Making Somerstown A Better Place

I live in a run-down inner city slum (as Beattie from the BT adverts would say, we're very 071). Somerstown  lurks between Euston and Kings Cross. A few years ago estate agents essayed "South Camden" but have now decided we're "St Pancras".

For an inner-city slum, Somerstown is lovely. But it has its problems. Luckily, the National Lottery has given us a shed-load of cash to Do Lovely Things.

Notices went up inviting us to come along to a meeting with ideas on how to spend it. I trotted along. You know on the news when they say "X became Radicalised After Attending A Training Camp"? I became accidentally radicalised because I sat too far from the crisps.

I sat in the meeting for an hour. There were a bunch of genuine residents. Some had brought along bits of paper, including a child's drawing in felt tip. It appeared to show a lot of green lawn and trees. But there were also a lot of people who were Big In Local Politics. The news would call them "Community Leaders". I'd call them Men Who Loved The Sound Of Their Own Voices.

They started talking with each other. Loudly and longly. Acronyms were exchanged. Grudges about differences between Local Forum and Working Parties. There was a lot of disparaging talk about Edith Neville (she sounded rather grand until I realised she was a school) and Plot 10. There was A LOT of shouting about Plot 10.

I put up my hand. "Er, what's Plot 10?"
Mr Love-Voice sniffed disparagingly.
Madly, I got a round of applause. No-one else seemed to know. Turned out Plot 10 was an outdoor gym.

The shouting carried on. After an hour the cowed-looking chair said "So, shall we move on to start the agenda?"

An hour. No-one had asked for any ideas. Just a lot of fat voices talking shop. I stayed a bit longer. Nothing more happened. Felt tip drawings moved from laps to under chairs. More voices.

Eventually I stood up. I'd left dinner on and had to get back to it. I apologised quietly and left.
I heard voices behind me. "Quite right!" and "Disgusting!".

On my way out of the community centre, I glanced back. I'd accidentally staged a walk out. I wasn't alone. Oh dear.

I'd gone along wanting open spaces and lawns and things for kids to do in the evening. All I'd done was sit too far from the crisps.

As I walked through my courtyard, two boys were destroying one of my rose bushes with a lightsaber.

Liz and her Mum

Last year I got to write for Liz Shaw. It was the last thing that Caroline John recorded before passing away. I got to meet her at the recording. She'd brought in jam.

She was wonderful, and I was so very sad when she died.

There'd been tentative plans for another adventure for Liz and her mother, which sadly didn't get very far. Here's the opening:


LIZ'S CAR. NIGHT.

(SFX: Engine running. It is raining. Car door opens and Liz gets in hurriedly)

LIZ: Drive, mum! Drive!

EMILY: I take it the meeting at UNIT didn't go well?

LIZ: No.

EMILY: And how is the Brigadier?

(FX: Distant thumping noise)

LIZ: He's in the boot...

OPENING TITLES

Anyway. That's as far as it got. No idea if I'd have got away with it. But I'd love to have tried.

Here also is her son's Just Giving page.

Party Politics

I went home early because of a nugget.

I used to be able to *do* parties. Not to A Level, but I could muddle through a GCSE in chatting to strangers in the kitchen, hoovering the crisps, flirting madly with someone else's husband and getting a bus the wrong direction home.

I still can kind of do parties. But not brilliantly. Given that the internet appears to be where people confess to social ineptitude, I've always found parties a bit baffling. I once bought a self-help book called "How To Talk To Absolutely Anyone" but gave up when I realised it was basically "pretend to find people interesting in case they can give you money, either through work or marriage". I've settled into "talk to the fun people and see how that goes".

Last night we couldn't get it right. It was a party full of young gay couples. In theory, brilliant. The hosts were lovely, there was booze everywhere... but my boyfriend and I stood in a corner hissing at each other "we should mingle". Everyone was standing in little covens of four. So we made slow progress.

A kind-of ex was there. Last time I saw him, he was a young Labour activist. Now he works for Theresa May. He was carrying a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and said "Let's bring out the good stuff! Ha ha!". We'd brought along some Mateus Rose. Because it seemed funny. (Always bring two bottles - one you'd like to drink, and one that's silly. But not Lambrinin. Never Lambrini). It's hard making small talk with someone who is still lovely and chatty and friendly while you're thinking "But you work for... for evil". I can only imagine orcs and mages at a mingle:
"So what's Mordor like?"
"Oh well, you know, Sauron's not so bad. Great sense of humour, surprisingly. And summer hours, hey ho."

What capped it though, were the nuggets. A tiny blond thing darted forward. He had hair that aimed for Harry Styles and landed on combover. Blond Thing grabbed a nugget, dunked it in the cheese&chive and trilled, "Ooh, I love a chicken covered in cream."

My boyfriend and I looked at each other. We went home and watched a film.

Unwilling

It all started when we went out for dinner with a lovely friend who is a lawyer.
"You have got a will, haven't you?" she said.
"No, why?"
"Well, now that you're living together, if you get run over by a bus then your boyfriend will have to move out."

Let's pause for a moment to consider this mythical Bus Of Vengeance. The Bus Of Vengeance seeks out and destroys those with unpaid bills, unmade apologies and unfinished business. In reality, buses only seem to run people over when their drivers are texting or confused by roadworks. You're more likely to be struck down by a lorry - those things are so lethal that even thinking about bicycle-clips increases your chances of being flattened by an HGV by 3000 per cent.

Anyway, it turns out that if a bendy bus should explode near me and I don't have a will, my boyfriend will have about 24 hours' notice to move out, pausing only to collect his cardigans, check the cupboard for any remaining crisps, and say goodbye to the cat. So, my learned counsel argued, I needed to get a will. This seemed a bit drastic.

"Well," my lawyer friend said, "You don't have to have a will. You could just get married."

My boyfriend and I looked at each other.

So, I've got a will now. As a process it's like painless dentistry with sad bits. Here are the things I've learned:

Money is great
Put all together those pensions and that weird life-insurance policy that came with that mortgage all mount up to quite a nice lump sum. If I died tomorrow, I'd never need to work again.

Your friends don't want your stuff
To you it may be a wonderful archive. But start bandying around bequests and you discover that your treasured possessions are mostly crap which would disgrace a jumble sale.

Don't try and leave anyone Lego
The solicitor drawing up my will is a marvellous woman. But even her reservoirs of tact ran out when she reached the Lego. I'd tried to leave it to a named friend. The problem is, it would have to be valued. Which means it would all have to be assembled. And catalogued. And put together in the same room. The last time I tried doing this I got halfway through laying out the train track and very nearly ended up single. I hadn't even touched the monorail or the airport.

A cat is a chattel
They may lord it over you in life, but after death, you can literally dispose of them how you see fit. My will adviser said she once had to execute an old lady's clause that her cats were put to sleep. Luckily they'd predeceased her, but it was still a horrid thing to ask.

Getting rid of the body
This was the stumper. It turned up as a surprise clause - you have to leave instructions as to where and how. Cue awkward email conversation with boyfriend. We've really only just about decided which side of the bed to sleep on and I'm asking him how he'd like to dispose of my corpse. Suggestion #1 was to leave it in the yellow-stickered aisle at Tesco "as that's where you're happiest". Suggestion #2 involved scattering it near a Loch. This is quite romantic, but isn't without its hazards. After all, my boyfriend is quite forgetful. He'll take the wrong tin to Scotland and end up sat on a rock, eating biscuits and sighing. My friend Lee came up with Suggestion #3 which involved a glitter cannon and a gay sauna.

You're going to die
The weird one. I've only just got used to being alive. I'm not sure what I'll do when I'm dead. But I do know one thing - I will be rich.

A film I hated

Turns out, I hated this film. Alan Bennett summed up Witchfinder General by calling it "degrading" and "morally rotten".

It may well operate on a level that I missed, but it's essentially about Vincent Price burning women. They're toasted, torched, griddled, branded, poached and fried.

When we got to the end of it, I reiterated how much I hated it. My boyfriend (whose favourite film it is) stared at me blankly. "But, it's just like Twins of Evil. You liked that."

"Yes," I replied. "But that had vampires in it."

His eyes narrowed. He may have sneered. "Is a film only any good if it has vampires in it?"

"Well, yes." Vampires are a bit like salt. They'll ginger up anything. The only thing that could possibly, in any way, have improved The West Wing is if they'd replaced the Jewish Mafia stuff with vampires.

London Morbid

The flat opposite me has a balcony. I would like that flat.

The owners used to keep it immaculate, and neatly-trimmed window boxes would spill out glorious blooms all the year round. Now the window box is full of weeds.

A few years ago, I think the wife died. That's when he stopped coming out to look after the flowers.

One night last year I was woken up by a banging noise. It was the husband, come home late and drunk. He'd locked himself out and was trying to kick his own door down. He looked old and small but he was still hefting away at the door. I helped him jimmy the lock with a claw hammer. He said thank you and staggered in, all without really focusing on me.

I haven't seen him since, but recently a district nurse has started to call on him regularly. I've discovered that London Feeling - a mixture of solid regret that I don't really know him mingled with "I wonder how much that flat is worth? Can I buy it if he goes into a home or something?".

These aren't nice thoughts. But it's all very well to think them. Because this is London, and some day, someone will be looking out their window at my balcony and thinking "oh, the window boxes are full of weeds. I wonder...?"

Single or Double?

Twitter is cross. Twitter is always cross. This weekend it has been cross because a gay couple were denied the chance to sleep in a double bed at a hotel.

It started on twitter. It got picked up by proper media. And, as the BBC journalist started typing the story I wonder they didn't stop and think. Looooong ago, I did some basic BBC journalism training. Two bits of it apply here:
1) Thou shalt not run a story from a single source.
2) Always kick the tyres to see they're sound before buying it

(Mind you, most of the "journalism" I did was about vampires and Bagpuss, so who am I to lob a brick?).

Reading the couple's account does raise some interesting points. They were checking into a central London hotel on a Saturday night. At 11.30pm. And were then disgruntled to find out that their choice of room wasn't available. Well, frankly, I'm not surprised. Are you? 2000 years ago, Mary and Joseph understood the idea of a late check in.

I don't doubt the sincere upset of the couple concerned. Neither does the hotel, who hurried to say "we apologise for the way they feel". But... this really is a single-source story. Ringing up a hotel's PR department at the weekend for a quote doesn't count as verification. That's a reaction.

A clever friend went off and checked the hotel's booking conditions, which is a valid second source. Here we go: "Guests may check-in at any time from 2.00 p.m. on the day of arrival. All rooms that have been secured by credit / debit card or prepaid at the time of booking will be held until 12.00 noon on the following day. Any non-secured reservation will be held until 4.00 p.m. on the day of arrival at which time the hotel is entitled to re-let the room, unless the guest has notified the hotel of a late arrival." and "Rooms are subject to availability".

Sorry for the small print. Research? Yawn. But there we go. Nearly midnight on a Saturday. Central London. Rooms are subject to availability. Uh huh.

Then again, this took place in the Barbican, that famous centre of homosexual oppression. Mind you, as someone said to me on Twitter: "If homophobic, then there's a serious charge to answer, of course.". Yes. And if the hotel had also murdered them for the glory of the Dark Lord, then there'd be a serious charge to answer there, too.

Mind you, the receptionist apparently asked, when confronted by two young men asking for their room: "Are you sure you want a double room or do you want single beds?"

Years ago I was asked the exact same question. I'd been on a rather lovely date which had gone very well, and we were wondering about staying in the hotel above the restaurant. As she made the booking, the receptionist asked if we wanted a single or a double - neutrally - and when we replied "a double", she giggled and said "oh, lovely". But, first of all, she had to ask the question. I suspect a lot of hotels do so when two people of the same sex check in. Possibly because sometimes straight men decide to share a room, make a mistake in the booking, and are quick to take offence. Not that I'm saying all straight men are homophobic. Or that all hotels are. Just saves the trouble of sorting them out another room so they don't accidentally bum each other while reaching for the complimentary shortbread.

Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick. Maybe I'm leaping to a conclusion without having read all the facts. Well, then I'm not alone. Here are a few tweets, all made, remember, before the hotel has properly had a chance to properly investigate and respond:

• "I'll make sure no one I know or work with books with you."
• "How he felt is because of what your employee did. He could sue you. And should."
• "Boycott is the answer here."

And those are just the nice ones. 
Don't get me wrong - Twitter is often a very useful customer-service tool (especially with Train companies, who seem to reserve their huggy approachableness purely for social media). But this kind of situation, which sees a lot of people getting very cross before the facts have been properly stood up could be very damaging. At the moment it's just damaging for individual companies, but it may rapidly change the way that organisations react to a social media witch hunt.

Finally, I recently stayed at a Thistle hotel. It was rather lovely. Although a chambermaid did keep popping into my room without knocking. I was a bit surprised and mentioned it on Twitter. Oh, and I also mentioned it at reception when I checked out.

Co-habits

My boyfriend has moved in. Properly. As in I've had to email the council and declare that I no longer qualify for "A Single Person's Discount".

We've kind of lived together before, a bit. But it's only really been in chunks of days. Whereas this is like prison. Prison with cardigans.

My boyfriend has a lot of cardigans. And boots. And scarves. In fact, there's a lot of my boyfriend. Everywhere.  I'm having to mentally adjust. Previously, granting him a cupboard, the odd drawer or shelf has been an act of largesse, proving my generosity as a boyfriend. Now, anything less than half looks meagre. I've done my best, and thrown a lot of stuff away - but not enough. He's still confronted by crates of things which I've halfway done. And really will, honestly, get around to. One day.

That's another problem. Perception. If I leave a small pile of paper, string and USB-sticks on the floor, then it is clearly The Best Way Of Filing Important Work. If he leaves a pile on the floor it is obviously proof that he is The Untidiest Man Alive And Should Burn.

Years ago, I read a review of minimalist hotel The Hempel, where the writer had tested out the hotel's zen credentials. He'd emptied his bag onto the bed and gone out. When he returned, the contents of his bag had been arranged on the bed in a tasteful, colour-graded ziggurat. Frankly, we're currently lacking that kind of order. It's reached the point where I'm trying to work out if I should invest in a storage unit. As a temporary measure. For a few years. Ten at the most.

The sadness of stuff is realising how many things you have that you haven't looked at for a while. I have crates of my university course work and old student newspapers. Clearly, I've not looked at them for the five years since I was at uni. Which is okay. Only I left university nearly 20 years ago. The next time I glance at my old copies of Isis Magazine (edited with Ben Goldacre, fact fans) it will be 40 years. The time after that, it will be seen by whoever is doing the house clearance.

It's making me question my routine. For instance my approach to cleaning is to sneak up on it, pouncing on it on a Saturday afternoon during a decent Any Questions. I failed to explain this to my boyfriend, who looked up, bemused to wonder why I was stood in the kitchen holding a carpet, a mop and some paperclips. "Don't you think," he asked patiently, "You'd be better off tackling one room at a time?" I stared at him. He was proposing Change.

Now he has a proper job, he's also done away with my makeshift freelance lifestyle. Out has gone "Book til whenever o'clock and breakfast of yoghurt and crisps at some convenient point." Now the alarm goes off at 7. There's porridge.

It is regimented. It is neat. It is like prison. With cardigans.

An Editing Hangover

Today I have an editing hangover. Don't worry, it's nothing serious. I haven't had to fry a thing.

Several years ago I discovered there were two ways to edit your own work:

1) Leave it for six months and come back to it with icy detachment and a fresh pair of eyes.

2) Do it drunk.

Deadlines and the real world being what they are, 2) is more normal. It's curious. I can't actually write when drunk. I can barely operate a computer. But, get just a little tipsy, and I can almost disapassionately comb through pages of stuff I've written. I'll spot repeated words, factual errors, and even things which, cold sober, I'd let myself get away with. A little switch goes in the brain - it's pedalled to the top of a hill and is now cantering down going "wheeeeeee!".

It's quite nice. There are only a couple of problems. Firstly, waking up late the next morning with the urge for a breakfast of crsips. And second, trying to decipher margin notes. At about 3am I appear to have typed on page 13: "Biscuits. Biscuits. BISCUITS!!"

Perhaps I was hungry.

Bring Bring on the silence

I've decided I pretty much hate all forms of communication apart from a cat's purr. This opinion changes from time-to-time, but there's one constant - I REALLY hate the phone.

If you're reading this and you're a friend of mine, please don't phone me. If you're reading this and you work with me, please don't phone me.

When I was a child, I loved the phone. You could talk to distant friends and relatives. It was magical. Now it's just the equivalent of Claudius dripping poison into old Hamlet's ear.

When the phone rings, I no longer think "oooh!". I think "what now?". At best, it'll be someone trying to sell me PPI. Otherwise, these days people only really use the phone for bad things.

If it's work, it's seen either as a humane way of firing you or for demanding extra stuff from you immediately. If an email says "Great. Can you call me to chat this through?" it's never a good sign either. Similarly, if someone rings me to say "Good news!" on closer examination it's always bad news disguised with a cheery tone.

I was talking to someone who is brilliant at managing computer programmers. He says the trick is leaving them alone. Don't pop over to see how they're doing, don't drag them into meetings every half hour - just leave them alone for nice, long blocks of thinking. If they decide to check Facebook or gmail, that's fine - they've selected to do that. But don't run over and interrupt them. And whatever you do, don't ring them.

It was cheering to hear this. If I'm working and the phone rings, it can often take me about an hour to get back to where I was. By which time I'll probably need another cup of tea. When I had a proper job, I was forever on the phone. It was nice. It was chatty. We were always phoning each other, for advice, for gossip, for setting up meetings. And, at hometime, I'd wonder why I needed to stay late for a couple of hours to get the day's work done.

This is beginning to make me sound like an information hermit. But I am at my most productive at my parents'. They live in a mobile phone blackspot, and the nearest internet is a walk down the hill. I can get days of work done in a morning, and still find time for an afternoon nap.

Currently, I'm researching contact lenses that will beam emails into our eyeballs and drill phonecalls through our skulls. It doesn't just sound like medieval torture. It's also my idea of hell.

I prefer the silence.