The idea of having 20/20 vision is something I’ve been pondering this past week and a half. Oh to wake up and be able to see the world, crystal clear on my own accord! I’ve taken after my father in having poor eye sight, starting back when I was 11, and things haven’t really gotten any better since then (quite the opposite, in fact).

I’ve been an avid contact wearer for the past ten years (wow!) and I’ve never really cared for glasses. So much so, that my lenses in my glasses are somewhere around two or three prescriptions behind. This is due to the fact I only wear them at night, from the bathroom to the bedroom, and not much else. And here’s the catch - what do you do when you get a mild case of conjunctivitis in your left eye, are on your last pair of contacts which must now be thrown out, your prescription has run out, and your glasses have to be worn 24/7?!

I was faced with this predicament. And I tell you what, I’m suddenly struck with the fact that life would have been a lot better if I had inherited my mother’s vision. I never really minded that I had to wear contacts all the time, but now that I can’t - and I can barely see with my glasses (imagine me squinting at you, only 25 meters away, trying to figure out WHO ARE YOU!!)

Aside from this, I’m unable to get a new contact prescription because, apparently in this country, I have to get fit for contacts and the eye check-up doesn’t count as the same thing… This means I have to wait until my infection has cleared and medicine is done (5 days!!!!). And even worse, I’m going to Portugal- BLIND! (Ok, I’m exaggerating, but I might as well be blind when I can’t even read the airport boarding screen!)

So what was my solution? Buy new frames, of course! I might as well look stylish and be able to see the beautiful people of Portugal while I’m on the beach. I wasn’t expecting to spend ~£200 on an eye appointment to get my infection sorted, but c’est la vie.

Until those come in on Wed, it’s all squinting for me.

At university in Australia, in-between spending unnecessary amounts of time contemplating where a “multimedia” course would take me (somehow it brought me closer to coding for Internet Explorer than I would have liked), I spent much time studying and working in film/video. Now that I am confined to a world of coding hell that is necessary for making web browsers behave, I will find it therapeutic, in the coming weeks, to try and share as many strange and surreal video I come across. The internet has created all sorts of new opportunities, but I’m more appreciative of it over anything else, for providing a platform for young, passionate film makers and artists of all types to share their work.

For instance, did you see time stand still at Grand Central Station?

Does google really index video’s in its search? We’re posting this entry to find out more about this interesting video technique. Watch this space.

Nostalgia, as the joke goes, is not what it was. I spent most of Sunday morning listening to old time Music Hall records - not the first time some of these would have been heard in London E2 I’ll warrant. And needing to go to the shops anyway, I strolled up to where I was led to believe Bethnal Green’s Foresters Music Hall had been, but there wasn’t really much to see there anymore. Of course not.

For some reason I struggle to understand that previous eras could be nostalgic for their pasts in the same way as we are, but that’s stupid - in the 1950s the Music Halls would be packed with people singing along to the very same songs I was listening to preserved on scratchy 78’s from the twenties and thirties, almost equally disconnected from their life and times. And what songs they are! To name but two I particularly enjoyed - Leslie Sarony’s ‘Ain’t It Grand To Be Bloomin’ Well Dead’ is a curious concoction; the narrator cheerfully imagines his funeral, obviously without any aitches : “Look at the flowers, bloomin’ great orchids, look at the corfin, bloomin’ great ‘andles - ain’t it grand, to be bloomin’ well dead!” The way Sarony sings “grand” with a distinct emphasis on the “a” seems to crystallise an entire era in one syllable. And sounding very contemporary today is Lily Morris’ ‘Don’t Have Any More, Missis Moore’ - warning against binge drinking and unprotected sex no less, with the prescient advice “Double gins give the ladies double chins”. Great fun.

I suppose this stuff has a resonance for me as my parents used to sing some of these songs around the old joanna when I was a child, though I’m not actually in my seventies, despite the impression this might give. Amongst many, I remember ‘Loves Old Sweet Song’ - a genuine Victorian ballad as opposed to some of these later songs and in particular, the awesomely lachrymose ‘Ticket To Heaven’ - I can’t find the lyrics on the interwebs, sadly but can try and sum this masterpiece up: man is knocked over while working on the railway and thought dead. His child (perhaps bringing him lunch) arrives on the scene to hear that poor Bill (I think it was Bill) has gone to heaven and proceeds to the ticket office and the tremendous chorus arrives:

Give me a ticket to Heaven, please.
That’s where Dad’s gone, they say.
He’ll be so lonely without me
Travelling all that way.
My mother died when I was born, Sir.
And left Dad and me all alone.
So give me a ticket to Heaven, please,
Before the last train has gone.

Amazing. And before you can barely read on through your tears, I can point out that in the final verse it is revealed that “though injured, he has not been killed” and father and child are reunited. The Victorians and Edwardians just loved this kind of sentimental stuff, bless ‘em.

There are also a couple of recordings by comedian George Robey on the record I was listening to - the so called Prime Minister of Mirth. And waxing nostalgic, the Sir George Robey (named after him) was a horrible pub in Finsbury Park which held dub nights when I was a teenager (the Proustian aroma of these events is not similar to the smell of Madelines) and years later - when the place was briefly run by the folks who owned Hoxton Square’s the Blue Note club - I remember playing records there and literally emptying a room full of people with the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s ‘Theme De Yo Yo’. Should have stuck to the man himself.

Anyway… I know that there is another popularity contest going on in the US at the moment (I write this on ‘Super Tuesday’) but the return of American Idol is obviously good news, even though it’ll struggle to beat some of last year’s contestants: beatboxing pixie-boy Blake, no necked and strangely sex-less belter Melinda Doolittle and of course, pony-hawked Sanjaya - should have put when he made that girl cry as one of my highlights of the year. It’s only once they go to Hollywood (”baby!”) that it gets interesting so I still have a few weeks to persuade my colleague Nik Dowlet to write an American Idol blog for the site. Here’s looking forward to that, dawg.

More next week.