peteashtondotcom

Swimming.

On Wednesday I went swimming. Nice pool in Bayswater, £2.50 for a swim, 1920’s building, real community pool with a total mix of people.

Kate said we’d do 20 lengths. I hadn’t been swimming for about a year. In fact I hadn’t done any exercise for about a year. I’ve been managing a minute on the exercise bike before my legs started wobbling.

Managed 16 lengths before going dizzy.

Felt pretty good on Wednesday - backache went and the endorphins were rushing. Felt quite tired on Thursday. Went to the pub and might as well have been asleep. Felt like shite on Friday. A bit better on Saturday but slept too long and was grumpy with a thick head. Finally felt better on Sunday night and now I’m up late writing emails like a demon after too long an absence.

So the plan is, one swim once a week until my recovery time is down to less than two days.

[distraction] Fight Club and Calvin & Hobbes - the hidden connection. Again from Metafilter

This is what I think I’ll be doing if/when I get my hands on a digital camera (where, once you’ve paid for the thing all photos are free). Loads of seemingly random pictures of stuff randomly displayed. Very nice. (From Metafilter)

Metafilter is proving invaluable for info on what’s going down in Genoa, including the photo which will probably be on the front page of your newspaper tomorrow. (Other options).

Here’s hoping Mr B doesn’t pick up some riot control tips while he’s there. Water cannon? Pshew! Shoot the fuckers and run them over - that’ll stop them.

You might have noticed my reading list hasn’t been updated for an age. No, I’m not still working through The Sirens Of Titan. Truth is I haven’t actually finished a book in months. Maybe this has something to do with the 10 minute tube journey (used to have half an hour) or perhaps I’m just not up for reading as much as I used to, which is kinda a sad thing. I’m currently reading Charlie Higson’s first novel, King of the Ants, which I found in a box in my mum’s attic. It’s kinda good but nothing to write home about. Hopefully I’ll actually finish it (it’s got a bit of the old “suspenseful plot” going on) and then feel like I can read a whole book… After than, some Richard Ford, which has been recommended to me as being of the same class as Murakami and Auster. If that’s the case then I’m sorted for the next for months as Mr Ford has been rather prolific.

The reading list will be replaced with a real reading list, ie, books I recommend you read. Since I’m a bookseller by trade it’s the least I can do. I’d welcome you own recommendations but they have to be REALLY good, life changing books. And readable. Ie not Finnigans Wake.

It’s all about how you read it:

Cheapside is held dear in property analysts’ eyes

The big salaries and huge bonuses paid to City workers makes the shopping street at the centre of the Square Mile the best in the British retail business, according to a new survey.

Cheapside, which has the Bank of England at one end, St Paul’s cathedral at the other and is lined with stores ranging from upmarket cobbler Church’s to a new Tesco Metro, has topped a list of 650 shopping streets and out-of-town malls.

The rankings, calculated by economic analyst Business Strategies and retail property consultant Chuirston Heard, are designed to shows the streets with the best potential for retailers and property investors.

In March next year the bookshop in which I work on Cheapside will be closing, not because it’s losing money (we’re actually 20% up on last year) but because the rent has increased by such a large amount that we’d have to increase sales by 80% in order to break even. Which is, of course, impossible. Even being part of amajor chain with multinational backing will not save us. So we’re closing.

Last year a Gentleman’s Tailor (established in the 18th century) on Cheapside closed and was replaced by a mobile phone shop. A Starbollox filled the empy store next door to us this year and a Prett is opening next week three doors down. There are other examples I could give.

Yes, you can make a hell of a lot of money from the suits on Cheapside, but the rents are so high that you can only do that with no stockholding (food outlets) or some kind of subsidy (why do you think there are so many mobile phone shops?). Any business that relies on holding things in stock and offering a range of interesting things is pretty much screwed once the landlords realise they’ve got a goldmine on their hands.

The irony is not lost on me. Our shop is closing because of brute capitalism. The City is the heart of brute capitalism. Those who work there will have coffee, sandwich and mobile phone shops and nothing else because of brute capitalism. Enjoy, suckers!

Wow, a cool banner add!

I think I need (or rather, want quite a lot), some kind of digital camera purely so I can put picuters on this site immediately. I don’t want quite a lot a really posh camera, just the equivalent of my cheapo scanner. Thing is I know nothing about such things. Would a cheapo plastic webcam do the job? Or do I need to get a low-end digital camera? I’d probably like to spend less than £50 if I can get away with it.

Hmm. Ebay…

According to Jez, the stats for Prostitute Trading Trumps are going through the roof thanks to Popbitch and Bizarre. Before this becomes the meme of the moment I’d like everyone to know that I was the one who ran around London at 4.00am collecting the cards in 1997 and without me this spectacular event in internet history would not have occurred. So there.

So I’m standing in the bathroom having a piss and I notice in the mirror that there’s a long hair coming out of the top of my ear. Urination finished I reach for the nail scissors and attempt to snip it off but the angle of approach and the mind-twisting effects of a mirror (so simple yet so anti-intuitive) mean I keep snipping the wrong way and when I do manage to touch the hair it bends slightly and springs off like a supple branch on an old oak tree.

So I get a little narked and start going for my ear with the scissors in the same manner as one might angrily grab for a fly. The result of this is I now have blood dripping on my shoulder as I type this.

Managed to get half the hair though.

Brett found this: Betty Bowers’ Profound Christian Advice. “Lap it up you pert little web puppies. God man, I like totally fear for your
souls” says Brett. Thanks Brett. It’s very good. But not as good as Hatt Baby, so I still win.

Last night I put in a few hours work for Borderline. This has been a pretty regular occurrence over the last few weeks, especially as the first deadline was last Friday. But last night it felt like WORK. Fielding questions, figuring out action plans, learning from mistakes, trying to avoid new mistakes.

Come midnight I was exhausted. Normally all this comics and internet stuff is a diversion. One I take pretty seriously, but a diversion all the same. I don’t watch television, I make my own media and experience other people’s made media. Or however you want to put it.

But Borderline is a JOB. I think I’d underestimated the effect that would have. A JOB. Which means I’ve got to plan out how I do it much more effectively than I’ve ever planned this kind of thing before.

Which is, of course, a good thing!

It’s a spoof! It’s not a spoof! It’s a spoof! It’s not a spoof!

The Margaret Thatcher Site. Oh yeah! They’ve got the “there is no such thing as society” quote up there but annoyingly give no explanation of it. I’ve been trying to figure that one out for the last decade or so. If there is no such thing as society, who are all these people? Why am I not shot more? How are cities born? How does the gene pool stop itself from inbreeding and giving us all 20 noses? This isn’t much help either.

Thatch site via lmg

Ooh! My life is complete!

The Shipping Forecast is available as a realaudio stream from the BBC, with transcript and a map! No more remembering to switch to Radio 4 at 12.58 for that aural nightcap! (thanks to Mo)

The FM/AM radio has been annoying me, partly because the weather is messing with the signal, so I went in search of internet radio and came across Jam Bomb, inspired by Chris Morris’ weird-ass enlightenment programming and run by the person(s) behind the tribute site Cook’d and Bomb’d. It’s a bit like Blue Jam - lovely, beautiful pieces of music linked by sharp rants from the man himself.

Moan

I’m not complaining about the hot weather. I think it’s lovely that it’s hot (although it’d be nicer in a field than in the City). What I have a problem with is the lack of air conditioning in my shop, caused because monthly maintenance checks were stopped about a year ago. Again, I don’t want to complain, but it’s become obvious tonight (as the temperature drops slightly) that I’m not cooling down. I’ve been existing in a much higher than normal temperature for 5 days straight and my body temperature seems to have normalised to that level. I’ve had two cold showers and a bath, I’ve been downing cold water all day, and I’m sitting here by the window breaking into a sweat.

D’ya think I can sue?

It’s nice to know that I work with a bunch of people who either know that a nice hot cup of tea in this weather will cool you down or are able to figure out for themselves why.

Got it yet? You feel hot because it’s hotter outside your body than inside. If you bring the temperature of your body up slightly there’s less of a difference so your body doesn’t feel the need to sweat as much. You might not be cooler but you feel cooler. Think about how a bottle of chilled water “sweats” while a bottle of normal tap water doesn’t. Of course if you’re really really hot then you should probably cool down a bit by sweating!

Oh my good lord, YES! The reason we have an internet: L Ron Hubbard sings! (as does Johnny Travolta!). Scientology freak out groovey monster fest! (God bless you Lukelog)

Nick Cohen is becoming something of a favourite journalist of mine for his ability to cut through the bullshit and present strong, viable left wing views with not a wet beardy in sight. From The Observer this week:

On 25 April 1996 Robin Cook and Paddy Ashdown shared a bottle of whisky in a Birmingham hotel and foresaw the toxic side effects of New Labour.

Ashdown told his diary that Cook said: ‘A number of us on the moderate Left of the party are becoming increasingly concerned that we are abandoning the underclass and our historic mission to work for the poor in favour of the middle class.’

Ignoring the dispossessed would be ‘deadly’, replied Ashdown. They would ‘turn to the extreme Right’.

He goes on…

The historically-minded have been faintly disturbed by the language of a political class with a tin ear for twentieth-century history. The warning we hear so often that ‘you cannot have rights without responsibilities’ was minted by the Catholic, monarchist and fascist opponents of democracy in inter-war Europe.

The Third Way is an old fascist slogan - Nazism was the Third Way between Jewish capitalism and Jewish Bolshevism. Griffin himself was once a member of a group called the International Third Position and now says he is ‘a moderniser’. It would be prissy to worry about disquieting linguistic echoes if other links between the mainstream and the extreme were not far stronger.

Sometimes his way of throwing in new-to-me things, such as this notion that Nazisim was “the third way”, raises some doubts as he doesn’t always cite his references (but then journalists rarely do), but from an awareness raising and thought provoking point of view his writing is essential.

Also of interest is Nick Davies’ (I confess I thought they were the same person until just now) Make Heroin Legal which is frighteningly convincing.

An authoritarian liberal government and a lost opposition - is this the perfect time for good writing? Makes a change from Simon Hoggart’s funny at first but increasingly tiresome sketches. Okay, so Anne Widdecome is fat and from another planet. And?