The best wooden rollercoaster (pre-1970) is the Grand National at Blackpool. This is a racing coaster (2 trains race, duh!) but was not built as two separate tracks. It's whats known as a mobius loop; one piece of continuous track with two stations side by side (if you depart from the left side station you return into the right side). Clear? Me neither, it's like that painting with the staircases that go nowhere which gives me a headache trying to work it out. The Grand National station is an art deco masterpice and has recently been refurbished back to its glory following a fire. Look how stunning it is. And at night too. Brand new trains and a computerised operating system were fitted during the refurb but this has resulted in this sometimes happening. I miss racing into the station watching the guy on the platform pulling back on the huge brake-lever trying to stop us hurtling into another train in the station which was still loading its passengers. I rode the 'Nash' a few times during my last trip to Blackpool and I can report that the computers made no difference to my ride and that the new trains are much more comfortable than the old ones (I was merely left 'bruised' after riding rather than 'severely bruised' as in the past).

My work here is complete. As a pair of hoarders who live in a shoe box our house in London has resembled those homes you see on telly in which old people die surrounded by 50 years of their 'stuff'. But now we have slimmed down the belongings (actually we just shipped most of it up to our much bigger house in Blackpool), got rid of those big 'ol clunky PC's, gave each of the rooms a proper function (what's a dining room?), went wireless with laptops (surf while you poop!), painted, put carpets down and generally made the place look like adults own it now instead of two stoner students. We now have a dining room in which to eat things that we heat in our microwave (learning to cook is next on the list) and a separate TV room where we watch shows about how to de-clutter your house and decorate rooms with a mental-hospital motif. I want to make my own exotic breads this winter so I'm going to shop for a new stove soon (our current appliance was bought at Toys R Us and runs on a single 10w lightbulb) and then the house will be filled with the smells of a Tuscany kitchen and the local paper will offer me their 'Homemaker Of The Year' award.
Of course what will probably happen is that the next big trend in interiors will be the cluttered stoner college dorm look and Wallpaper magazine will knock on our door because they heard we had perfected that look and we'll have to turn them away because our house now looks like something from the '60 Minute Makover' pages of Womans Weekly.

Mohn & Komplane
Mobile phone contract ended this week but I renewed with Vodafone as my tariff with them couldn't be beaten. They sent me a new phone too - a Motorola V3X which is just too lovely (and has a 2 megapixel camera). Nice lady at Vodafone told me the phone came with a USB cable for connecting to my laptop but mine arrived without it. I called to complain but the chap I spoke to said that his colleague had misinformed me and that the USB cable is an accessory and is not bundled with the phone. However, he apologised for his co-workers incompetance by giving me two months free line rental and calls (worth £30). I was very grateful because I just bought the USB cable on ebay for £5.

Back from Blackpool. Weather was unusually hot (though not as hot as here in London) so I did lots of beach strolling and paddling with Edward the dog (forgot the camera so no pics). I was Billy-No-Mates one day and rode roller coasters on my own and in the evening went to see the Hot Ice Show (fantastically camp and well up to Vegas standards). I thoroughly enjoyed working my way through season one of Curb Your Enthusiasm on DVD and also rented French films Le Clan and The Beat That MY Heart Skipped (both brilliant). Darren arrived for the weekend just in time to stop me talking to the walls. We climbed the dunes in tropical temperatures to watch the planes take off and went to see Superman Returns (quite good). But then Darren ate a dodgy calzone and got food poisoning which meant a delay for our return to London. I’m going to do it all again next month and then I’ll have no more time off work until December.

Oh 'appiness is bloomin'
All around 'er
The daffoldils are smilin'
At the dove
When Mary 'olds your 'and
You feel so grand
Your 'eart starts beatin'
Like a big brass band
Oh, it's a jolly holiday with Mary
No wonder that it's Mary that we love!




Carpets getting laid tomorrow so frantic painting taking place. Up a ladder last night in just my underpants whitewashing a ceiling, sweating like a pig even with all the windows open. I came down the ladder to load my brush and caught a neighbour in his garden waving at me. I blushed and closed the blinds.
I'm off to our dacha in Blackpool tonight with the dog for a week. Darren will join me next weekend and for the first time since we bought the house 3 years ago there are no jobs to do so it might just turn out to be a proper "'olliday with Mary".

From Wikipedia:
Mary is also used as an affectionate slang term for a gay man in the United States. It may be related to the Spanish offensive terms marica and maricón derived from María. Gay men who go to the gym, exercise or otherwise take good care of their physiques are often referred to as Muscle Marys.

Currently addicted to that Rhymefest track where he samples the riff from Someday by The Strokes. Also a bit partial to the George Michael tune Easier Affair and the Digitalism remix of Fire in Cairo by The Cure.
The World Cup is over and Wimbledon has passed on so I'm hoping that I may get to extract the TV remote from the paws of my sports-mad bf. I like to lie on the sofa blinking at the home improvement/buying property aboard/fly-on-the-wall airport shows (Lagos Airport is my current fave - what a hole!).
Goldie Hawn and her huge swollen lips had me transfixed on Friday night as I watched The Banger Sisters. She's over 60 and was playing a 40 something! Ridiculous. Still, I tittered a few times and Susan Sarandon is always a pleasure to watch so it wasn't too bad (trivia - Mum and daughter have now played 'groupies' in movies - see Kate Hudson in the brilliant Almost Famous).
Potty mouth Plan B has made an angry and violent album which makes for uncomfortable listening but his words and delivery are stunning. His songs are almost cinematic and make me thankful that I don't live on a council estate in East London. With Mike Skinners star descending, following his poor third album, Ben Drew should step up to the podium and put on the king of the chav poets crown. He's a good looking boy too (as you can see here and here and here).

One more week until Superman returns. Simply everyone is excited.

Last weekend I spent a mini-fortune in Blockbuster on movies and peripherals (isn’t Haagen Dazs expensive). We watched the French thriller Cache (The Hidden) first. I’m not sure what the moral of the story was but I am sure that it had one. There was one truly shocking moment involving suicide and a razor blade but apart from that I was left unsatisfied at the conclusion.
Next we watched Me And You And Everyone We Know which was an American indie with the spirit of those early Todd Solondz and Todd Haynes films. This wasn’t directed by a Todd but it was right-up-my-strasse being funny and uncomfortable and thought provoking.
Next up was Thumbsucker directed by Mike Mills. I’d seen a 10 minute portion of this movie at the Beautiful Losers show (soon to be a movie/docu-drama) in LA last year and enjoyed it but it turned out that those 10 minutes were the best bit. Despite having Tilda Swinton, Keannu Reeves and Vince Vaughn as it’s stars this movie sucked. Teen angst dressed as art. Boring. Incidentally, Mike Mills directed a shorter movie a few years ago called Architecture Of Reassurance which had nothing to do with the fantastic book of the same name which details the technical aspects involved in designing Disney’s theme Parks.
Heartlands was a great British film from a few years ago about a fella (played by Michael Sheen who was stunning as Kenneth Williams in that recent BBC4 drama) trekking across England (gorgeous scenery) on his crappy motorbike towards Blackpool where his wife had run off with someone from the darts team. He finds her but then decides he doesn’t want her back. Lovely film.

I saw the cartoon below on someones blog but can't remember where. I think it's originally from The New Yorker. It tickled my fancy so I'm showing it to you now.

They share the same initials you know.

Things to do in Victoria part 5
Take a train journey. Victoria Station serves the towns of Kent, Sussex and Surrey. Trains have chugged in and out of Victoria since 1862 and the London to Brighton line has always (and still is) the busiest. Before I moved to London I spent a year living in a lovely Kent village called Westerham and Victoria was the London terminus for my weekly jaunts into town. I had a job as a live-in barman at a country pub and on my day off I would stroll three miles from Westerham into the next town, Oxted, where I would take the train into London. London seemed magical back then (mid 80’s), the GLC, rock against racism, Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues (still going!), BatCave, The Wag, NME & The Face, scooter parties at The Greyhound in Fulham, boys with flat-tops and tartan shirts, Hampstead ponds, Kensington market, Kings Road and the Scala cinema (thank god for their all-night programming). I particularly remember one perfect summer day when I came into town with friends from the pub and we saw a gallery exhibition featuring a new photographer called Bruce Weber and then got lucky at the Royal Festival Hall box office by grabbing tickets for a gig that night by an unsigned (but very press hyped) singer called Sade (she deserved the hype and Malcolm McLaren sat near us!) and then saw The Evil Dead and several other trashy horror films in an all-nighter at the Scala before catching the 6am train to Oxted and grabbing 4 hours sleep before work. If I attempted an evening like that nowadays I would need at least four days off work to recover.
So, I’ve always had a soft-spot for Victoria Station and that’s before I’ve even mentioned my trips on the boat-train to Calais, Gatwick Express services (the starting point for brilliant Florida holidays with Darren), architecture that evokes episodes of Miss Marple and Poirot and the Krispy Kreme donut shop on the station concourse.

Stage door, Apollo Theatre, Victoria, London.

(name that Pet Shop Boys song)

Things to do in Victoria part 4
Go and see a show. There are two theatres in Victoria and one is currently filled to the brim every night for Billy Eliott and the other is currently dark in preparation for Wicked (September 2006). Wicked will run at The Apollo Victoria Theatre which was built by E Warmsley Lewis and WE Trent and first opened in 1930. It was originally built as a massive cinema but luckily a stage was built in front of the screen "just in case the talkies don't take off". The building is a highly distinctive and prime example of Art Deco architecture (now grade II listed) and seats more than two thousand. The cinema at the Apollo closed in 1975 and remained closed for six years. In 1981 the venue reopened exclusively for stage productions the first of which was a spectacular Shirley Bassey season. The following years saw productions of The Sound Of Music (Petula Clarke), Dash (Wayne Sleep), Fiddler On The Roof (Topol) and Starlight Express (18 years!!). Inbetween these productions various 'stars' such as Shirley Maclaine, Liza Minelli, Dean Martin, Cliff Richard, Johnny Mathis, Bucks Fizz and Nick Cave stroked their egos in 'an evening with...' type shows. Wicked will be a huge hit and I am going to get some tickets to see it.
*worries about flying monkeys*

Cinema Treasures fan site for the Apollo.