Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

As I mentioned in my earlier post, Furtle and I spent several hours sauntering around the West End yesterday. The express purpose of the expedition was to take a few snaps of the Christmas lights while they are still up. Sadly, many of the snaps I took were beyond the ability of my little Cyber-Shot camera to capture adequately. That said, I expect that if I understood how to work it better, I may get more acceptable results, but unlike a number of my friends, I am not really into photography, so I have never really worked out how to get the best from it.

Be that as it may, ( here are some of the best that are viewable (One probably NSFW): )

For once, despite all the horror stories coming from National rail, the journey back down to London wasn't so bad. It took longer than it should have, but wasn't too bad. I had to walk across the centre of Birmingham to change between Moor Street and New Street stations, but that was OK too. My geographical knowledge of Brum is very poor; I can place the city on the map, but with the exception of the very immediate environs of New Street (and that information is largely 30 years out of date), the city plan is blank and labeled "here be dragons".

Anyway, it's only a 5 or 6 minute walk, and not the immense hike I had feared. Moor Street is a much nicer station to hang around on waiting than New Street, or would have been had the temperature been just a few degrees higher.

At least my ticket was valid for the enforced change and I eventually got back to the Athenaeum Club by seven o'clock (rather later than usual because of the additional traipse across London caused by coming in to Marylebone instead of Euston).

Looking at Christmas from a solely secular point of view, this year's haul has been my best for some time. Apart from the spiffy X-Files DVD box set from Furtle as reported previously, I am now the proud owner of twelve bottles of beer (I feel a song coming on), a Shrewsbury Town football shirt courtesy my niece and nephew, a shirt from my sister (It's a black shirt, happily free of silver runes. I'm not sure when people wear black shirts when not demonstrating outside the Reichstag), a cheque for £50 from Mum and a copy of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, the bilingual copy with the original text in parallel and the radio controlled dalek that I mentioned before I went away¹. I have, as they say, done quite well this year.

There has been the odd piece of decent TV over the holiday period. The past two nights have seen the final installment of Prime Suspect. Before that there was the BBC's new adaptation of Oliver Twist, with its odd little infusion from Merchant of Venice². I remain in two minds about the Christmas Dr Who special. Glossy, loud, brash and unnecessarily messianic, with further heaped spoonfuls of gay rights allegory. The story just about hung together, but once again demonstrates that the weakest of the script writing team is Rusty himself.

There we are. All up to date. I am back in the smoke and I still have another week off. Furtle will be back from Egypt tomorrow and there is still some vacation time ahead of us before the entire wheel starts off again in January.

Oh, and I have bought a new jacket for work so that I don't wander in for the first half of 2008 at least, looking like a tramp in tweed.

¹Now I know that I am not the world's most observant person, but I am sure that the Dalek I encountered in the bathroom this morning was not there last night...
²As colonel_maxim pointed out, Dickens did not have the judge attempt to force Fagin renounce his Jewish faith àla Shylock in what presumably was an attempt to make Fagin appear a little more sympathetic and possibly even a man of principle. An odd approach to a child exploiter/molester from the Victorian underworld, but there we are.

I haven't decided yet (though I shall have to, shortly) whether I am going home today or very early tomorrow. I have already had a text from my sister telling me my youngest niece wants me to go home today; the emotional blackmail begins before breakfast.

I have done the early run home on Christmas Eve before and once started, it isn't so bad. You can always doze off on the train. It's a bind, but not really a problem.

Coming back to London after Christmas will be a problem. The West Coast Line is being dug up again. I think that since the Paddington rail crash in 1999, there has been about one year when the lines have not been subject to hectic maintenance. I don't think much more than a fiver in maintenance was spent on the entire network between Nationalization in 1948 and de-Nationalization in the mid 80s, and maybe a tenner in the ten years before the rail crash. People have to die before improvements are made and that's what happened. So, time to get 60 years of maintenance done in under ten years.

The upshot is that on 29th when I aim to come back to London, I have two options: I can either take the usual route from Shrewsbury to London. That will involve rail replacement buses between Birmingham International and Northampton. Total travel time over 155 miles? Three hours 55 minutes.

Or, I can take the train from Shrewsbury to Birmingham New Street, walk across the city centre to Moor Street Station and travel down to London Marylebone. Total travel time a much more acceptable two hours 46 minutes but with a 20 minute walk in the middle with bags. If I take this option, I can't get a return ticket as I shall be using a different series of rail companies. That will effectively move the fare for the holiday from an already extortionate £45 to around £90...

I hate traveling in the UK.

I'm back. It's done and that's that until 4 January. Hurrah!

Returning via North Finchley, I have ventured into toy shops and their ilk for the first time in many moons. I was worried that I shouldn't be able to find what I was after amongst the mountains of tat being sold at sky-high prices, but Lady Luck smiled upon me before my patience ran out; it was a photo-finish, and Lady Luck won by a short head.

Once again, the incomprehensibility of 21st Century life hits me: there is a clear mismatch in my mind between the quality of toys for young pre-school children and the prices we are expected to pay for them (the toys, not the kids). For kids of school age there are some respectable quality toys out there, but it would be cheaper in the long run to put down a payment on a car for their 17th birthday and show them brochures in the intervening years (some day, my boy, all this will be yours).

On the other hand, a trip to Steve's Sounds on Charing Cross Road means that I now have a copy of Kate Bush's Aerial for the princely sum of a tenner. I shall now wander back into my bedroom, collapse in a heap, and listen to what people have been raving about this last six weeks.

I am not leaving the Athenaeum Club again today, with the possible exception of a brief foray across the road for fish and chips around 8'o'clock. Even that may not happen as I consoled myself with a Swedish Meatball sandwich from Subway (the first time I've been in one since the franchise landed from the US). It was very tasty and very large and I am replete. I am even prepared to forgive them for calling them submarine sandwiches, when they are clearly torpedo rolls. I suspect that's another English term destined for the rubbish dump of history now that another US import has arrived.

But it was a very tasty sarnie, and I am willing to forgive and forget.

For now.

I think that over 90% of the population of that section of North London adjacent to the High Barnet Branch of the Northern Line must be on holiday already. Plenty of room on the Tube this morning, and no delays, which meant that my customary doze was undisturbed by close proximity to the armpits of the great unwashed. Until Euston at least. The denizens of all points around Finsbury Park, Seven Sisters and Walthamstow are evidently NOT on holiday as the Victoria Line was packed as per usual.

Something has clearly gone right this year: I have had cheap read-in-the-loo books from both my direct line manager and the boss above him for Christmas. I will soon be able to tell you the origins of many colloquial phrases thanks to the one book – I have already identified a mistake, however, so that casts some doubt on the accuracy of the other snippets. Still, interesting enough in an entirely unacademic sort of way. My immediate boss knows better: I am now the proud owner of the 2006 Dr Who Annual. It’s like being 8 again except that I am in an office trying to draft responses to idiot questions from MPs.

I am knocking off early tonight (this afternoon). I want to wander into the West End and pick up my delivery of comics and such. I may treat myself to a CD or DVD or two, too. For once, I have enough spare room on my debit card that I don’t need to touch the recently paid-off credit cards. Of course, being as organised as I am, I have yet to purchase pressies for my Goddaughter or her little brother. I know what to buy, and where best to attempt the purchase, but locating an outlet is problematic. Why are there no Woolworths in central London? Ah well, I’ll pay a visit to the Finchley branch tomorrow if the worst comes to the worst. Hopefully they will have what I’m after.

Normally I don't mind this time of year too much, despite the busy workload we always have in the office trying to get the financial settlements sorted out for the new financial year. Christmas week itself is a pain, because it is so disruptive to my schedule: I like having the time off work, I don’t like the fact that everything from TV/Radio down is changed, sprinkled with saccharine cultural icing and repackaged with flimsy seasonal variants.

I am not a religious man, but I am reasonably certain that the modern evolution¹ of the seasonal message of cheer and goodwill to all has reached the commercial point that had he been here now instead of the Middle East 2,000 years ago, Jesus might well have by-passed the temple money lenders entirely and nuked the stock exchange instead. I realise, of course, that I am conflating different Biblical periods here, but the observation stands.

Christmas has become a cultural and financial black hole out of all proportion to its importance, and we are trapped on the event horizon watching our resources drain and time slow and stretch into infinity as we make futile attempts to escape. The effects of the holiday are only negated for a fortnight or so around July when we have finally paid off the excesses, financial and physical of the previous year, and before we start fretting about the consequences of the next one.

Many committed Christians in the past wouldn’t celebrate anyway as it is just a thin Christian veneer over a pagan holiday, and only has a 1/365 chance of being Jesus’ birthday. Easter (which is only notable in the UK for the fact that the pubs close early on Good Friday, otherwise it’s pretty much a normal day unless you want a bank loan) is by far the more important holiday.

This year the build up is annoying me just as much as the commercialisation of the holiday does. This is largely due to the fact that we have a certifiable Minister who can be relied upon to push everyone to the edge of nervous breakdown with additional and unnecessary work, but it’s also due to the fact that I needed to have a rant about something, and Santa happened to be the biggest, reddest and most visible target available, and I wanted a suitably sanctimonious whinge.


¹I know that one of my friends will be unhappy about both the usage and relevance of the word evolution in this context. It is exactly the right word for my purposes.