'Mare of London

So what are the choices facing us electors next week in London's Mayoral elections?

On the one hand you have the media-savvy one with the unruly hair, a shopping list of uncosted policies and the funny accent. On the other hand you have the astute political performer with years of experience and friends in high places, basking in his subtle shift to the centre ground.

As for the gay one with the fetching smile and penchant for nicking the other candidates policies - well he hasn't got a hope in hell of winning so why even bother considering him? I think he kind of knows that anyway hence his newfound knockabout style.

Who, oh who, can save us from all this?

boris london mayor elections mayor

The Dangers of Cake

So it is TWO YEARS WITHOUT SMOKING.....HIP HIP HOORAY

What's it been like? Do I still miss it?

Relatively painless thanks to 1)pressure from R 2)inspiring efforts from AB and others 3)I forgot was three was.

I have managed to get through a new job (to be honest the new job helped me adjust - my routine was less set in its ways) and, amazingly, I have got through the stress of buying and moving into a new house. This only leaves divorce as a true testing ground of how successful my change-around has been. R take note ;-)

In a respiratory way I do feel better but my sedantry lifestyle and extensive self-pampering have puffed me up considerably. Its not only my habits that have been transformed.

My quitometer has gone a bit mad as I had been warned it would. It has now started deducting money saved - I have only saved £200 now instead of the £1,000 odd I had reached last year.

Perhaps it is more realistic than I thought. Maybe it will also start stating that my life expectancy is going down rather than up. Even if that is the case I think I still prefer the feeling that I am less chained down to my addictions.

R had an anniversary of a more normal kind - her anniversaire in fact. At one point we found ourselves in the garden (yard more accurately) of the Greenwich Union. It was a bit drizzly but it was a well covered. There had been a couple there but they moved back inside as soon as we turned up. I saw an ashtray and suddenly remembered that gardens are where smokers are supposed to go when visiting pubs. Where were they all? At home I guess or walking around the street swigging cans. Perhaps they've all given up.

Playing with my Asus Eeepc I have looked into the world of ebooks a bit. There is a good reader bundled that handles a few common Ebook formats the sort you can get at the Gutenberg Project and Memoware. I downloaded a copy of Vanishing England written way back ages ago and it was lamenting the passing of the traditional boozer too. The older you get the more lamenting you do. Smoking around the fire was the only tobacco reference he made. Most of the desriptions centred around food. Pubs packed to the seams with everyone caning cigarettes isn't the way it always was anyway.

I am about to walk from the Juice Bar to the Sussex in Baylis Road - it's trying to do food a bit more, "Proper Pie 'n Mash" in fact with tables decked out in the fashion of a pie and mash shop. I hope its successful because I like the landlord. I am surprised they're feeling the pinch as they have a lot of outside seating. So food marches back to it's central position in the life of our taverns and my waistline really doesn't stand a chance.

smoking smoking ban london pubs

Plumstead High Street

I love this picture - its got a wild west feel to it. It's looking from the west to the east. The lamp post on the right is the entrance to what is now Mineral Street- or at least I think it is.

A made a tentative start to a mini-project : photographing the High Street. I am curious to see if I will ever be able to complete it. By the time I have photographed both the north and south sides something will have changed again - another estate agent opened, another pub closed.

When I went out for my first 'shoot' early on a Sunday a few weeks back my batteries ran out after half a dozen snaps and I couldn't be bothered to go back and start off again. Its got to be done in order or I will get too muddled at the editing end of the process. And the weather was horrible.

I have attempted to stick a couple up on Google-Earth. I am a total newb as far as adding content (kml/z files etc...) so I be interested to see if they have turned up yet.

Oh yes - the High Street has a central role in what seems like a new blog in Plum. It's called Planet Plumstead and wants to get a debate going about the High Street. I'm off to check it out right now in fact. ( Blogger is giving me an error so here's the link long-hand www.planetplumstead.co.uk )

If you've got Google Earth my two pics are supposed to be at the Walmer Terrace and Griffin Road junctions with the High Street. Haven't got a clue if they're up there yet though.

plumstead google earth photography

Railing again

I have just been trialling the eeepc as an on the move blog-assister. You can check the results here.

eeepc

Specious Drivelly

I am in a bit of a rage about good old postie and his jolly ol' chums. (Such as Nick Clegg below).

I won't bother you with the details (just yet) but I was a bit surprised to see how little gets thrown up on the web when you type into Google "Royal Mai*^~~~*****!!!!! ****** bad *******improvement needed from the little ****s"

Maybe I am in a tiny little minority of one with my postal misfortunes.

The only thing that really cheered me up was coming across this site promisingly called Hellmail.

I immediately started looking for its forum so I could vent my rage, get help advice and all those forumy things. Turns out they don't have one. Not any more they don't.

The site has a general feel of "the Royal Mail do slip up from time to time but they're all human and they do a tremendous job given the circumstances".

Take this attitude and combine it with what they say on their site and their speling ...well draw your own conclusions (front front front). I love the begging letter at the end.

On 31st August 2007, we closed our busy and highly succesful forums after two years, to concentrate on news and editorial. It was not an easy decision to make and we still, to this day, mourn the loss of so many valued contributors but we felt that forum content often sat at odds with editorial, was enormously time consuming, and could in some cases be damaging to businesses and jobs(my italics-erik). Hellmail has since that time become an important source of information for news and informationand arguably m(o)re effective.We still believe in everyone having the opportunity to put forward their own viewpoint and many of those original forum members went on to become Hellmail writers (see 'Extended Writing Team' above..Editor: "We particularly welcome views from former-members including TMFTPO, Amber Leaf, Singing Postman wherever they may be. Their contribution was enormous."

Yes Comrade Editor we agree gratitude is due to such exemplars of the Postal IdeaL Nothing to do with this outfit I guess.

(EDIT: I have since got a couple of responses to emails that I sent to Hellmail and they were really nice and I feel totally rotten for mocking them)

I'm in general raging mood and will slip into politics briefly.

Nick Clegg is promising "an in-and-out Referendum on Europe. As in "in-and-out of my manifesto whenever it suits matey"?

In one sense Labours betrayal is far more disgraceful - after all the people who voted for them did it in the knowledge they might actually form a government.

But they are the Liberal Democrats...does that mean nothing? Perhaps it means "let the Liberals do the choosing for you (plebs)"?

The Cameron squeeze seems to mean the Libs have to break their manifesto promises just to get some attention.

And all the crap that has come out defending it all...."that's what we pay MPs for" "the issues are too complex" and "media's undue influence". They should all get jobs at the Royal Mail immediatement

(EDIT - I have subsequently heard a Radio 4 profile of Nick Clegg and I don't feel the least bit rotten. Its not him anyway - if it was "he" could easily be "solved". Unfortunately its a bit more widespread and deep-seated than that).

thanks to sarahmonster for the sentiment on flickr

europe referendum betrayal nick clegg
royal mail stalin mister bean

Fast Food

A couple of Plumstead chums (ages various) have taken it into their heads to run for literally mile and mile to raise money for people needier than themselves.

The prospect of completing this gruelling course is highly likely given the intense training routines they have committed to.

If you have a few pennies to spare why not sponsor the Blah Blah Fishcakes as they join Sport Relief's big event?

plumstead sport relief

Fags passed

A comment on my last post prompted me to do a bit more nostaglia searching.

Yahoo answers (1 and 2) featured strongly for some reason. There must be some kind of search-engine-users profiling that might explain why that is -- Google images was unable to provide a single image of Player's Number 6 but that was probably because of my apostrophe.

It did provide an Embassy picture though with a link to a pertinent site.

Are Players still going? The short answer is a "Wikipedia Yes". The full story is here.

Our yeah I did find a Players No.6 picture somewhere. A beermat as it happens. When I smoked them I didn't have much legal reason to come across such a thing - I was too young for pubs.

I gravitated towards No.10 myself. I could fit one into a Swan Vesta match box - the idea being that this would be a clever disguise if a teacher chose to search my pockets.

"Ah...so what do we find here Fuller?"

"A matchbox sir - like for non-expellable activities like aimless match-flicking and minor acts of arson all totally innocent sir"

" Right! You better not be lying to me Fuller....move along"

My preferred Half Coronas wouldn't fit obviously so extra care had to be taken on the suspicion-raising front.


Embassy smoking 1970s Swan Vesta
Players cigarettes

You're never alone with a Flickr

This attractive dummy appears on the pages of a little Flickr group I came across this morning. Nice isn't she?

The group is called Smooth Smoke Slogans and it specialises in good old fashioned cigarette adverts.

I used to love the look and feel of adverts as a young impressionable smoker. I can always recall to my mind an advert in Hampton Hill High Street for a packet of Carltons - a cool purple type of affair (as were the packets) and thought I would try and fit a packet into my extensive sampling programme. I didn't get round to it partly because I had half an idea that the lads at school might pick up on the fact that the packaging was a bit, hmmm, feminine. I also think that the unavailability of the brand in packets of ten was another off-putting factor. I didn't want to blow two weeks tobacco budget on an untested smoke despite that colour being so lush and enticing.

Who knows what impact buying some Carltons might have had on my future development? I might have been humiliated by my mates ("No thanks Fuller, I'd sooner wear high heels") and given up on the whole cool smoker act and gained an extra ten years of life. Alternatively it might have led to me discovering I did like wearing high heels as well. Though I confess I am wearing my partner's polka dot pyjama bottoms as I write this, that's about the limit of my cross-dressing. Honest.

More cigarettes presented similar problems for the adolescent male smoker. I always liked cigars and cheroots and More obviously looked cigar-like. You could just about get away with them for a few days before buckling down to some proper cigs again. But More Menthols? No way, no never no way.

Thanks to hier-houd-ik-van for his picture "Mary Long".

You can find a bit more cigarette nostaglia here.

smoking cigarette advertising flickr advertising hampton hill

But where's the Blog-o-matic?

If you're giving up smoking you could do worse than turn to the world of gadgets for a bit of therapy.

They've certainly been helpful to me in the past. Another ex-smoker I know rewarded himself with the money he had saved by buying an iPod – and in case that seems a bit commonplace it's worth pointing out it was a few years back and it was the purchasing equivalent of buying an iPhone with the full 99 year contract. Or drinking champagne for breakfast for six months on the trot and not the supermarket own brand.

Although the need to reward myself has now waned the need to renew oneself with gadgets remains and there have been a few in my life recently. And heh! This is a blog for chrissakes and what are blogs about? Technology for stevessakes. (I did have a dream about Steve Jobs the other night – the bit with him playing with the train set is fresh in my mind).

First up and slightly more modestly priced than the early iPods and present day iPhones is the Lidl stopwatch. This is a standalone device with a modal operating systems. The four modes are Timer, Stopwatch, Alarm clock and some other time thing - I can't remember. Its wireless so you can use it in the kitchen to time eggs/pasta as well as use it to wake up in the middle of the night if you forget to reset the hourly reminder tinkle. I don't know if the hourly tinkle is for the overly hyper (time is slipping through my fingers) or the “time weighs heavily” types (only another hour...I'm sooo depressed..tick...tock...). It's pretty useless and I'm surprised Nameless Plastic Items at Lidl Limited bundled it with the more useful features in this gizmo.

Another stopwatch enabled device I picked up was the Nokia 6233 which is a neat little 3g phone. You can't video-call with it due to the lack of a front-facing camera and its only a Series 40 type phone meaning you're stuck with some limited applications. I did install MobyExplorer on it from Bermin software but it hasn't run smoothly and despite stumping up for the licence have had zero support from them. Its a file manager with some encryption software and a FTP feature and a text editor thrown in. Its also supposed to be certificated. this is important because without it the 6233 keeps throwing up a dialogue asking if I give it permission. MobyExplorer's website gives precise instructions and I managed to get the trial version to function smoothly. What's really annoyed me is that the licencing process involves installing a new version rather than just inserting the reg code (unlike Tracker and Fileman for my A925).

I'm very happy with the phone itself - I have lugged around a big phone for a while and this does most of what I want.

More importantly it is my first “generic phone purchase”. That is – it is not linked to a phone network -neither is it a phone that was previously linked to a network and has subsequently been unlocked and or re-flashed.

This does create a few problems but the advantages are major. You don't have a device that has been geared to pointing you towards services you do not want. Certain options that would normally be blocked out are there.

However it's frustrating that I can't allow whatever software I want (such as Bermin's) to run. So, although I escape the clutches of the network I remain within the clutches of the manufacturer. They presumably want to avoid the hassle of support calls from people that have messed up their phones and then have the gall to complain about it. Surely PC manufacturers have to deal with the same thing (multiplied a hundredfold) and have introduced measures to head off those problems. I have heard that this is a Nokia problem rather than with generic phones in general.

My network is the 3 network and that is the main reason why I got a 3g phone. I don't have a contract and wouldn't want one at this stage. I guess I could have got a locked PAYG phone deal and transferred my SIM over but I do like the opportunity to stick any card in if I, or R. need to. And when you do the locked PAYG prices with the compulsory minute purchasing and compare with a generic phones prices it begins to look less prohibitive.

Obviously the higher-end phones have scary prices. But that is what they cost. If we could break our association with handset and network so that something akin to the computer world took place we could spend less time going insane trying to calculate the benefit of handset and bundle offer over another.

Now those scary priced phones only cost money because they are pretty much little computers. And so we move seamlessly to my third gadget – the ASUS Eeepc.

The first thing to say about it is that it doesn't have a scary price. It doesn't have a hard drive. It doesn't have a DVD drive. But it does have an awful lot of what you would expect in a laptop and it is great. The early ones are Linux (Xandros) but you can install XP. Later ones will come pre-installed with Windows and relunctantly I would say that may be what drives the Asus (and an entire industry based on affordable ultraportables) forward. It has Wifi but seeing as this is Britain that doesn't mean two much. More importantly for me it has an ethernet port (unlike the Macbook Air and the Nokia Internet tablets). With the help of some Homeplugs we now have a two PC household where I can be writing a blog whilst R checks her emails. (And no I haven't written a blog with it yet – the small screen and keyboard seem a bit daunting for such a mesy blog creator a s myself. I need all kinds of things cutting and pasting across each other to make the simplest post. I will use it but there's a lot more configuration to do first. For everything else – emails, browsing, playing music and watching BBC iPlayer streams its a star. And its principally as an internet device for around the house that I got it. I can time my eggs with my Lidl stop watch whilst listening to Delia explain the finer points of a successful boil.

asus Nokia 6233 eeepc lidl

Doing it in the Road

157 George Street.
Originally uploaded by mr walker

I was walking up our road last night and confused to see people standing outside of their houses smoking. Not everyone in the street of course because then I would have known I was dreaming.
Two sets of people. A bit strange.

There is a lot of rented accomodation down our road so perhaps they were incredibly scrupulous tenants observing the no-smoking clause in their agreements. I could also understand the smokers being in the minority in their households and stepping outside at the behest of their non-smoking co-habitants. It was the standing outside bit on the pavement that confused me- our street consists of small terraced houses each with reasonably sized backyards. If I was them I would much rather smoke in my private space around the back than stand in the street with bloggers brushing by me with their shopping and such like.

The second pair spoke to each other in a foreign language. Perhaps they were only recently arrived to this country and have seen the way the natives like to stand outside in the street smoking their cigarettes? Perhaps they haven't made the link with smoking and standing in the street at all and they think there are loads of spontaneous street happenings in the offing in the UK in general or Plumstead in particular and are coming outside full of expectation.

A more prosaic reason might be that my mystery smokers don't want to die young. Not from cancer but being burnt alive. There was a fire in the street a few months back (druggies we were reliably informed). It might explain why they don't stand around the back too. There are no back paths out onto the street as far a I know.

Nah - it's got to be my street party theory.

Thanks to mr.walker at flickr for his photo 157 George Street.



plumstead smoking ban smoking

Smokin' the Shark

Smokin' the Shark
Originally uploaded by l_cheese.please_l

Ok.."Erik" is just a a label for this one but isn't that shark victim costume just brilliant?

Erik & Stefan

Erik & Stefan
Originally uploaded by Mögelfar

How's that for a party trick? Erik inhales and Stefan exhales (or vice versa).

2000.04.25: Erik smoking

2000.04.25: Erik smoking
Originally uploaded by Sixfoot6

Ok it's not me. But i have found there's a few Erik Smoking type photos on Flickr. I feel a series coming on.

Trusty Tar

I was playing with my new phone and came across this. What a cheeky lad I was when I smoked. How gay and care-free.

Sorry about the appalling quality but it is a cameraphone from a few years back. I understand technology has moved on since then but my 2mb camera at least seems as bad as my good old NEC 808. I understand there are more quality options with the video capture on the Nokia though.

Happy New Year

So the Year of the Ban has come and gone and is any one much bothered?

A couple I know have given up having the occasional visit to the pub by themselves. Either they had to sit alone whilst the other half had a cigarette or they both went for one together - that is they went to stand on a pavement together on a freezing winter night. Not exactly a hot date. They just stay at home now and smoke to their hearts content.

Another wavering smoker is very happy with the ban - she's so glad she doesn't come home from the pub smelling of smoke. She has the occasional cigarette but not down the pub - she has to find other excuses. And she does (find other excuses).

For my part it is my second new year without a cigarette and I don't miss it at all.

A lot of people will have given up as a New Year Resolution. Good luck. I did it once using the Alan Carr method - it was the nuttiest January I have ever had wrestling the mini nicotine monsters he encourages you to visualize whilst undergoing cold-turkey. Never again.

Literally.

Hopefully.

A poke from behind

Today I got this in my gmail inbox:

" Dear future self,
I'm reminding you about your stated goal on 43 things,
to "Quit Smoking". How's it going?

Sincerely,

Your past self "


It was from a social networking site called 43Things.

I can't remember setting it up but I doubt a Superbrain computer did it off it's own bat.

So what do I say to my past self?

Yeayyyy!!!! I have actually gorn and done it - I have not smoked since whenever it was - April 2006.

I still have the odd one in my dreams and I occasionally make jokey remarks about needing one if something particularly stressful has taken place - but yes Past Erik, the Erik of Christmas Present is currently a non-smoking Erik. Can you believe it?


smoking quit smoking



Thanks to tarnie at flickr for "xmas past"

The Chicken Party

Krunchy Fried Chicken
Originally uploaded by hugovk

I was busily not helping around the house last weekend when I heard R deal with some visitors to the front door.

I later found out they had been canvassers for the forthcoming local elections - R mentioned her annoyance with one particular council policy but being the conscientious democrat that she is, she took a leaflet outlining the main planks they were standing on for her to study later .

It contained one of those questions that it is often unwise for a politician to ask. It went something like this - "did you know the Council is engaged in a major redevelopment program for Plumstead?" I thought the obvious answer would be no. But reading the detail it mentioned the refurbishment of shopfronts and it slowly dawned on me that I had in fact noticed it. I had been a bit bemused to see that the Chick-Chicken shop had renewed its hoarding a few weeks ago. A few days later I noticed another shop that sells an odd mixture of things including fried chicken had also had its sign renewed. I believe I even chucked a little comment up on my Facebook status line along the lines of "Erik is wondering if the refurbishment of all the fried chicken shops in Plumstead is a sign of development or retrenchment."

That's what the development programme seems to amount to anyway - at least as far as appearances are concerned. (It's just occurred to me that I saw a particularly dodgy estates agents had decided to have a a paint job-struck me as odd at the time). For a bold development program the council seemed to be making some odd choices as to what needed improving. The Chick-chicken shop had a perfectly adequate sign anyway. After all who needs a good shopfront when your marketing team have come up with such an excellent brand name?

Picture: Krunchy Fried Chicken
Originally uploaded by hugovk

fried+chicken plumstead local+elections london

Crimes and Misdemeanours

I've been feeling tired all week. I was woken in the night by Mr Scuttles who has taken over from John and Wayne apparently (did I tell you that Wayne was found looking uncomfortably dead in a trap in the bathroom?) Mr Scuttles was making a fair bit of noise - it sounded like he was trying on my hiking boots at one point.I made a mental note to kill him then went back to sleep. In fact my sleep has been relatively undisturbed but I still feel in need of more.

Is it the stresses and strains of the jury service I have just completed? I'm pretty sure I am not supposed to mouth off about the details but we found him guilty and the whole thing was pretty lame. There was a brutal murder closely connected to it but it was itself a mini-saga about the possession of controlled medecines. It was a bit unsavoury but I certainly didn't lose any sleep over it - it made me laugh a bit and it made me feel sad a bit but it was hardly the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Perhaps it's the troubles faced by Civil Servants this week? I am a bit annoyed that all read/write access to DVD drives and support for flash drives has been removed at work. Getting rid of the ability to copy to them makes sense of sorts - in fact you needed special permissions to write to CD/DVD before the debacle as far as I could work out. But not being able to read from them seems beside the point. We are all going around self-satisfied that it would never happen in our own particular corner of the world and have definitely not felt the need to pull duvets over our heads either metaphorically or actually.

Was it the dismal awfulness of the England versus Croatia game? Did that take it out of me? When I heard Israel beat Russia, coming back from my Irish friend Mariadphod's Birthday drink, I leapt up in the train , spun round and shouted the result down the carriage and one hundred Nigerians,Poles,Lithuanians,Indians, and Finns looked back at me blanky. Two sweet old ladies from Ghana asked me what I was excited about but I am not sure they understood. The Italian and Australian to my right at least knew there was a game a called football but were much more interested in Rugby. After this realisation that no one in England really cared about what happened to England's football team the defeat was a lot easier to take.

Perhaps its all due to not enough cigarettes all round.

Mr Scuttles certainly would not want to be poking around my smoke-ridden bedroom risking passively contracted mouse cancers.

If I had been desperate for a cigarette during our deliberations the jury would have moved along a bit quicker.

I would be getting regular breaks from my computer for fag breaks.

I could have enjoyed a quiet smoke instead of annoying all my fellow passengers.

I bet more members of the Croatia squad smoked than their English opponents.

And I am missing out on the enlivening effects of the plant itself - I now have to rely on the narrow gauge of caffeine that irritates more than it soothes.

A ghastly image of Fag Free Britain arises before my eyes - knackered and stressed and generally useless at everything.

Thanks to BlackScarletLove for the photo



football croatia england hmrc discs cd smoking smoking-ban cigarettes mouse mousetrap

Starlight Foundation

These are the links to donation forms the Starlight Foundation in the UK and the Australian Foundation respectively. You can click back to their homepages to see the kind of work they do brightening the lives of children with serious conditions.

The UK Starlight

https://secure.paradisii.net/Starlight/payment_details.asp

The Australian Starlight Homepage - click through to make a donation

http://www.starlight.org.au/Default.aspx?TabId=1374

Down Under

Melbourne 2006 : Flowers
Originally uploaded by simv

I have just found out about the sudden death of my uncle David.

He emigrated with Margaret and the children to Australia many years ago but I remember staying at their house, that David built himself, in Woodstock.

I last saw him at my cousins wedding and he seemed happier than ever.

I am glad that he got to meet my partner before he died - they got on like a house on fire.

My thoughts are with Margaret, Christine, Kevin and Colin and all the family.

He was buried this afternoon in Melbourne.

Gifts have been requested to go to the Starlight Foundation, a hospice for terminally ill children.

When I can find an obvious link that's suitable for UK citizens I will post it up.