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The Glasgow diet

The Scots are known to have a prodigiously poor diet. We've all heard stories of the deep-fried Mars bars, the insane consumption of Irn Bru, and the life expectancy rates in some districts of Glasgow that rival much of the third world.

But until last week, I'd never really studied the issue at first hand. My first taste of what was to come was on the train north. A Scottish family got on at York. Before they'd got set, out came the family packs of M&Ms, wine gums and the variety selection known as Sports Mix. These treats were washed down with bottles of Coke, and Cherry Coke for mum.

Also on the train was a little boy with his grandma. During the train ride to Glasgow, nana plied the poor kid with three packs of French Fries and two cans of Coke. Just when the kid was begging for mercy, a friendly woman offered him a pack of Chewits, as she had 10 packs and couldn't eat them all.

When I rolled into Glasgow I noticed that the promotion with the local paper, the Evening Times, was a free sausage roll with each newspaper. As with all good local newpspapers, the Evening Times surely knows its audience.

Surveying Glasgow city centre, what becomes apparent is that the extremely heavy presence of Greggs. I know that Greggs is pretty prominent on just about every high street, but in Glasgow the situation has got totally out of hand. There must be six or more in the city centre, all doing a very brisk trade. When you add those on to the MacD's, the Burger Kings, the kebab shops and the restaurants offering quaint-sounding fish suppers, you've got a compelling recipe for heart disease.

This puts evident pressure on the health-conscious Glaswegians. I stopped in an Aulds bakers in the St Enoch's shopping centre. There was a counter full of pasties, sausage rolls and cakes. The only healthy option was a minestrone soup. The mum in front of me, who may or may not have read a scary healthy story in a mid-market tabloid that morning, ordered the soup...and then, with a pained expression on her face, a sausage roll as well. (For the record, I got a cheese roll, served with a side order of crisps.)

As a conscientious reporter, I was convinced healthy food was available - I just wasn't looking hard enough for it. And after a half-day trailing around the city centre, I found, deep in the faintly bourgeois Buchanan shopping centre, a cafe offering,

wait for it

wait for it

salad!!!

And I can say, having witnessed the businessmen and women enjoying their lunch, that salad - like jazz music and Proust - remains the preserve of intellectuals in Glasgow. Yes, it has its advocates, but don't expect it to catch on any time soon.

I'm sorry - you were wearing the wrong shoes

A brilliant moment on the bus this morning. A middle-aged lady trod on another, younger woman's toe (she was wearing open-toe sandals). The woman winced in agony.

The woman, quite posh, was profuse in her apologies, but then could not help being quite precise in what she was apologising for.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry...I'm a doctor and I always tell my patients to go on public transport in appropriate shoes. I always tell them that. I am sorry."

I can report that the woman felt very comforted by those soothing words, and will no doubt not go on a bus in inappropriate footwear again.

The fattest kids are in London

Some people up north and in Scotland might raise an eyebrow at the news, but the Office for National Statistics has declared London's kids the fattest in the UK. One in nine are obese by the time they join school - with no doubt many, many latestarters putting on the pounds when they get into the education system.

I don't know how the ONS compiled its stats, but my recent trip to McDonald's on the Walworth Road was all the evidence I needed. The place was choc-full of parents feeding their babies and toddlers french fries and McNuggets and Coke.

The place looked more like a creche than a restaurant - and for those parents it probably was. It didn't look like an occasional treat; this was daily life. I'm not judgemental about it, but you are going to get some porky kids into the bargain.

It's pretty much the case that being fat is the norm for kids in London. This isn't just down to a solid diet of fried chicken and MacD; it's also because they hardly ever move under their own volition. The mayor gives them all free bus passes, and so you find them using buses to go one stop, just like my arthritic grandmother used to do when she was in her late 80s.

In this sense, the London kid is at the vanguard of progress. Their Scottish and northern counterparts should demand the same rights to free transportation and then perhaps they'll have a chance to compete for the fat kid title on a level playing field. But I suspect the London kid will be the fattest in the UK for a long time to come.

Essex boys storm Wembley

Essex men are not great travellers. They are not great frontiersmen. An Essex man would, nine times out of ten, rather be at home, enjoying a beer, than going off to some unknown district.

But sometimes he gets driven, by a sense of duty, off his patch. And so it was on Sunday, when Dagenham & Redbridge found themselves, to the incredulity of everyone, in a Division Two play-off final against Rotherham United.

I'm an East saxon exile, living in south London and so my first sight of Daggers fans was at Green Park when I got on the Jubilee line. Two hefty lads in replica shirts were nervously checking tube maps, disbelieving the automated voice saying the train was bound for Wembley Park.

This was obviously a rare foray outside the county boundaries and the two teenagers, who were both comfortably over 15 stone, engaged in some worldly chat, which amounted to declaring far-flung places they had been.

One suggested he'd been to Manchester. The other had been to Birmingham, and said that was further. There ensued a massive dispute about whether Manchester of Birmingham was further away (from Essex, that is), cleared up only by the iPhone.

Yes, it was new territory for most of us, and the fans peeling out of Wembley Park tube station had an air of people who were there if not to believe it was true, then just to enjoy the dream. There was a bit of milling about with the Rotherham and Daggers fans eyeing each other with a mixture of friendliness and suspicion, all polite enough.

Getting into the stadium with my dad and his genial fellow season ticket-holder it was a remarkable sight seeing thousands of Dagenham fans making a decent fist of being a big team for a day.

We got into the stadium and the fans were trying to rid themselves of pre-match tension through drinking several pints of Carlsberg. Going for a piss, I noticed a few chaps queuing up for the toilet, trying, for all they were worth, to look like they needed a shit rather than a line of marching powder.

Getting into the stand behind the goal, the fans were warming up with a few songs.
"Digger!!! Dagger!!! Digger!!! Dagger" was the main one, followed up with "We're just a pub team from Essex" although that wasn't fully endorsed - it didn't seem right on this day.

Eventually the match got going and the Daggers lads looked a bit startled by their surroundings and were hoofing the ball around, afraid to make a mistake. I settled back to listening to the Essex man's banter, which never fails to amuse through the sheer volume of swear-words employed.

A grizzled old grandad behind me was saying, repeatedly, "He's a cunt." And then, to fully make his point, added, "Des's uncle - he's a cunt."
The calls to the pitch were of a similar nature. "Referee - cahnt!" said one, to much merriment.

Even my dad, who is not native Essex, but tries to fit in, joined in with, "Get up you tart!"

And then the match broke into life, with Benson swivelling in the box and slotting the opener home. This brought celebrations from the stand and absolute pandemonium on the pitch. The Daggers were amazed to be in front, and so set about getting the thing back on level terms. They started running around like headless chickens, kicking the ball blindly, and before you knew it, the Yorkshire men had equalised.

Daggers manager John Still must have made one of his Churchillian addresses to the lads at half-time because they came out playing with energy and belief and style. This style mostly involved getting the ball out to Danny Green on the right flank and letting him terrorise the full-back. After a while this paid off with him cutting inside and drilling one home.

2-1. But the Daggers repeated the previous half's action and gave it away as soon as they had got it. But this time they redoubled their efforts and with about 20 to go they got ahead 3-2. And then all that was left was for the fans to sit nervously and wait while the boys, paralysed by fear of losing the lead a third time, hacked the ball away time and again, before the ref gave us mercy and the thing was won.

Cue the glitzy celebrations: fireworks, flares, lots of Coca Cola branding. Then the lads picked up their trophy and an old man next to me said quietly: "We'll be playing Charlton next season."

Getting back off at Green Park, I saw another exile, in replica shirt and shorts, heading southbound on the Victoria line. I collared him for a chat.

"Marvellous, wasn't it?"
"That was better than when my kids were born," he said. "I shouldn't say that, but it's true."

Blair and Cardinal Manning

I have been reading Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey. Its first subject is Cardinal Manning, the archdeacon who converted to the Roman Catholic Church in the mid-nineteenth century, and went on to become Archbishop of Westminster.

Irrelevant to the modern age, you might say. And it's true, I did not pick up the book looking for insights into politics. But, idly reading away I was, and suddenly I could think only of the Chilcot Enquiry and Tony Blair's appearance there last week.

I would now contend that if you want to find insight into Blair's sheer chutzpah in talking about 'calculus of risk' and other such nonsense, you should look no farther than the Strachey text on Manning.

They have a few things in common. They both converted to become Catholics; they were both ruthlessly self-serving and blithely ignored facts if they did not serve them.

Here is a passage about Manning's conversion:

"The Church of England is a very commodious institution; she is very anxious to please; but, somehow or other, she has never been able to supply a happy home to superstitious egotists."

One can see, from this sentence, how Blair is a natural Catholic and bedfellow of Bush, or Clinton, or whomever happens to be President of the US.

The opening paragraph also lays bare Blair's approach to the Chilcot enquiry:

"Undoubtedly, what is most striking in the history of Manning's (or Blair's) career is the persistent strength of his innate characteristics. Through all the changes of his fortunes the powerful spirit of the man worked on undismayed. It was as if the Fates had laid a wager they would daunt him; and in the end they lost their bet."

Looking at this masterly text, it is obvious how Blair could look at the 45-minute claim, realise it referred not to long-range strategic weapons, but battlefield munitions, and then say: "I didn't focus on it a lot at the time."

End of the Brixton Woolworth

It's gone. Totally gone. Even though the company went bankrupt a year ago, I never thought the large red letters atop the Woolworth store in Brixton would be taken down. But they've gone.

The shop had a brief flourishing last year, going back to its roots as selling cheap plastic products, sunglasses for a pound, posters of Bob Marley, pikey fake brass beds, very very cheap women's fashions, all run by Asian traders who know more about the Woolworths five and dime tradition than anyone.

But that got closed down. Someone more upmarket, someone with a brand must have bought. Now Woolworth is closed down and boarded up. We await a boring high street store. Further gentrification. A loss of the essence.

Picture says it all.

No mercy on the bus

X68 bus this morning. Same routine. Nonstop, express, from West Norwood to Waterloo.

As opposed to the 68, which stops. This morning there was no announcement of the X-status of our bus. The notification, for the unaware, came when the bus turns towards Brixton instead of towards Camberwell.

A middle-aged Asian woman was unaware. At Tulse Hill she made enquiries to the chap reading his paper opposite.

‘Doesn’t this stop?’ she asked.
‘Not until Waterloo,’ he said, with a touch of severity. No one likes a novice. He advised her, with a generosity of spirit which eludes me on a morning, to speak with the driver.

She did so, and came back empty handed, and the bus continued to make smooth progress towards Brixton. This was the same driver who let a punter off earlier in the week. When mercy is in your hands, it is not easy to be even-handed. Perhaps the driver was an aesthete and didn’t like a middle-aged woman wearing Nike Air trainers with her winter coat.

The woman tried for information from a couple sat near the exit. ‘Does the bus stop?’
‘At Waterloo.’ At which point she muttered something to herself and gave it up.

I have to report that I was glad at this woman’s misfortune. I objected to the trainer and smart clothes combo, even for commuting on a wintry day. I objected to her not knowing. And I enjoyed the schadenfreude. As I suspect did a few other passengers on our happy, elite, bus service.

Trouble on the x68

Standard incident on the x68 this morning. We get on the bus and start our nonstop journey from West Norwood to Waterloo. After going down Tulse Hill, it becomes clear that one of the passengers realises something is terribly wrong. The 68 doesn’t go this way, it goes down towards Herne Hill.

As we descend into Brixton the man starts dinging the bell. A woman looks up from her and says, brutally, ‘it won’t stop.’ The man, a young foreigner on his way to work, in overalls, becomes anxious, and dings furiously. Everyone ignores him.

He goes to speak to the bus driver. Remonstrates with him. The driver explains: this don’t stop until Waterloo. The man dings the bell again, urgently, thinking the irritation will work better than verbal appeals.

We stop at the Brixton Water Lane lights and the driver shows mercy, and lets the labourer out. There are mutterings, glances. We don’t like that on the x68. We don’t like people being let off before Waterloo. Sets a bad example, and lets the cold air in, besides.

Still, at least the driver didn’t do the unthinkable. He didn’t let someone on. There would have been uproar if that had happened.

Coffee shop etiquette

i spend a lot of time loafing around in coffee shops, reading books. i am a relative latecomer to this type of activity. I don't have the studied air of a frenchman or a spaniard who are born and raised in coffee shops and treat them as an extension of their home.

i cannot help but have that pub mentality. i feel absolutely obliged to have a drink in front of me or i must remove myself from the establishment. i just can't brazen it out like our friends from the continent. i know most coffee shop workers could not care less whether i stay in there without a drink in front of me: the pressure comes from within.

i am sure that plenty of British people get this. we feel like our trip to the cafe is to do something specific, and when that is done, we feel terribly out of place remaining there.

Today, there i was in one of those blank Costa coffees, in Hornchurch, reading away. i had long finished my drink, and felt not the slightest anxiety about staying in out of the cold and reading. But the moment a polite waiter / barista fellow took my cup away, the pressure of being visibly without a purchased drink from the cafe was too great. Absolutely intolerable. And so out I went.

You might ask, reasonably, why not buy another cup? Two reasons. First, I am miserly; second, two cups of coffee sends me off into psychedelic brain meltdown territory and i start jabbering like a lunatic, often to myself. This is also something the contintental coffee drinking professional does not suffer from.

Cafe culture is now a part of life in England. But can we do the continental attitude? Not quite yet, i suspect.

The Horns Tavern, West Norwood

Coming off the x68 at west Norwood yesterday, it was pouring with rain. So, I did the wise thing and bobbed into Tesco for some Bran Flakes while it passed. I bought them and a few other bits and came outside. It was raining harder than ever and I had left my brolly at work. It was raining so hard that I took evasive action and dived into the Horns Tavern.

Sitting opposite West Norwood Station, it is well-located for me to go in for the odd pint. But in two years, I haven’t been in there. I know this sort of place. I come from Essex.

In I went. I felt the eyes of the men upon me. The regulars. Putting the hours in to make the place their own. Not encouraging of passing trade, of chaps coming in out of the rain.

The distinction between myself and the men was clear. They were dressed in bomber jackets, jeans and boots. I had on my new three-quarter length black-and-white coat from River Island that tapers to accentuate my slender frame. There were looks to my Tesco carrier bag. You don’t bring your shopping to the pub; you get your missus to go shopping.

I ordered a Guinness from the rotund woman behind the bar: the only woman in the Horns. Guinness always helps to placate men who see my somehwhat effete appearance as an affront to their masculinity. They look at me and think, ‘who’s this cunt!’ Then they see the Guinness, and somehow it acts as a tough mate, saying, ‘he looks like a poof, but he’s not; he’s drinking Guinness.’

The Horns has plenty of entertainment to keep the men amused. Like all pubs of this sort, there are tellies everywhere. There are two big screens at either end of the bar, plus a couple of small TVs, with some sort of online poker game on them. There are little control panels for people to play if they want.

A fruit machine makes its garish appeal to the drinkers. A jukebox plays rigorously heterosexual 70s rock (The Who, The Clash). There’s a pool table.

I take a seat at a table at the back of the pub, below one of the pull-down screens. As I sup my Guinness and read my book, a few details come alive. One of the men is wearing a high-visibility jacket. I’ve done plenty of jobs where you wear these jackets, but I always love to see a man asserting his manual worker status by wearing the thing to the pub. It’s a sort of perverse fashion statement.

The Horns does food. There’s a large chalkboard in the front bar, with but one offer: ‘pizza and beer £6’. An interesting concept, perhaps half-remembered from a trip to Wetherspoon’s. The only food I see consumed is pork scratchings.

One of the blokes playing pool showed the full extent of his descriptive powers. “Who’s that cunt?” he says, trying to remember someone. And then to flesh out the description he adds, “That person.” It wasn’t enough, no one knew and the conversation moved on.

When the football came on, I’d finished my drink. I had the money for another pint but decided the lure of watching Man City v Arsenal in the Carling Cup was not for me, and so wove past the pool players and the pitcher drinkers and left. It had stopped raining and I walked home merrily.

After 'The White Ribbon'

I went to see The White Ribbon today. Went to the early showing, really early, 11.40am. Only time it was on down at the Ritzy.

It was about the right time to see a film like that. Going to the early showing gives you the rest of the day to get over it.

The film, lauded at Cannes, follows a cycle of violence and cruelty in a village in Germany about a hundred years ago. It shows the village leaders (a baron, a priest) using their authority mixed with Christian morality as a weapon with which to control and subdue the villagers. This unbending intolerance is repeated down the lines of authority, from the strongest to the weakest.

One scene of perfectly wrought unpleasantness follows another for two claustrophobic hours.

At the end of the film, the last image fades very slowly to black, and the credits roll in silence. No-one in the audience speaks. It is hard to know what to say. Everyone is agog, traumatised, hushed.

The audience pushes out of the auditorium, heads down mostly. It's not nice to look into someone else's eyes after that. You can't help thinking you might see something you had not previously noticed. Something unpleasant.

I spent the rest of the afternoon reading the News of the World and watching football as a sedative against the dark, Ibsen-like vision of Michael Haneke.

Essex cultural life takes over the nation

Keen followers of Essex cultural life have been having a good run of it lately.

Stacey Solomon, 19, of Dagenham, is the last girl left in X Factor, and the prospect of romance with Olly Murs, also of Essex, is the talk of the trashy mags.

Brit-flick, Fishtank, set on the Mardyke Estate, Rainham, telling the story of what is known in those parts as a ‘gobby cow’, is winning awards left, right and centrte.

A quick glance at the football league tables shows Dagenham & Redbridge in their highest ever position, at the top of Division 2.

And this week , in addition to this great swirl of cultural activity, enters Peter White, 26, of Romford. This hitherto unknown unemployed man hit the front page of the Daily Express on Tuesday, under the banner headline:

OUTRAGE AT
‘PARASITE’
ATTACK ON
THE QUEEN


http://express.co.uk/posts/view/140813/Outrage-at-parasite-attack-on-the-Queen-

It turns out that young Peter was aiming to stand as a local councillor at the next general election in the very ward in which I grew up: South Hornchurch.

The hotblooded male had waded into the Queen on none other than Andrew Rosindell MP’s facebook page. The Romford MP thought we should have a day off next year to celebrate the Queen being on the throne for 300 years (or something). White thought not, and called QEII a parasite and, even more intemperately, vermin.

The brave, but foolish, Peter has now apologised for his honestly held opinions. His republican outburst has been snuffed out by that great defender of the monarchy, Andrew Rosindell (with help from his British bulldog).

Yes, Peter has been rattled and may never surface from his parents’ house again. But it shows, once again, that all the best things come out of that much-maligned conurbation that joins Dagenham and Romford and Rainham.

The pleasures of south London commuting

Some people hate their commute. Really hate it. They wake up in the morning and think, ‘not that again’. I can’t face another day of this. Miserable London, too many people. Moan moan moan.

But there is an exclusive club of people who really rather enjoy their daily commute. No, we are not masochists. We are the passengers on the X68 service which rolls in from the nether-regions of south London into the very heart of the city.

For those who are not familiar, the X68 runs from South Croydon, up to Russell Square. Nightmare, you might think. But note the ‘X’. This stands, if you will, for express. This service runs, and you’ll need to follow me closely now, nonstop, between West Norwood, where I pick up the service, and Waterloo.

No stopping for the people of Tulse Hill, Herne Hill, Camberwell, or Walworth. They can stick their thumb out; they can try to flag it down. But the X68 will roll on by, oblivious to their entreaties.

This divine route means the travellers on-board have something of a camaraderie. You have that feeling of being above the hoi polloi as they struggle onto trains and buses, all elbows and knees and bags and sweat and the hopeless struggle to avoid eye contact.

The X68 takes you back to the good old days, by which I mean those days which never really existed, of people sitting in comfort as they are taken swiftly to their desk job.

Naturally, the same faces are seen every day. A group of middle aged Asian men get on the bus and acknowledge each other with a look which says, ‘Oh, so you take the X68 as well, you wise old thing.’

At West Norwood Station, the stop after mine, the bus driver calls out: ‘Next stop, Waterloo.’ And on occasion, in those moments of rich humour for the commuter, a lady frantically gets to her feet, and calls out, ‘WAIT!’ And the rest of us quietly chuckle to ourselves and enjoy seeing someone scramble off of our pleasant double-decker.

These are the quiet pleasures of south London suburban living.

Tampering with genius: the 'new' Hitchhiker's book

When looking at books to buy, I always become somewhat suspicious when I see two authors on the front page. Not a co-authoring project, but a 'brand' name at the top, and the real author at the bottom.

This is the kind of thing which happens with thriller writers like James Patterson. It is a commercial enterprise: Patterson outlines the plot, and the hack writer churns out several hundred pages of thriller. Patterson gives it his seal of approval and it's on your supermarket bookshelves a few weeks later.

That's fine. James Patterson is alive. He is making no bones about the fact that his creative juices overflow so wildly he cannot possibly write down all of his ideas for trashy thrillers himself.

But when I find Britain's best-loved author of the twentieth century, Douglas Adams, fronting a book by Eoin Colfer, I become shocked. Adams is dead. He can't give that seal of approval. He can have no say over the product bearing his name.

I become even more shocked - appalled, even - when I see that Colfer has picked up the thread of the work for which Adams is known, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Colfer has written part six of three. This is a crime.

Euan Ferguson wrote a review in the Observer:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/11/and-another-thing-douglas-adams

He said the book is really quite good. I believe him. But that is not the point. This is a series of books with which millions of people have fallen in love over the years. It shouldn't be expanded on, extended or tampered with. These are Adams' characters. This is his universe which he chose to share with us. It is not for another author to come along and bandwagon the operation, a few years after the author's death, and carry on the franchise. The whole thing seems crass.

It is so crassly commercial that nobody even in the world of rap music has attempted it. Yes, Tupac and Biggie have both had flourishing careers after their untimely deaths. But not even Puff Daddy has attempted to create a Notorious BIG album, with no real material from the rotund rapper himself. He just samples a bit of Biggie rapping, brings in an alive rapper and a honey-voiced singer, and he has the 'Duets' project. That is honest by comparison.

There is no suggestion, even, that Adams was thinking up a final book and Colfer is picking it up. No, he feels the man's muse and writes a book in Adams's name. And, worse still, there may be more to come.

Ferguson says this in the Observer:
Colfer has given us a delight, and an eye-opener, and hope, and, close as this book does on the line "The end of one of the middles", the near-promise of more to come.

This is not a near-promise. When I saw the advert for the book on the tube, I felt a nagging distress, a feeling that one of my heroes was being tampered with, with no chance of recourse.

Who knows if Adams would mind. Many splendid creative types take horrific decisions late in their career (see Beatles video game for evidence). Adams' wife did sanction the project.

But I'm sure many, many fans of the Hitchhiker's series of books mind very much. The best way to put a stop to this tawdrey enterprise is to avoid buying or reading Colfer's book, and hope it disappears, with no more additions.

The strange similarity of GPs and IT support

Walking up to the doctor, my hobble became slightly less so. This is a recurring theme for me. You wake up and think, 'I really do need a trip to the doctor'. And then, when faced with the GP, you think, 'perhaps I didn't need to visit the doctor quite so much'. It's as if by sheer force of seeing these highly-paid public servants, you get a bit better.

That said, my knee was making a funny clicking sound, and I was having trouble descending stairs. A lifetime of hearing about footballers doing their anterior cruciate - a six month layoff at least - meant I should get it checked out.

The doctor was a young Asian woman, perhaps younger than I. She sat at her desk with that posture and look on her face which spoke of confidence, almost arrogance. I eased myself into the seat, making a thing of it.

I explained the situation. Trip to the Lakes; Scafell, Striding Edge (yes, that's right, both in two days). Subsequent knee pain. She was unimpressed. It was clear that if you didn't have cholera or plague, you were wasting her time.

She got me on the bed, and waggled my knee about. I yelped. She said there wasn't any fluid - and left it at that. Had I not done my cruciate? Would I not be out from my desk job for the next six months?

The doctor went back to her desk; I followed, gingerly.
She told me I had a bit of swelling, and I should take some paracetemol for a week and if things had not improved to come back. She turned back to her computer as a way of concluding our interview.

Feeling shortchanged from my free appointment, I reflected that GPs often dealing with people very much as IT support staff do. GPs suggest a week of paracetemol just the same as IT support suggest switching your computer off and turning it back on again.

And the galling thing is that it nearly always works.

the staffordshire hoard

Walking through Birmingham town centre, I saw a good old-fashioned queue patiently formed. It was a bit cold, a bit wet; a typical Birmingham day. It was one of those queues you rarely see any more. It was an experience in itself. The people in it felt they had little prospect of reaching the front, and when there, they would have quite forgotten what purpose they had in mind.

I tried to work out what the queue was for. It could have been the post office, but the days of the really good post office queue are over. No one knows where their local one is, and the places are so forbidding and lacking in value that only those on a serious nostalgia trip would think of going there on a Monday morning.

No, it had to be something else, something really good. I carried on walking and saw a big sign advertising the wonders of Matthew Boulton. As a former employee of the Science Museum, my heart leapt at people from Boulton's home town still being so inspired by this titan of the industrual revolution, that they would wish to queue for several hours on an autumn weekday for a look at a steam engine.

I wandered round the corner and saw the queue was indeed leading to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. I walked up to the entrance, a move which aroused some consternation among the queuing public.

"You here for the gold?" said the lady from the museum.
"I'm here for Boulton," said I.
"Well walk straight in, then, and keep to the right."
"What's the gold you are referring to?"
"It's the Staffordshire Hoard," said the lady, impatiently. This was clearly common knowledge.
"And how long is the queue?"
"About three-and-a-half hours."
"Is it always that long?"
"No, if you come at 9am, you might only have to wait for an hour-and-a-half."

I decided I was better off spending some time with Matthew Boulton, and walked into the desolate gallery. I reflected that this was one of those great British events, the one that everybody had spotted. It was the combination of the lucky find, the anglo-saxon hoard, much bigger and of more value than anyone had thought. Quickly dusted off and put on public display, the Brummies, seeing the Staffordshire hoard as a local history find of unparalleled importance, had seen that here was really something. Here was a once in a generation opportunity to queue.

Brixton Urban Green Fair

"This isn't good enough. These olives, they're sticky."
"That's an outrage. I've never been so insulted in all my life."
The woman jabs at the olives.
"They're sticky. I want my money back."

Urban Green Fair, Brixton. The home of drum workshops, holistic massage, and falafel. Christians and Buddhists. The Brixton Pound brigade. And lots of green groups.

Picking my way through the crowd, through to the Friends of the Earth stall where I am putting in a shift, I am reminded of just how many green organisations there are. Greenpeace are there, worrying about fish and nuclear warheads, World Development Movement are concerned about international finance, Climate Camp are against 'clean' coal, and Transition Town Brixton want to reduce dependance on oil. Friends of the Earth are campaigning about the food chain ie. that feed for animals here should be produced here and not on rainforest land.

The event is pleasant, filled with cycling vegetarians, of which I am one, talking genially about allotments and rearing chickens. Many times I start chatting to people about the meat and dairy issue and they raise a hand and say, 'I know.' The phrase 'preaching to the converted' comes up more than once.

It is a harmless exercise in the concerned few having a day signing their support for each other's campaigns. But without other things to draw people to the event, namely Chucklehead cider, a feature of the Lambeth Country Show, most people will generally not bother attending.

That seems a shame. Better to expand the remit a bit, get some traders and tunes, and give the green groups a chance not just to chat to their own. Otherwise the only argument you will hear at the Urban Green Fair will be about the quality of the olives.

Goldacre debate with science minister

I've just been down to the Royal Institution where Ben 'Bad Science' Goldacre was debating the quality of science journalism with science minister Lord Drayson. Simon Mayo chaired.

Lord Drayson was 'for' science journalism and Goldacre, inevitably, 'against'. Paul Drayson's argument was that there was a low point in science journalism in 2002/03, with MMR stories scaring parents into not taking their children for the vaccine. He said things have improved since then. He also made a case for sensationalism, because it gets so many more people talking about science, citing end of the world fears about the Large Hadron Collider project which made people aware about physics.

Goldacre, a chirpy, lively character whose fans filled the auditorium, said there should be more for the nerd in the media. He made a case for more features about general trends in science, rather than news stories about research being published. That seems unrealistic and a recipe for dullness.

He was dismissive of the Daily Express's science coverage. Today's front page was mentioned which talks of research into a new cancer drug which could help thousands. His criticism was of the Express generally, not of the story in particular. However, this story, from Breakthrough Breast Cancer, for whom I work as press officer, showed good quality journalism from the Express.

The story was well-written, with a good explanation of the research. It cited the peer-reviewed journal in which the research was published and quoted the scientists who led on the research, Professor Alan Ashworth and Dr Chris Lord.

Michael Hanlon, from the Daily Mail, made a stout defence of his newspaper's journalism. He said while his paper does sometimes write conflicting stories, that reflects research published in journals such as Science and Nature.

James Randerson, from the Guardian, said that a recent survey had showed that the vast majority of scientists were happy with how research was represented in the media. He also disliked the suggestion from Goldacre that there was something wrong with a journalist picking up a piece of research, quickly familiarising themselves with the story, conducting interviews and then writing it up within a few hours. ie he was defending the daily news journalism process.

Both Paul Drayson and Ben Goldacre shifted towards the common ground through the debate. Both have a role to play: the minister in promoting groundbreaking research and quality journalism where he sees it, Goldacre in scaring everyone in the media and science PR to do the best job they possibly can.

I think that Goldacre's appeal for more journalism for the nerd is unrealistic. Science is more often than not funded by ordinary non-scientists who raise money for research in the name of a good cause. These millions of people need to hear about the research, so they can see the benefit of the money they are raising. Without their money, many scientists would be out of a job, and we wouldn't see progress made in treatment of diseases like cancer. We need to see science not relegated to a niche, but promoted as being important and interesting for everyone.

Result of the debate: a high scoring match, edged by Paul Drayson.

Uncovering layers of Oxford Street

The overhaul of Tottenham Court Road station to make way for the Crossrail project is seeing the urban fabric stripped back. The dilapidated Victorian corner blocks are being pulled down; expect a glass and steel replacement.

Most of the area is covered with scaffold and protective sheets, like a theatre curtain disguising a change of scene.

Dionysus chip shop has gone: no fish and chips this side of Holborn now.

And down on Oxford Street, Waterstones has been closed. The shop sign has been pulled down, revealing the long-forgotten Dillons bookshop chain. The mind is cast back to a time before the coffee shop and gourmet sandwich takeover, to the 80s high street, of Our Price, Wimpy, Woolworths and C&A.

Standing faded and unnoticed on London's most famous shopping street, it looks older than any church: the prehistoric world of retail before the internet; the high street before Americanisation.