The drugs do work!

These little fellas have been the bane of my life during the summer months over the last few years:

They may be microscopic and look innocuous, but the weeping sore eyes, the runny nose, the general fatigue and the flu like symptoms they induce in me make pollen spores my all time public enemy number one. I developed Hay Fever at school as a teenager, where it conveniently kicked in whilst I was studying for my A levels. Since then, the start of summer has been marked by that familiar prickling sensation behind my eyes, and the never ending quest for snot free tissues.

Over the years I have been given quite a bit of advice about how to treat my pollen allergy. Taking Vitamin C apparently assists the bodies’ natural defences against the symptoms by boosting the immune system, but you do have to be careful when choosing your Vitamin C supplement, as some can cause diarrhoea - the last thing you want is another part of your body running uncontrollably! Another way, which sounds like much more fun, is to eat honey that is produced in your local area. According to the logic, locally produced honey contains small amounts of pollen spores from the grass strains in your area, which when consumed, allows your body to build up resistance to the pollen, effectively inoculating you against the harmful affects. As a pragmatist, I have found the most effective way to deal with my pollen phobia is the most unpolitically correct one - just do the drugs. I am not talking about heroine or crack cocaine here - just a tablet and a few squirts of nasal spray. They are relatively cheap, and for me they work quickly.

Admittedly, this year hasn’t been too bad so far. Up to a week ago the arctic weather has meant the pollen count has been kept in check. The recent sunshine and higher temperatures have put paid to this, and that slight stinging around my eyes, and the beginning of an itching sensation in my nose suggest that an urgent trip to the chemist is in order…

Rover Game Over?

It has been effectively for the last three weeks anyway. My Rover was over heating big time - on the A3, the temperature gauge was going off the scale, and the sounds of the engine were increased by the cacophony of the cooling fans working flat out. The garage diagnosed a blown head gasket, so for the last three quarters of a month, I have been at the tender mercies of public transport.

As experiences go, it has proved to be pretty uninspiring - it was quickly apparent just how rubbish the Rail and Bus systems are when you have to travel from Zone Four and beyond. It takes over double the drive time on the South West Trains service to go from New Malden to my workplace in Leatherhead, and even going short distances by rail to locales such as Kingston and Norbiton are subject to complications, as the frequent delays and cancellations make a relatively straight forward journey become, to use a technical term, a royal pain in the butt.

If the powers that be are in any way serious about getting people out of their cars and back on public transport, then some joined up thinking is required to make the public transport links outside of London Zone Three more effective. The evidence of such co-ordination between central government and the local authorities is pretty scant, so the only hope for me is that my car is repaired real soon.

Tweet-tastic!

Most radio can usually be categorised as either ‘talk based’, for example LBC, or be ‘music based’, like Virgin Radio, but all that is set to change as the dawn of the Digital Era has spawned a new style of radio broadcasting - there is now a digital station that broadcasts nothing but bird song!

It may sound like a load of old bird droppings but it is actually true, and what’s more, the audience figures show that its popularity is spreading faster than Avian Flu. It seems that there is nothing more the general populace loves than hearing the sound of twittering through their Hi Fi Tweeters. The programming potential for this kind of thing seems to me to be kind of limited though, for example, would a chart show have things like;

“…and new in at number five, it’s…a sparrow!”

The only other features they could usefully do would be in the ‘Nigella’s worm feast’ or ‘Jamie’s Bird Seed Bonanza’ type of vein. As you can tell, the possibilities are not endless.

The popularity of this station has been attributed to people finding bird song soothing and relaxing, which is something that is not true in my case. Whilst I have no serious problem with our feathered friends, their habit of dumping on my car is not very endearing, and the only memory associations their warblings invoke in me is the task of cleaning my Rover.

Broadcasting bird song is basically a creative cop out, as it is very easy to do - it literally is a case of doing radio on the cheep.

March of the Muppets?

Is it me, or are this year’s crop of contestants in the BBC1 series ‘The Apprentice’ even more Muppet like than usual? As well as exhibiting the usual traits of self delusion, megalomania and egomania, quite a high proportion of this years selection of business hopefuls seem to be, in politically correct terms, common sensually challenged, or if you want to be blunt about it, as daft as a brush.

For those of you unfamiliar with the programme, the wannabe apprentices of the title fight it out for the hallowed prize of a six figure salary, working in the organisation of the famously forthright entrepreneur Alan Sugar. Sir Alan, as he likes to be known, sets them goals in a business related task, in which two teams of contestants compete, usually to return the most profit. Failure is definitely not an option, as one of the losing team is fired each week. As you can probably guess, the last person standing gets the job.

This weeks episode showed evidence that muppetry was indeed afoot. The teams had to use their combined business acumen to successfully provide the food at a local pub for a day. The Project Manager of the boy’s team, a hapless guy called Ian, demonstrated very ably that he couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery, let alone sort out the food for one, and when he smugly announced at the start of the show that the word ‘loser’ was not in his vocabulary, the writing was on the wall. It came as absolutely no surprise that his team kind of …er…lost. To be fair, he was not the only one. A fellow team mate believed that just because he had eaten out in a few Italian restaurants, he was a renowned expert in Italian Cuisine. The girls team, although slightly more organised, were not much better, muddling through despite loads of bickering and back biting. Basically it was a case of muppetry of the heinous.

As is the case with most of these shows, the contestants are probably not chosen entirely for their business ability - every show needs that element of entertainment value, and that is something that ‘The Apprentice’ provides in spades. The heady mix of failure in the face of adversity and the judgement day styli of the boardroom scenes make it compulsive viewing indeed, making it probably the best reality show on the TV at the moment.

Pub Price Polarisation

Price rises, as anyone but the most naive will tell you, are a fact of life, and the cost of drinks in pubs is no exception to this rule. Whilst not claiming to remember that halcyon period when you could buy seventeen pints, all the Pork Scratchings you could shove in your cake hole, a slap up fish and chip supper, and still get change from half a shilling, the level of prices charged for booze in our public houses seems to me to be veering towards the excessive.

Yesterday evening at the pub, after buying the first round of drinks, I was surprised to find that the cost of my favourite pint had gone up to £3.00 exactly. Logically, this should not have been such a big deal, as I had been effectively paying £3.00 a pint for quite a while - the price crept up from £2.65 to £2.70, then up to £2.75, and so on, which in practical terms, is an approximation to the 300 pence mark. Now that the £3.00 price has been hit, things start looking very different, as psychologically, any further price increases start the build up to the £4.00 milestone. As I was going for a beer, and since the pub was located in Wimbledon, £3.00 was probably relatively low when compared to the price of lagers and to the charges made in other boozers closer to the centre of London, but it still bumps up the cost of buying a round.

If the cost of a pub night out carries on increasing at the rate it is now, going out for a couple of pints will soon become a luxury that few people can afford.

Driller Chiller

Phobias are indeed strange things - their origins can prove to be equally as baffling to the sufferer as to the casual observer, and in some extreme cases, the effects of them can be completely debilitating. The only phobia I ever remember having occurred years ago, when I was a small child. Back then, a visit to the dentist was a one way trip to terror, mainly due to these:

I just hated the drill - the sound it made, the sensation as it broke into your teeth, the very look of it was enough to send chills up my spine. For years I was unable to watch the film ‘Marathon Man’ because of that one very disturbing scene.

As I got older, these irrational child hood fears became easier to deal with, but a lingering distrust of dentists still remained. Towards the end of my first term at university, I got a gum infection due to a decaying back molar- the left side of my face had ballooned. I made an appointment, and found myself in the surgery of a very cheery Aussie dentist, who after taking one look in my diseased gob made the following diagnosis:

“It’s got to come out, mate.”

As I was expecting some advanced, sophisticated dental technique to be used, I was not that bothered, and it was only when he produced a weapons grade, industrial sized pair of pliers that worry very rapidly set in.

“Don’t worry, mate, you won’t feel a thing!”

Thankfully his assurances were correct. The anaesthetic that was applied numbed the area around the tooth completely, but there was still a slight problem. My molar was not budging - it was happy where it was!

“It’s certainly a stubborn little bugger”

I was certainly in no position to disagree with his medical opinion - in fact, giving any sort of reply was just not an option - my head was wedged firmly against the bosom of an admittedly very pretty dental assistant, whilst my jaw was being held in the vice like grip of the pliers. The level of brute force was increased gradually. Even though nothing was being felt through the tooth, the issue of how long my neck would withstand the level of punishment was causing concern. He was just stopping short of putting his foot on my head and putting a tow rope around the pliers. Eventually, out and out aggression won the day - the molar shattered, and the dentist was able to pull out the remnants a lot more easily. A couple of stitches later and it was all over.

“How much will it cost?”  I asked, sensing that my already meagre student income was to be diminished a whole lot more.  His reply was brief and to the point.

“Loads.”

He wasn’t lying either.

Cider house rules?

It certainly does if you believe the glossy TV advertisements, as drinking cider is now officially cool - there is scarcely an Ad break that goes by that does not portray groups of trendily clad twenty something’s, who give all the appearances of having a really great time, even though their lifestyles seems to consist almost entirely of quaffing bottles of the afore mentioned apple based drink.

On the surface, these ads are no different from the advertising campaigns used to promote any other products, but what I find interesting about the promotions for cider is how much the perception of cider drinking has changed so quickly. Not so long ago, the storey was very different - cider was considered to be a very down market drink, whose main preserve was unsophisticated, gauche, anorak clad individuals, who would typically pass their time train spotting, and whose idea of social interaction was going into town to buy a replacement part for their thermos flasks. When it was advertised on the telly, the plot vehicles used were dull, stereo typical countryside features that made a few lame attempts at humour.

Speaking personally, any experience of drinking of cider stemmed from my student days, and was done out of necessity. The end of term was usually a difficult time for me, as the rate at which my meagre funds declined began accelerating rapidly, and on the odd occasion when I could make it down to the University bar, the only thing I could afford to drink was an absolutely revolting brand of cider, which was the only one they stocked. The only positive thing you could say about it was that it was better than meths.

Looking at the way it is currently portrayed, I can’t help but marvel at what a good job the Marketing men have done for the image of cider, as it is now very much a mainstream drink. Even though in my case, cider will always evoke memories of poverty and destitution, turning around what is essentially a rather uninspiring glorified fizzy drink is proof positive of the power of style over substance.

A very rough guide to celebrity spotting

The cult of celebrity is something that I would never say I am particularly drawn to, but I think we have all had that moment on a train or bus, where you see someone you seem to remember but can’t quite place, and then hours after the event the realisation suddenly dawns that you do ‘know’ them - they have been on the telly!

Unless you are part of the Paperazzi or work in TV, contact with celebrities occurs randomly and follows two basic rules:

1) You never run into the celebs you would really like too meet such as Kate Beckinsale, pictured below:

The ones you bump into tend to be either real Z - listers such as Keith Chegwin and Keith Harris (or if you are very unlucky, Gyles Brandeth!),  or personalities that you feel completely neutral about.

2) On no account try to approach them - just don’t do it. No. If you do they will start to look very uncomfortable and scared, and will generally act as if you are the maddest, axe welding, psychopathic stalker who is only asking them for their autograph as a ruse to do them in.

That said, I haven’t run into that many celebrities - highlights are:

- I once almost bumped into Alison Pearson (former ‘Late Show’ panellist and Journalist) in Kingston.

- In London I passed Gryf Rhys Jones coming out of a newsagents muttering to himself.

- I saw Jack Dee in a street parallel to Euston station in conversation with someone who I didn’t recognise.

- The last and most recent sighting was of none other than Peter Stringfellow, who mutually ignored me in a well known coffee shop in the Bentalls Centre, again in Kingston.

As you can see from the above, there’s not that much to write home about the celebs I have encountered - if anyone else has met any of the more interesting ones please feel free to share the experience!

Touch Down

Made it it through the ether! It was a bit of a struggle, but I have finally managed to fix up a site here on wordpress! The main problem was finding a name that wasn’t in use. There are apparently two Roy’s blogging around here, but I am sure there is room for another - it is obviously a popular name!

I am yet another Platform 27 refugee, fleeing the proverbial sinking ship in the search for life. This is the second time I have jumped platform - I just hope there is someone out there!

I hope to see you all soon.