Camden! I was talking to someone the other week about how when you’re in your early teens, Camden Market seems like the most amazing place in the world - remember the sensory overload when you turned right out of the tube station and headed up to the market? It felt kind of dangerous. Edgy. And there were goths. In fact, I’m starting to feel that the Brick Lane area is becoming a bit like it; maybe it’s the influx of an element of society I recently overheard being described as “all those crustie Euros”.

Of course, there still remain a few good reasons to go to NW1: the Jazz Cafe (though I try and boycott it on principle owing to their greedy ‘booking fee’), Primrose Hill - the hill not the terribly precious conurbation bit - and there’s a pub I quite like on Delancy Street, a road name I’ve long been a sucker for; though having also been to Delancy Street in NYC, while I appreciate Lorenz Hart hasn’t felt any balmy breezes blow there or indeed anywhere else recently, it sure ain’t fancy any more. On that theme I did go and have a Chinese meal on Mott Street and while I wish I could say it was incomparable, I just remember the menu being somewhat tricky to navigate.

Anyway, I didn’t go to Camden this weekend, but I did go to the Camden Town Group exhibition at Tate Britain. It’s great. And isn’t all ambiguous if disconcerting scenes of the artists’ charladies in drab bedrooms, though there were plenty of them. Indeed, appropriately enough considering last week’s blog, there were also several of Walter Sickert’s famous if somewhat murky paintings of the clientele and the stars of London’s music halls.

Outside of his paintings Sickert is probably best known today because of the American crime writer Patricia Cornwall’s theory (and book) about him being Jack the Ripper. I read that book - for sale in the Tate shop oddly enough - very quickly while on holiday in Paris and it is worth a look though I was somewhat underwhelmed by her evidence. I think it is safe to say that she really, really wants it to be true.

I’m going to see Arsenal play Blackburn Rovers now. Not in Miami, Hong Kong or Tokyo either. Not yet.

Oh, and as *insert ‘first signs of spring’ cliché here* I found myself humming the old standard ‘Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most’ this morning on the way to work; a lovely song whoever does it (though Mark Murphy does it the bestest) and particularly loved by me for the inspired couplet which rhymes “College girls are writing sonnets” with “but I’m up on the shelf with last year’s Easter bonnets”.
More next week.

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.

Who knows? If you want a deadpan punchline, then great. But did you really mean it? On the other hand, stating that X from SuchandSuch Monthly is a real card, and you just can’t wait to hang out with him out of work hours, may be taken at face value. It’s a minefield that less skilled writers such as myself face everyday. Anyway.

Hello everyone. As the new boy, and under the gentle pressure of Mr. Scott, I thought I’d dip my toe in the Blogbridge waters and see what either tickles it, or rears out of the water to bite it off.

I’m not really sure how this works; do I suggest a topic, and wait for the conversational deluge? Must I select a category, or can I post my aimless ramblings under a catch-all “misc”?

If a particular point of discourse is needed, then perhaps we may start with this:

Penguins are, most likely, inherently sociopathic and amoral.

Bear with me. When has one ever considered your feelings in any way, shape or form? What have they done for us recently?

I was once bitten by one of the little buggers. You don’t turn your back on one a second time, I can tell you. I think I’ve already milked that story on the first floor, though.

8:05am - Leave the house in high spirits, full of Coco Pops and January optimism. Step on a dog-turd. My luck holds, it’s long since hardened.

8:10am – Through the use of colourful language and a sharpened stick, I battle my way to the 20 square centimetre area of the platform that I KNOW my usual set of train doors will pull up to. Proceed to hold/beat back the thronging, briefcased masses like a Spartan at Thermopylae. But with less beard.

8:20am – Train is late. And my spear arm is nearly spent.

8:22am – Watch in abject horror as the “whimsical” train driver decides to sail onwards an extra six feet today. Cue an almighty free-for-all for pole position by the time the doors open. All chances of finding one of the few remaining seats in the carriage rapidly evaporate. Utter, utter bastard.

8:30am – Silently curse the seated masses from my vantage point squashed face-first against the Perspex partition. A fat man in a polo shirt is simultaneously playing a game of Patience and watching an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” on his laptop. Make a mental note to hurt him grievously should the chance arise.

8:33am – Only at Herne Hill. Torturous. Through a Herculean effort, manage to extract my book from my coat pocket and elbow myself enough room to read “The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe”. Perks me up a bit.

8:35am – Imagine the fat Trekkie strapped down in the vault from “The Pit And The Pendulum”, awaiting his agonising doom. Chuckle evilly, and unexpectedly loudly. Some odd looks from nearby passengers.

8:40am – The Phantom Farter. As with every other day this week, someone lets fly a silent but devastating air-biscuit between Elephant & Castle and Loughborough Junction. At close quarters, there’s no escape. My fellow commuters look furtively around with a mixture of total horror and grudging admiration at the sheer audacity and pungentness of the deed, but once again the culprit isn’t apparent. I’m keeping a closer eye out tomorrow. This reign of terror cannot continue indefinitely.

8:50am – We pull into Farringdon station. The whole train collectively braces itself.

8:50am + 03 seconds – All-out carnage as over a hundred designers, suits and advertising creatives run hell-for-leather for the alcove leading to the staircase, fully 2.5 people wide. I grab a small elderly woman who was dithering fatally, and pick her up for use a makeshift shield and battering ram. With an improvised battle-cry of “Have some, chuckleheads!!” I ascend as quickly as the carnage will allow, stepping on as many toes, faces and groins as are necessary to proceed. A smug-looking designer with preposterously tight jeans and an “eccentric” haircut spots an opening and tries to beat me to it, but is quickly felled by a roundhouse blow with the old lady. The top of the stairs is in sight.

8:51am – As the smoke clears, I exit the station in a cheerful frame of mind, pausing only to set the old lady on her way and punch a Free Paper Provider in the face. Onwards to another busy day.