you to sign a petition. I always do. But of course I can’t help thinking A) I’m not sure the nasty regime is going to be bothered by a petition.

 Especially from a load of concerned Londoners, as currently they’re happy killing people who probably need a bit more protection than a petition but the B is the more worrying. Maybe I’ve now upset the regime by getting involved. Plus now they’ve got my name. Sometimes my postcode. Maybe they’ve got Google Street map. These guys kill people. Uh oh. But that’s another issue for another time. I guess the point is that the streets of London are now covered in stuff. Year on year. People in your way. Stopping you getting where you are going. Don’t get me wrong it’s all generally good. Big Issue. Great. Salvation Army. Fantastic. Red Poppy appeal. Marvellous. But I have to say finally there is one group of London street people that just baffles me. The Hare Krishnas. Uh? A load (sorry make that four to six) of people in thin orange pyjamas shuffling along banging a drum slightly out of time (very annoying if you feel like grooving) and repeating themselves in a sing song voice. And always two of them who don’t have all the orange gear. I saw one the other day with the orange shirty thing but wearing leather bondage trousers covered in zips and high heels. His friend had the orange pyjama bottoms but was sporting a rather fetching pink Puffa jacket with the legend Street Fighter embroidered across it with matching Ugg boots. Clearly they were half krishnas. Not quite fully orange. Trendsetters if you will.

But be careful. If you catch their eye they’ll immediately stop and try and flog you a book with some bloke and a blue elephant on the front. Or sometimes a weird looking CD. So the pavements are filling up. But do we care? Really. Does it bother anyone honestly? No. It’s a London thing.

Animal Art de Jour – Monkeys and Mutant Rabbits {Art}

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It seems the world is going animal art crazy and the following two pieces are possibly the most unusual.

This giant passed out monkey is made entirely of flip flops. Built in Sao Paulo Brazin to celebrate the Pixel Show (an international art and design conference). Obviously if anything represents art then it’s a gigantic drunk monkey.

 

An if you’re looking for something to give you nightmares tonight then here it is…

Plush mutant rabbits by Zoe Williams. Not only does she trap the unusual weird little woodland creatures in frames, she also has a collection of mutant red peacocks and rams among other animals.

As far as possible, boycott the nasty 35 {Carl Packman}

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Imagine this: every day a big kid at your school takes the money your parent/carer gives you for a measly meal of chicken burger and chips and a can of cherry pop. You’re left asking your mate for a bite on their corned beef sandwich and a couple of crisps.

When you go home you’re asked how school was, to which you reply, in your nonchalant way, fine! The next question, intrusively, is: “…and how was your lunch?” Your only option, in order to save face, and those long dreaded conversations which end in the questioner calling the school, embarrassing, is to lie and say it was fine – even though you had none, and even if you had it would’ve been crap as your school employs a woman with 6 cats to make what might colloquially be called the food.

Imagine the next day that person who steals your food money says they have food for you, but you have to do errands for them. You ask what kind of errands. Their response is to get you to clean their shoes, and the shoes of all their friends, while someone who used to do your job watches you to make sure you do it right. After you’ve done that, they give you a small amount of food – an amount so small that it would take that person only 0.25 of a person’s food money, out of the 20 or 30 they steal from, to afford the food.

Imagine then the wage packet of your parent/carer halved because some people, in the city, started to fuck around, making money by giving someone else’s money to people who were earning 10 times less a year. Your parent/carer decided to continue giving you the same lunch money (on the naïve thought it went towards a decent cause – which was taken by the bully anyway – but the quality of your clothing diminished, your dinner became smaller and of worse quality, you had to move out of your flat near the trees to a flat near no trees, and your lasagne dish turned into Welsh rarebit with peperoni and pasta).

All the time, the bully at school supports your “austerity”, after all, they still get their labour (ie your lunch money) but you get less, and are, thus, less inclined to seek alternatives to the existence of opening your arse to the shaft of a bastard!

Well, believe me, this is what is happening with the 35 bosses of the “big companies” who think it would be a mistake for the chancellor to “water down” his budget, reducing half a million jobs in the public sector and possibly doing the same amount, perhaps more, to the private sector, in order to level national debt – something which has been a reality for-flipping-ever, and is nowhere near as rocky as was Canada, who in the nineties were 101% in debt of their gross domestic product (so, Ozzy Osborne can stop using them as an example).

Yup, we’re being shafted by the cuts, all of us, no matter what sector you are in; the chancellor is screwing you over. Oh, unless you are a loan shark – you’re making a killing!! And the bosses of 35 companies don’t mind, because they still buy your labour under value, still make tremendous amounts of cash, and you continue to live in your prison.

Hey, I don’t know about you, but I might take the only power I have this Christmas – how I love Christmas – and take my money elsewhere. Yup. I will not buy anything from those 35 companies mentioned here. Because if the government wants to screw us over, I want nice people to at least lend me their hearts. If they can’t do that, then fuck them.

Roz Savage and Zac Goldsmith launch anti-plastic campaign.

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When: 4th of November, 2010. 7pm

Where: American University, Richmond.

I was already anti-plastic before I went to hear this talk by Roz Savage and Zac Goldsmith. The event is by Greener Upon Thame’s, and Michael Glazebrook was on brilliant form. The videos I saw and the talks that I heard my anti plastic stance  tenfold. It is not a small issue. As well as bringing news of the launch of an anti-plastic campaign by Greener Upon Thames, with the help of  Zac Goldsmith and Roz Savage, Frost will be doing a series of articles of how you can be more environmentally conscious.

MP and  Pacific rower launch campaign to make Olympics plastic bag-free
Zac Goldsmith, MP, and ocean rower/ environmental campaigner Roz Savage have launched a campaign to make the Olympics 2012 plastic bag-free.
 
The duo are backing Greener Upon Thames and will unveil banners and bags, soon to be seen across London, declaring “London – shouldn’t we be plastic bag free?” The group fear that the Olympics could prompt the production of hundreds of thousands of promotional bags, which would be carried around the world, creating a global problem, and shaming the British capital.

The campaign, backed by politicians,  schools, more than 500 shops and thousands of London  residents, will call on the Government to rid the Olympic Park and the capital of  the polluting bags for the duration of the games to break the habits of millions of Londoners, and as a symbol  to the world.  
 
The move follows Roz’s latest – 8,000 mile – Pacific row, where she skirted the North Pacific Garbage Patch. This is an area of marine plastic pollution roughly twice the size of Texas, containing around 3.5 million tons of rubbish, including millions of plastic bags that kill animals and contaminate our food supply. 

Roz Savage has now rowed solo across much of the planet: she is the first woman to have rowed across  the  Pacific, adding to her 2005 solo crossing of the Atlantic. In 2011 she will be setting off to row the Indian Ocean before rowing the North Atlantic to return to the UK.

Roz   combines her epic adventures (she is one of the Top 20 Great British Adventurers) with raising  awareness of  the top environmental challenges facing the world today:  marine plastic  pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction. She is a United Nations  Climate Hero, a trained presenter for the Climate  Project, and an Athlete  Ambassador for 350.org.

Her Pacific row was a project of the Blue Frontier Campaign and she is an Ambassador for the BLUE Project. Her inspirational book, Rowing the Atlantic: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean, came out in   2009.

Richmond Park MP Zac Goldsmith is a former editor  of  The Ecologist  magazine and author of The Constant  Economy  (2009), which looks at some key environmental problems and  provides a  programme for action.
 
In 2005 he was invited  to oversee the Conservative Party’s Quality of Life Policy Group,  which helped develop the  party’s policies on issues ranging from  transport, housing and energy to food,  farming and the countryside. 
 
Zac supports Greener Upon Thames, the Richmond and Kingston anti-plastic-bag campaign which is organising these  two  events, with help from the American International University and Kingston University’s Sustainability Hub.

Zac and Roz will also address an audience at Kingston University at 7.00pm on Thursday 11th November.

Climbing the walls {Fitness}

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In my eternal search for a sport that I’ll enjoy and can keep me interested, this week I tried my hand at climbing. I don’t know at which point I thought it would be a good idea, but I definitely know the exact point I realised it was a bad idea. That point was half way up a wall in London’s Westway Centre attached only by a rope and gripping hand holds with my slowly slipping hands and weakening muscles.

 The instructor tied all the knots so that there was absolutely no chance of us falling to our deaths.

I have only good things to say about the centre itself, the facilities were spotless, comprehensive and vast. The instructor was very understanding and managed to stifle his laughing…mostly. We had one instructor between two of us and climbed and belayed (held the rope) in turn. The instructor tied all the knots so that there was absolutely no chance of us falling to our deaths. If you’re planning to have a go yourself…you’re very safe.

 If you’re thinking thoughts like “ooh, this must be how mountain goats feel” it means you’re not thinking about where your hands should be.

This didn’t stop three of our party from chickening out. I don’t judge them…climbing’s not for everyone. There are a few groups of people who probably wouldn’t become great climbers…the first is those who suffer from vertigo (I fall into this category). There’s one mantra that every vertigo suffer repeats when they’re at a significant height…“Don’t look down”. When you’re climbing, this isn’t an option as putting your feet in the right place is half the challenge. The second is the easily distracted (I fall into this category also). When you’re five meters off the ground, concentration is key. If you’re thinking thoughts like “ooh, this must be how mountain goats feel” it means you’re not thinking about where your hands should be.

Although I personally won’t be giving climbing another go, I heartily recommend it, especially if you don’t suffer from vertigo and a short concentration span. Where better to go that London’s Westway Climbing Centre.