A Day in the Downs

BEDFORD ROAD: Went for an epic 21k hike in the South Downs today from Seaford to Eastbourne. Yes, I could be a commando. Here are some photos:

Posts

A lighthouse (what else?)

Lightness and dark

Huts

Purty

Seven Sisters

Cliff

I Will Always Jihad You

BEDFORD ROAD: Now I really don't know what is funnier. That Whitney Houston is the most withdrawn entry in Osama Bin Laden's spank bank or that George Bush is engaged in a struggle with his svengali Karl Rove to see who can read the most books. A selection of Dubya's diversions (just the summer ones) can be found here .

Better Than Big Brother

OLD STREET: Now imagine what this would do for ratings. Can somebody leave a comment if they find it on YouTube.

Storm in a Teacup

BEDFORD ROAD: Cricket? You've got to love it, it's just a shame some people try so hard to fuck it up. I was completely behind Pakistan until yesterday afternoon's farcical hystronics. Okay so they tampered with the ball. Maybe - the evidence is yet to be seen but the umpire's word is, and must be, sacrosanct. (And doesn't the penalty, five runs and a replacement ball, seem somewhat ludicrous?) Couldn't they have just accepted the penalty and moved. When Kevin Pietersen, in the second or third test, was blatantly out, he didn't walk. It wasn't necessarily fair but nobody complained. It wasn't the done thing. And that decision cost Pakistan far more than five runs.

Now I understand Inzi doesn't want to get slurred as a cheat but everybody has done it more or less. Remember Mike Atherton? I think it was an Australian trick to rub the sugar from sucked lollies. Why does ball tampering all of a sudden have to become utterly taboo in the manner of chucking or massacring your wife's family? They made a mistake, they got caught, pay up, move on. As though Pakistani cricket can take the high moral ground? Remember Salim Malik?

I'm not saying Australians are above reproach, we're not, I just want people to move on and play the fucking game.

Things Not to Take on a Plane

BEDFORD ROAD: So after a couple of hours working I went out to pick up some groceries, drop some DVDs off and buy (and subsequently eat) too much dirty bird.

Now... what did I do last weekend? Friday night I cooked a key lime pie with too much lime juice, got outrageously drunk and Chris pashed some random Surrey girl in the offy. Saturday I went to see the Modigliani show at the Royal Academy and then to a cocktail party in Chiswick with Lisa and Greg.

Then I schlumped across town to Jaq and Libs housewarming party where I Jaq served her own cocktails. Want to know what the terrorists were planning to blow up the plane with? I've got a fair idea.

And on Sunday it was raining so I nixed my idea to watch the Demons on the Common and rented some videos: Walk the Line, Tsotsi and Miike's Audition.

paka

So Blue

BEDFORD ROAD: It's Tuesday night and I'm staying in to work on the french word for 'voyage' which, as Kate says, will make John Kinsella happy. But I'm feeling blue and I don't get a chance to try out my dashing new maroon shorts. I will get work done though. Now. And I'll tell you all about my weekend later.

Further

BEDFORD ROAD: Now I know the post below sounds fanboy and bitchy, and it is. But in the same vein, I was reading some dinky local rag this morning and work and came across a profile of some minor politician. Queried on the last film he saw, he replied The Magnificent Seven, his justification - he just loves Clint Eastwood. Sadly, if the Man with No Name was doing anything when Charles Bronson was doing his thang, it was in Rawhide.

And on another note I'd like to publicly congratulate Kate who, like the Leigh Matthews of the Brisbane Eistedfodd scene, has come up with another bag of prizes and highly commendeds. And there's still a week to go!

Selling Bananas to Monkeys

BEDFORD ROAD: I was just at the video store - it's raining and I couldn't find a cinema showing Superman Returns at an appropriate time and venue - and I was struck by how stupid consumers can be.

Eli Roth's Hostel, which I really wanted to rent, was all out. But I lingered around that part of the shop for a while hoping somebody would put a returned copy back on the shelves.



After looking at the poster, no less than five people remarked "Wow, I didn't realise Quentin Tarantino directed this!" Now the image above isn't completely clear but it does say, quite clearly, Tarantino presents and, directly beneath the title treatment, written and directed by Eli Roth.

So much for educated purchasing decisions.

I wander through each chartered street,

BEDFORD ROAD: Started my new job last Monday at its such a wonderful change to be working on the fringes of old London in St. Lukes.

On lunch today, after visiting the bank, I wandered back to the office through an old cemetary I've taken to eating my lunch in. At the entrance to the cemetary is a small sign explaining its history. Halfway through reading the precis it mentioned the famous people intered in there. Some relatives of Crowell, various writers, John Bunyan, Daniel DeFoe... and William Blake. Fuck I was surprised.

So tomorrow at lunch I'm heading back to Bunhill Fields to eat my sandwich and practice Russian alongside the mad prophet of Jerusalem.

As an aside I've just discovered that John Milton lived, and wrote most of Paradise Lost, on Bunhill Road.

I got this piece of genius from Big Mike:

"Bulgarians!
http://home.arcor.de/hmvh/2006/498.htm

And they want membership of the European Union.

Unbelievable."

Chuck Norris to Star in Miami Vice 2?

BEDFORD ROAD: The drought continues. I took a light tumble on the Common tonight and ended up grazing my knee. We had some rain the other day but all you get is a pissy little drizzle that does nobody any good. Somebody said it rains alot in winter but I don't remember too much from the start of the year.

I went to see Miami Vice at the Ritzy in Brixton last night. I was supposed to see Superman at the Picturehouse but I misread the time and missed it by a good two hours, then I was too late for The Death of Mr Lazarescu so I legged it down to Brixton. I can safely say that spending two and bit hours in company of Messrs Crockett and Stubbs, Miami Vice will undoubtedly be my movie low light for 2006. Hands down.

It's probably the first Michael Mann flick I've seen so I was incredibly impressed by the camera work and the action sequences. There was beautiful atmospheric footage of clouds and highways and the opening sniper shots are incredible. But the whole thing was so stuffed with the most ludicrous plotting, indecipherable dialogue, the worst oncreen romance I've ever seen and sundry other distractions that I spent most of the film contemplating the cinemas lovely arches.

Save your $10. Watch Spaceballs instead.

Scrabble

BEDFORD ROAD: The other Sunday after I got back from Amsterdam I played the most amazing game of Scrabble with Pete the Student. He introduced me to the concept of parallel parking, where you double up letters. Needless to say it has completely revolutionised the way I play. For the record Pete won the game 270 - 250 (approximately).

Care Factor

BEDFORD ROAD: So Charlie's gone. Now I know some of you, particularly those of you with UK addresses, are saying so what. And indeed at times I ponder those very syllables. So what?

Well we will miss him, at least on the balance of probablities it seems that way. We had his going away party on Friday night in a pub in Notting Hill and then went to some after party at some Portobello club called The Neighbourhood where they played crap techno but I couldn't leave because it was Charlie's party. I guess that's what Gitmo feels like.

Saturday was mostly taken up with recovering from a Fried Chicken binge and then giving the little pikey an escort out to Heathrow. Sunday, having consumed only one unit of alcohol the previous day, I got up bright and early and went jogging through both Wandsworth and Clapham Commons. Then I visited an exhibition called The Ship: The Art of Climate Change at the Natural History Museum at the Natural History Museum with Lisa before going to some shitty free music festival in Regent's Park.

The thing about London's parks at the moment is that they are all dustbowls, looking uglier than Beaudesert after a four year drought. So while in theory it might've been nice to relax on the grass on a summers day, for all intents and purposes I could've been watching Indecent Obsession at the Ipswich Show. Please rain. I'm asking nicely. I moved continents to stop asking that question and where has it got me?

Another Day in Paradise

BEDFORD ROAD: Yesterday I was all pumped up about putting finger to keyboard over the latest Middle East debacle, but things interupted me and I never got back to it. But now with a moment to type and reflect I feel to daunted to even try. Daunted, not only by the volume of reportage and opinion currently saturating the media sphere, but also apparent futility of it

When I was younger I sometimes yearned for an event as defining as the Vietnam War seemed to be for a previous generation of poets. Growing up at the end of history, all I could do was wander what an epoch defining war, or even event, would be like. I think it was the desire to make art that mattered, when it mattered.

Now I just want peace and quiet, news reports without civilian casualties, sectarian suicide bombers and demolished homes. Any kind of art, journalism, or indeed carefully weighted argument, seems pointless against the tsunami of empty ideology that is Freedom Inc. Just yesterday, Blair seemed to announce his foreign policy shift, then immediately followed it with repackaged Bushspeak.

The US seem hell bent on occupying Lebanon with a UN Force that I'm certain will be just as effective and successful as the forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.The IDF, for their part, are apparently confident that they can neutralise all of Hizbollah's members. Now I could be wrong here, but I can't think of a single major guerilla force who ever ran out of members. They are, almost by definition, hydras. And while we're on the subject of the IDF, their fearful reputation seems to have lost some of its lustre in the face of fierce and highly trained opposition.

And all the major talking heads seem oblivious to the fact that a viable, geographically united Palestinian state is fundamental to an eventual resolution of the war on terror. (I can't use that phrase without smirking.) We rebuilt Europe and Japan after World War Two, pulling economic golden rabbits out of hat in the process. Why wouldn't we do the same to Palestine? Surely it couldn't cost anymore than the billions we're pissing away on warfare and, ironically, aid. Wouldn't that really be showing the "evil doers" and "demagogues" up? Still I'm no foreign policy expert and Donald Rumself apparently is.