why bother?

From the ever-wonderful BBC photo archive, illustrating an article about the government's energy saving schemes:

Here's a tip: If there's nothing on the two front rings of your hob, why not try turning them off?

You're not going to see many flyers more offensive than this I wouldn't have thought

Like a twee Nathan Barley.

Once I've opened up the R'n'B'n'B (the world's first bed and breakfast aimed specifically at R'n'B fans), and maybe an R'n'B'n'Q (same but for DIY), and possibly started marketing R'n'B'n'H (fags), I think my next project will be Satay Beautiful - a Chinese restaurant for Manics fans.

Not to be confused with this. Or this. Shame they're not covers really.

On Today this morning, one of the codgers (Humphrys? Naughtie? Could even have been Stourton. If it's not Sarah Montague or floundering new-boy Evan Davis I don't notice) was reading out some football news.

He had three names to say and managed mispronounce and incorrectly stress all three.

He pronounced Robinho "Rob-Eno".

Berbatov became "Ber-BAT-off".

I began to wonder if he was taking the piss when he pronounced the name of the out-going West Ham manager as Alan "Cur-BISH-ley". Come on! It's hardly an exotic surname.

Ice cream van-appropriate rap lyrics:

1. "I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one"

Also, who knew his first name was Alan? Regardless, it's still Mr Whippy to you, son.

For a long time I've wanted a shed. I'd happily live in the little flower-selling shed outside High-and-Is tube station, for example.

Gas heater. Battery operated radio. Hurricane lamp. What more does one need?

Well, anyway, sheds are over. It's all about railway arches now.

I'd never even dared dream I'd some day have my own railway arch but for the next couple of months we have access to two of them! Our landlord is taking over our garage as an office for his property company and while he builds us a new garage he's given us the keys for the railway arches at the back of our building. AMAZING!

One of them is now full of our crap. The other one is completely empty, but does have this cryptic inscription on the wall ...

Which is nice.

Further to plotting the transit time of pop-culture with regard to High Heels and Low Lifes, there's an article on the BBC website today about "emos". It comes five years after NME ran a Johnny-come-lately special issue about emo (back in the days when "emo" was an adjective, not a noun) towards the end of 2003, and, I'd guess twenty years since the name was invented by disparaging hardcore fans.

Twenty years! That's got to be some sort of record. That's like the BBC cottoning on to Merseybeat in the mid eighties.

I was sat next to Kate Hoey, rebel Labour MP for Vauxhall and filthy Boris collaborator, on the train today. A little while later Frank Field, Labour MP for Birkenhead - not be confused with Frank's Field (of Dreams) - came and joined her.

Neither of them said much of interest.

Frank Field's been doing some reading and will forward the email to you when he gets to his office.

Kate Hoey's not sure which way to vote on the Human Fertility and Embryology bill and can't decide whether to take a London.gov.uk email address. She doesn't want a cup of tea. She'll drink it seeing as how you've already got it, though. And she wouldn't mind a bit of her intern's Kit Kat.

Kate's intern I found fairly depressing. 21 years old, engaged to a man in his mid-thirties ("I'll be 22 when we get married though" - as old as *time itself*, then), law student, whole life planned out. Knows where she wants to live when she becomes a barrister and which school she wants her kids to go to when she has them ("the best private school in Cheshire").

Not sure if I was depressed for her or for me. But I'd be willing to take a guess.

Hope none of the above read this - especially the intern. I am over-stepping the fine-line between citizen journalist and cunt, no doubt about it.

Another Sunday night, another dreadful film on BBC1. Tonight it's 2001's High Heels and Low Lifes, a British chick-flick about gangsters. Or a British gangster movie about chicks. Either way it's embarrassing. The worst bits of those, the two worst genres, strung together.

The Actor Kevin Eldon is in it. And Danny Dire (sorry, Dyer). And that guy who says "This week I will mostly be eating..." in The Fast Show. Oh, and Junior Simpson as an unconvincing night club owner.

On the plus side, there was just a bit filmed in Hoxton Square. It was before the building with Miso in was there. There used to be a bench around the big tree in the square. I like that tree. It'd be worse with a bench. These have been the most interesting details of the film so far.

Ooh, and now they're stood on the old rail bridge over Old Street at Kingsland Road, on the old station platform. That's gone now too, replaced by a new bridge as part of the East London Line extension programme.

I do sort of wish I lived in the world of this film. It's one of those films where people seem to go to work for about 20 minutes a day.

But I remember 2001 and except in specific aspects of Shoreditch gentrification it was no more like this film than 2008 is.

This is obscene. Ryan Ellis, an eleven year old, shouldn't be setting himself weight-loss targets. He's eleven! I'm not usually one to get upset about kids growing up too quickly nowadays - the comparison always seemed a bit specious anyway. More quickly than when? The days of Victorian child-labour? But the idea that society is now not only projecting body-image issues onto children, but telling them it's their responsibility to address their obesigenic lifestyles and whip their fat little bodies into shape I find horrifying.

And as an aside, this is a question of body-image. Despite scare stories being put about to the effect that this generation will die younger than its parents, there's no actual evidence for that; life-expectancy both at birth and at 65 continues to rise.

Why you might ask, is the olympic torch passing through London in an eastward direction? Given it was lit in Greece and has to get to Beijing, if anything it would be going through London in a westward direction. The answer is that it's going a completely mental zig-zag route.

And it's already been to Beijing, for fuck's sake!

Really, what is the point?

Flash-mobbing: so over.

Taking off your trousers: timeless.

Ain't no party like an Adam and Steffi party: Friday night in, draining a faulty washing machine and watching Roland Rat's 50 greatest pop stars on The Hits.

No, you just have to wait. For it to cool down before you liquidise it, specifically.

I made soup on so-called "good" Friday and I was in a hurry to go out so I skipped the advised 15 minutes cooling time after it finished cooking and dived straight in with the old Morphy Richards 48471 hand blender.

It's now one whole week later and I've still got little burns spattered up my wrists and forearms where the piping hot soup splashed on me. What an idiot.

On my way home at the end of the evening - some time around 5am, I believe - I slipped on a snow-wet curb stone and gashed my shin. That's still in evidence too.


Even so, as stigmata go, my Easter injuries made for a pretty weak set.

Places I could've spent Holy Saturday (not to be confused with Easter Saturday) other than bed:

• Bermuda Trade Park, Nuneaton
  
• Merry Hill Retail Park, Dudley
  
• Trinity Retail Park, Bolton
  
• Buywell Shopping Centre, Wetherby

These were my favourites names from the locations listed on the electronics store flyer I've been reading.

There are no photographs of any of these retail parks on Flickr or Google Images. The closest I got was this animated GIF from a commercial estate agent's website:

I don't imagine it's intentional but it makes the point neatly: the places interchange and have no individual identity.

That much is easy. Bemoaning retail parks - especially ones with transparent names like "Buywell" - as undifferentiated architectural and spiritual wastelands doesn't take a great deal of insight. I think the more interesting thing is precisely the fact that there are no photographs of these places. I think I might take some. There must be something going on there. The trick will be to avoid taking photos that say over and over again until you want to stave my smug face in "there but by the grace of our sophisticated urban tastes, our boutique shopping and our farmers' markets go we all". Apart from anything else ain't none of us buying no hand-reared organic flat screen TVs from Borough market.


I've also enjoyed reading the flyer for a computer game store. They have a special offer on a computer game officially endorsed by Pippa Funnel ("Pippa Funnell: Ranch Rescue"). You know, Pippa Funnell "the world class equestrian sportswoman". Here are her other computer games:

• Pippa Funnell: Stable Adventure
  
• Pippa Funnell: The Stud Farm Inheritance
  
• Pippa Funnell Takes the Reins
  
• Pippa Funnell 3: The Golden Stirrups Challenge (also known as 'Horsez')
  
• Pippa Funnell 4: Secrets of the Ranch.

All of these names are brilliant in their own way. The reassuringly unexciting promise of a "stable adventure" is a particular favourite though. It reminds me of a porn video I once saw on sale in a newsagent with a sexy policewoman on the front. It promised "uniform sex". Nice and even. No surprises.

The good folks at Hackney Museum have included the photo of mine above in their exhibition about shops in Hackney.

Probably not worth going just for that, because it's just part of a rolling slide show, so I'm guessing it's on show briefly and infrequently. Plus you can see it here anyway.

I've not been yet - blew out the private view last night in favour of drinking heavily with my soon-to-be-former colleagues instead. Suspect that the private view wouldn't have left me hungover, tired and listless all day today but nevermind.

Even so it sounds like an interesting exhibition and it's free (isn't it brilliant how museums are free in Britain?) so if you live in Hackney go and have a look. Just not on Monday - it's closed on bank holidays (which isn't brilliant).

Methane found on distant world

I'm sure it's very important, methane's an organic compound, blah blah blah.

But it's not exactly "lots of diamonds found on distant world" is it?

There's a woman on BBC3's Freaky Eaters tonight who eats "two or three loaves a week". I easily get through that much bread. Admittedly she eats nothing else. No meat. No fruit. No veg. But even so.

How hilarious I thought it was when I saw that Duffy's album is called Rockferry.

I bet she doesn't know Rock Ferry is a shit-hole near Birkenhead full of trackie-bottoms-tucked-in-socks scalls.

She must have a different, more poetic, place in mind, I assumed.

So I checked.

And no, the album actually is about Rock Ferry on Merseyside.

Which is actually kind of awesome of her. Well done Duffy, for that if nothing else.

Looking through pictures of Rock Ferry on Flickr made me want to move back to Merseyside. Which is weird because since getting back from New York I've been loving London more than ever.

And especially weird because the Rock Ferry stop on the Merseyrail network, through which I've trundled many a time without ever even entertaining the thought of getting off, is all kinds of grim and I've always felt that was all the Rock Ferry I needed in my life.

(Ellesmere Port - bottom right. Brap brap brap)