Brand Awareness

Writing yesterday about President Bush's sporting youth, before he swapped the oval ball for the Oval Office, reminded me of a misapprehension of mine that shows how much the world has changed.

A couple of years ago driving through Twickenham of Richmond I remember seeing an advert for the London Pride Sevens and assuming it was some sort of Pride in the Park gay rugby extravaganza before I realised it was simply sponsored by Fullers.

Strange Creatures

In a 1996 poll of political attitudes commissioned by Boris Yeltsin, three categories ended in a tie: democrats, Communist revanchists, and apoliticals. But one category beat them all: nihilists. Historically, Russia is the only country in which nihilism became an actual popular movement, and now, 150 years later, it has returned: Russian ballots feature the option 'Against all.' In a March presidential poll, it placed second.
The Claremont Institute

Alcohol makes your brain grow

Drinking alcohol boosts the growth of new nerve cells in the brain, research suggests.
BBC

I should have a "brain the size of a planet" then, tipping my hat to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Presidential Rugby

I was doing a little research on George W. Bush this morning, and was astonished to find that he played Rugby Union as well as baseball when he was at Yale. I thought only the Welsh played baseball and rugby. I seem to remember, for example, that David Bishop - among others - is a double international having been capped for Wales at both sports.

The photo above is apparently from a 1960's Yale handbook, and I would also note that as well as appearing to throw a "gratifying right hook", the future President is also performing an illegal but gratifying high tackle.

Back from Huntington

On the train back from Huntington to Kings Cross you pass the site where Arsenal's new Emirates stadium is being constructed very soon after the Finsbury Park mosque.

It is very cheering to see a football stadium sponsored by an Arab airline just after the former HQ of the notorious Sheikh Abu Hamza. It would be funny if Emirates has sponsored Tottenham Hotspur's stadium though as it probably wouldn't sit too well with the nickname the yids.

Which reminds me, when I was researching the Qibla after finding one in our Dubai hotel room I discovered that there is one exception to the direction is which a Muslim faces when praying.

Prayer is always offered towards the Ka'aba in Mecca which is the holiest place in Islam. It is a large granite building in the shape of a cube, but if the supplicant is inside the Ka'ba itself, prayer is directed towards its outer walls. Obvious really.

Anthology of Huntingdonshire Cabmen

I am off to a meeting with Cambridgeshire Constabulary this morning. Much to my delight, their headquarters is in Huntingdon, which brings to mind Beachcombers immortal "Anthology of Huntingdonshire Cabmen".

It can hardly be claimed for the newly published Anthology of Huntingdonshire Cabmen that it is, in the words of an over-enthusiastic critic, 'a masterpiece of imaginative literature'. The Anthology consists of the more striking names (with initials) from each of the three volumes. It is a factual and unemphatic work, and the compiler has skinned the cream from the lists. Here are such old favourites as Whackfast, E.W., Fodge, S., and Nurthers, P.L. The index is accurate, and the introduction by Cabman Skinner is brief and workmanlike.

I was introduced to the teeming world of Captain Foulenough, Dr Strabismus, and Thunderbolt Footle etc. in Richard Ingrams' Beachcomber: The Works of J.B.Morton. I can't seem to find it now, which is odd because I distinctly remember buying every single copy for peanuts from a shop in Cardiff when the book was remaindered back in the late Seventies or early Eighties. I wonder if any of the friends that I pressed the book on have managed to keep hold of it. I'd love to read it again.

Back From Dubai

We re back from Dubai with a thousand impressions that I should try and record. I will just note one tonight. I had never been to a Islamic country before and I was surprised to see that the table in our hotel room (see photo above) had an arrow showing the direction to the Kaaba in Mecca so that a Muslim could easily tell the way to face when praying.

It doesn't matter

One piece of good news is that arts journalism is being transformed before our eyes by the rise of Web-based new media�and just in the nick of time. The old mass media were and are zero-sum operations, as advocates of literary fiction have been discovering to their dismay in recent years. Allocate more space (or air time) to one topic and you have that much less space available for all other topics: novels compete with memoirs, classical music with jazz, theater with film, indie flicks with special-effects extravaganzas. Now that most of us live in one-newspaper towns, and now that newspapers themselves are struggling for survival, that�s turned into an iron law.

The Web is different: it permits you to publish a "newspaper" or "magazine" of your very own without having to pay for ink, paper, bricks, and mortar - much less a graduate degree in journalism. What it doesn't guarantee, however, is that such "newspapers" will ever be read by millions of people, or that their publishers will be able to give up their day jobs.

Terry Teachout on why it doesn't matter how big an audience is.

Souls can only be changed one by one, and each one is as supremely important as the next. Hence there are no small audiences, only small-souled artists.

So its still valuable if you are your own audience of one I conclude.

Pearls

As long ago as 1580, an Italian traveller reported that Dubai was a prosperous pearl-diving and fishing community. It was still much the same at the beginning of the 20th century, when over 300 pearl-diving dhows were stationed in Dubai�s creek.

Pearl divers risked life and limb to gather oysters from the sea bed, often diving for more than two minutes at a time, with little more than a nose-clip and a heavy stone to weight them down.

Such was the renown of Dubai's pearls, that pearling continued to be the mainstay of the city's prosperity, until the development of the cultured pearl in the 1940s led to the collapse in demand for the natural variety.

Number 1

We are in Dubai to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of 25 April. So whatever single tops the chart tonight will be added to the series below. It is sure a long way from Sir Cliff's "Congratulations" to Eamon's "F**k It"!

2004 Eamon F**k It (I Don't Want You Back)
2003 Room 5 featuring Oliver Cheatham Make Luv
2002 Oasis Hindu Times
2001 Destiny's Child Survivor
2000 Fragma TOCA'S MIRACLE
1999 Westlife SWEAR IT AGAIN
1998 RUN DMC vs Jason NEVINS Its Like That
1997 R Kelly I BELIEVE I CAN FLY
1996 Mark Morrison RETURN OF THE MACK
1995 Take That Back for Good
1994 Prince The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
1993 George Michael, Queen and Lisa Stasfield Five Live EP
1992 Right Said Fred Deeply Dippy
1991 Chesney Hawkes The One and Only
1990 Madonna Vogue
1989 Bangles Eternal Flame
1988 S Express Theme form S-Express
1987 Madonna La Isla Bonita
1986 George Michael A different corner
1985 USA for Africa We are the World
1984 Lionel Richie Hello
1983 Spandau Ballet True
1982 Paul mccartney and Stevie Wonder Ebony and Ivory
1981 Bucks Fizz Making Your Mind Up
1980 Blondie Call Me
1979 Art Garunkel Bright Eyes
1978 Bee Gees Night Fever
1977 Abba Knowing Me, Knowing You
1976 Brotherhood of Man Save Your Kisses for Me
1975 Bye Bye Baby Bay City Rollers
1974 Terry Jacks Seasons in the Sun
1973 Dawn Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree
1972 ROYAL SCOTS DRAGOON GUARDS Amazing Grace
1971 Dave and Ansil COLLINS Double Barrell
1970 Dana All Kinds of Everything
1969 Beatles with Billy Preston Get Back
1968 Cliff Richard Congratulations
1967 Sandie Shaw Puppet on a String
1966 Dusty Springfield You don�t have to say you love me
1965 Beatles Ticket To Ride

The Souks

�Souk� is the Arabic word for market, and Dubai is littered with them. They are a legacy of Dubai�s status as a thriving port, dating back to the 19th century, when traders and smugglers docked by the banks of the Creek to do business. The city�s souks remain beside the famous waterway.

The most acclaimed is the Gold Souk, on the Deira side of town near the mouth of the Creek. It�s an impressive sight. Rows upon rows of windows filled with elaborate 24-carat gold necklaces, with throngs of Arab and Indian women clamouring for a better view.

This is no tourist trap. People come to stock up on the yellow metal, mainly from India, the world�s largest gold market. Dubai�s bullion market has tailed off since 1999, when India liberalised gold imports, but jewellery is still thriving.

The Spice Souk is the most popular among tourists, thanks to its picturesque narrow streets and pungent smells. But not all of Dubai�s souks are so appealing. The electronics souk in Bur Dubai is a network of shabby, 1970s shopping arcades, where Russian, Iranian and Sudanese �shopping tourists� come to stock up on cheap mobile phones and stereos. The fish souk in nearby Karama is simply a grotty indoor market full of fishmongers; ideal if you need to buy hammour, a local fish, or the magnificent Gulf prawns, but not one for the �must-see� visitors list.

Friday Brunch

Friday brunch is an institution in Dubai. The city's convoluted weekend system means no one seems to be off work at the same time, but this is an exception. Whether it is families out for a pleasant feed, or young expats recovering after Thursday night's excesses, Friday brunch is one of the few pursuits that straddles cultural barriers. Even some of the locals - few though they are - might line up in between their five trips to the mosque.

Stubs

A long time ago I worked as a Corporate Development Executive at George Wimpey PLC. At that time Wimpey was a large international construction group - it has since shrunk but that is another story. One of my jobs there was to follow what the construction analysts in the big stock brokers were saying about us.

At first I was a bit intimidated by these apparently giant brains and their predictions, but after a while I hit on the plan of reading what they had been saying a year ago before reading their current prophecies. The old stuff was invariably rubbish in retrospect, plausible as it had been at the time.

Since then I often like to look back a year to put things in perspective. As we are going to Dubai until the middle of next week, I will probably not be able to update this log, until we get back, so I have decided to put up stub posts in advance covering those days so that there will be year old posts next April.

On Wikipedia, a stub is a short article. When writers begin a new article, they use the word stub to mean that it is still very short and that people can add a lot more useful information.

I may come back to the stubs if I have time, but I may leave them.

The Conner

William Shakespeare's father was an ale-tester or 'conner'. The 'conner' tested the ale by pouring some upon a bench and sitting on it while drinking the rest. If there was sugar in the ale, or it was impure, their leather breeches would stick after sitting for half an hour or so.
History of Beer

Where do babies come from?

"Pop star Britney Spears has confirmed she is pregnant with her first child, following weeks of intense speculation" reports the BBC.

Speculation is one word for it I suppose.

When you think that the same organisation recently told us that "Parliament must debate whether terminally ill patients should be given the right to die as early as possible after the expected election", it does make you wonder if the budget extends to a sub-editor at BBC online.

Serendipity II

Just after posting about the Banana leaf, I have found that Google Maps for the UK has just been launched. Coming on the heels of BlogMap I think that Geo coding RSS feeds could be very significant for our work never mind my personal blogging.

Anyway, if you are hungry and in the neighbourhood, you can find the Banana Leaf here, courtesy of the associated Google Local service with directions from our office.

Serendip SW17

The word serendipity, which means the making of happy and unexpected discoveries by accident or when looking for something else, was first committed to paper by Horace Walpole in a letter he wrote on January 28, 1754 in the library of his gothic mansion Strawberry Hill in Twickenham. In the letter he says that he formed the word from the title of the fairy-tale `The Three Princes of Serendip', the heroes of which `were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of'.

Serendip is an old name for Ceylon which in turn is an old name for Sri Lanka, and a serendipitously discovered advantage of living and working within walking distance of Colliers Wood tube is access to a great range of South Indian and especially Sri Lankan restaurants.

Yesterday's lunch was masala dosai - served on a banana leaf, along with chicken biryani prepared with curry leaves and green chillis, and egg masala at the aptly named Banana Leaf, for about the same as it would cost us to go to Burger King.

We need to count the pennies as we will be eating at Verre, Gordon Ramsay's restaurant in Dubai on Monday. As Derek Smalls and David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap have noted, "people should envy us.... I envy us.... yeah I envy us too".

Wikipedia: Merton Priory

Wikipedia is a Web-based, free-content encyclopedia, which is written collaboratively by volunteers. It consists of 195 independent language editions sponsored by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its purpose is to create and distribute, worldwide, a free encyclopedia in as many languages as possible. Wikipedia is one of the most popular reference sites on the Web receiving around 50 million hits per day.

Wikipedia contains approximately 1.5 million articles, more than 500,000 of which are in its English language edition.

After being surprised to find a Wikipedia entry for Colliers Wood last week that mentioned Merton Priory I decided to create an entry for the Abbey. (I assume that the Abbey and the Prioiry are one and the same thing).

My new entry is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merton_Priory. Creating it was piece of cake.

I put a paragraph or so in that included internal links to Adrian IV etc. and edited the Colliers Wood entry to include a link to my new page. Since I did that someone else has come along and added the categories Merton and Abbeys in England.

All in all Wikipedia is very impressive. I must find out more about it.

It will be interesting to see if anyone else takes it upon themselves to improve the page I added. We have arranged to visit the Chapter House on Wednesday lunchtime so I may be able to update it myself after that.

Browsing the connections from Saint Thomas � Becket to the Priory to Walter de Merton to Merton College Oxford to T. S. Eliot, makes me think it would be fun to see Murder in the Cathedral in the Colour House Theatre on the site here.

Church Going by Philip Larkin

A poem for Sunday.

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Colliers Wood - Wikipedia

Blimey, there's a Wikipedia entry for Colliers Wood! All that ever comes up on Google News is the football team.

Would you Adam and Eve it?

(Thanks to Simon Brunning.)