Isca Alchemist

The Raleigh Country

2007-04-05T13:18:00.000+01:00

There is a book, The Raleigh Country, by R F Delderfield, the famous East Devon author and long-time columnist in Devon Life magazine back in the 1960s and 1970s. In this book, he claims to have coined the phrase 'Raleigh Country'. Anyway, it is a great description for an area of East Devon centred around the birthplace of the famous explorer Sir Walter Raleigh. Like 'Hardy Country', 'Bronte Country', Wessex, etc., etc., the 'Raleigh Country' has a great historical resonance and the area itself has a distinguished character all its own.

In the middle is Woodbury Common, a 100 square mile area of heathland, something that most tourists don't even consider, they past East Devon on the A3052 or the motorways. Yet is is full of beautiful, unspoilt villages like Yettington, East Budleigh, Otterton, and so forth. (well, Otterton is the other side of the River Otter, of course, and nothing to do with Woodbury Common).

There are numerous, sublime old country pubs, like the Maltsters Arms and White Hart Inn in Woodbury, the Digger's Rest in Woodbury Salterton, Rolle Arms and the Sir Walter Raleigh in East Budleigh, not to mention the several pubs to be found in Budleigh Salterton.

There are actually about 7 commons to be found in the area known as Woodbury Common: Colaton Raleigh Common to the east, Aylesbeare to the north, Dalditch Common, among others. The whole are was formerly part of the Rolle Estates (based at Bicton Park) but is now managed by Clinton Devon Estates, some sort of charitable offshoot of the original Rolle Estate.

Otterton and Ladram Bay

2007-03-25T14:19:00.000+01:00

If you continue, from Woodbury, over the common to the crossroads, Four Firs, you get a splendid view of the heathland with Woodbury Castle overlooking the entire landscape. Then, on to Yettington across the heath, past the entrance to Bicton Arena, all through some beautiful and varied East Devon countryside.

East Budleigh with its new Walter Raleigh statue and the pub named after him, then on to Otterton including crossing the old railway line and station, evidently owned by a train enthusiast. Otterton Mill for a coffee and then another mile to Ladram Bay via the enormous holiday camp.

Spar convenience store, Fore Street, Budleigh Salterton

2007-03-19T16:11:00.000Z

There is no better place to end an 18 mile bike ride to Budleigh Salterton than with a 79p cup of Tetley tea, self-service, in this superb convenience store in the high street of Budleigh Salterton.

BOOK: Bikie, a love affair with the racing bicycle. Charlie Woods (Mainstream, 2001)

2007-03-19T15:58:00.000Z

This is a brilliant, fascinating little paperback about a man's teenage cycling days and the sheer enjoyment and exhiliration to be had from racing bikes.

Charlie Woods was born in about 1938 and he recounts his upbringing in west London (around Acton or somewhere) and his days of cycling with his friends and, later, a cycling club. They went all over the place, up to the Chilterns on races - he calls them 'roars' - and down to Brighton.

Of course, they all used a proper "racing" bike; this means a mens racing cycle as opposed to the awful "mountain bikes" you see so much of these days. Mountain bikes are for... fucking mountains, not cycling on roads. If only all of these adults who buy mountain bikes realised how much easier their little journeys would be if they bought a proper fucking racing bike.

It's like asking someone about to embark on a journey up the M1 motorway to the north: what would you prefer? An Aston Martin or a tractor? Would you drive up the M1 in a tractor? A mountain bike is for cycling across fields, cross country on rough, unpaved tracks and open countryside. NOT for cycling around town.

I cycled down to Budleigh Salterton at the weekend, as usual, and on my Claude Butler San Remo racing bike it was effortless. Indeed, the person I went with was on a mountain bike and I constantly had to stop every five minutes to wait for them to catch up.

Anyway, Charlie Woods is a very skilled, accomplished writer. Bikie is very philosophical in its treatment of cycling; he sees it as a sort of zen past-time, one where the repetitive motion of turning pedals with one's feet and legs is entrancing, leading to a higher consciousness. And he is right. Absolutely. I experience it every time on my long (35 miles) trips to the coast and back.

Cheltenham Festival

2007-03-13T12:16:00.000Z

Today the fantatic Cheltenham Festival starts. Four days of superb racing, featuring the finest jockeys and horses to be found in Europe. The crowds are enormous (probably 100,000 plus) and the atmosphere must be electric. I'll only be sampling the atmosphere in Ladbrokes or Corals in Exeter, of course, but so what. I'll have my little wager (preparing to lose about £20), but the entertainment is superb.

Today's big race:

SMURFIT KAPPA CHAMPION HURDLE CHALLENGE TROPHY (Grade 1) (Class 1) £360,000 added 2m 110yds.

This 2m 1/2 furlong race should be won by either Tony McCoy on Straw Bear, or Ruby Walsh on Brave Inca. I prefer Brave Inca.

Brave Inca it is.

Salterton Arms, Chapel Street, Budleigh Salterton

2007-03-13T12:03:00.000Z

Friday, 9 March 2007.

This pub in Chapel Street, Budleigh Salterton, is a splendid example of what Punch Taverns can achieve when they go the whole hog and refurbish an entire pub from scratch. They did the same for the Queen Victoria pub in Tudor Street, Exeter, about two years ago.

Despite being a few yards up a little-used side street in Budleigh Salterton, the Salterton Arms should achieve great success in this small, genteel seaside town. The pub is still just a few yards from the famous Steamer Steps, found at the end of Rolle Road (a cul-de-sac), which lead down from the clifftop to the pebble beach and tea kiosk with the white plastic tables and chairs outside.

Outside, the Salterton Arms has the appearance of a small, semi-detached house, complete with bay windows and dressed in a sort of light olive paint. Step inside and the interior is splendid: stone flooring, fire places, comfortable wooden furniture and couple of large leather sofas. The bar is shiney and new and there is a fine selection of real ale - Pedigree, Wadsworth and, of course, Otter ale (this being the head of the estuary of the River Otter, the opposite end from Otter's brewery at Luppitt, the source of the famous river).

Today, I cycled all the way from Exeter to Budleigh Salterton and the main intention is fitness and enjoying the fine countryside along the way. So I have a cup of tea, delivered in bespoke 'Salterton Arms' white crockery, complete with a little jug of milk. Superb. And fairly reasonably priced at £1.50. Later, a cuppicino, £2.25 (rather expensive).

The Salterton Arms is a gem, and ideal for a summer visit.

Book: Maxed Out - hard times, easy credit. James Scurlock (2006)

2007-02-19T16:55:00.000Z

Scurlock has written a fascinating account of the new religion of the 21st century - credit.

We live in a credit- obsessed society, full of voracious consumers, all created by the rampant advertising and soliciting of the banks and credit card companies.

In the old days, when my mum worked at Lloyds Bank and, before that, Midland Bank back in the 1960s, banks hated lending ordinary customers money. Loans were for companies and big businesses. People just didn't have personal loans and lived within their means.

To work in a bank, in the old days, you had to be good at basic arithmetic and perhaps have a vocation in banking, accounting, etc. Now, according to Scurlock, it is a positive disadvantage to have such qualities; banks want salespeople, not bankers. They want clerks who can smile like morons while they pester every customer into taking out a loan and taking on more debt. That's how the banks make their money. Banks make money through consumers taking on debt, not saving money.

I was in debt to the the tune of about £12,000 until about 4 years ago when I said to myself, fuck it, I've had enough, forget the whole thing. I simply stopped paying. Immoral, you say? Well, I was a saver with Britannia building society ten years ago until they sent me about 40 letters begging me to take out a loan. In the end I caved in, taking out a £5,000 personal loan (immediately £6,000 debt, even if I'd paid it back after one month). They talked me into it so they can fuck off. I actually kept up the monthly payments until I'd repaid about £2,500 so they should think themselves lucky.

Same with the credit cards, which both arrived through the post, totally unsolicited. As Scurlock says, where is the health warning with credit/debt??

On teletext, just yesterday, the UK banks are reported to have made £38 BILLION this last year. What a joke... hope the housing market collapses!!

Atlas Single Bed with Bewley Single Firm Mattress, From Argos

2007-02-07T16:28:00.000Z

My latest delivery from Argos - just £134.99 plus £4.95 delivery - turned out fine but, of course, that's forgetting the awfulness of flat pack, self-assembly furniture.

It comes in one 7ft long narrow but heavy (22.5 kg) box with, of course, the 'firm' mattress separate. That amounts to about 30 separate pieces of metal and about 80 screws and nuts and bolts. By initial estimate, that means about 3 hours work, assuming you can work out how the hell to assemble it all. What a fucking nightmare.

Actually, the assembly was quite straightforward, taking less time than I thought, mainly due to the excellent 1 sheet, 4 page assembly document. It's very well written indeed, having several structure maps and very simple text stating what goes where.

The end result seems to look fine, but its assemblance is twidly, the headboard having about 7 pieces alone. One metal tubular bar, in particular, simply didn't fit into the right hole. That had to be abandoned but, luckily, didn't affect the overall structure (which was lucky, being part of the foot, lower headboard).

In the end, it is perfectly rigid as a single bed, with a built-in headboard. The bed can be handled like normal furniture without wobbling around. The mattress - the Bewley 'Firm' mattress - is only one up from the cheapest, but is springy and comfortable.

A fine product.

Book: The Memorial to the Missing on the Somme - Gavin Stamp (Profile, 2006)

2007-01-25T15:33:00.000Z

This is a fascinating book about the famous Memorial to the Missing at Thiepval on the old Somme battlefield in northern France. Written by architect Gavin Stamp, it is illustrated with some fine photos of the memorial under construction back in the early 1930s and some of the influences that went into its design.

Lutyens, of course, designed the Cenotaph in London, back in 1919/20. I'm quite proud of myself in that, after a little attempt at my own analysis/deconstruction of the famous slab of white Portland stone in Whitehall - shown in a photograph in this book - I was able to make a pretty accurate account of what its design meant (before reading on further).

The Cenotaph pylon is actually a series of telescopic slabs of stone - Portland memorial stone, as it were - that are designed to be projected right up into the heavens, with, of course, the stone tomb/sarcophagus of the Unknown Warrior at its zenith, sent up to his rightful place with God. According to Stamp, the stone blocks are actually slightly curved, so that they would meet at about 901 ft. How's that for a bit of amateur semiotics?

Stamp covers the entire background to the Memorial to the Missing, with chapters covering the career and background of Lutyens; Memorials to the Missing around the world (of which there are very few, since mass slaughter didn't start until the 20th century); the Commonwealth War Graves Commission; Thiepval and the Somme itself in the British psyche, as it were; and a number of other matters.

Lutyens was a central figure in the new Commonwealth War Graves Commission and it was at his insistence every cemetery should be almost entirely secular. This meant that the famous tombstones had no cross, crescent or any sort of religious symbolism in their shape, but were in fact just a plain slab of white Portland stone. Many stones bore the famous epitaph A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR, KNOWN UNTO GOD. Of Lutyens, that says it all, really: pure class.

The cemeteries are absolutely beautiful, flowering little gardens, manicured better than a concert pianist's fingernails. Little gardens of England amidst the terrible, haunting loneliness of the abandoned battlefields.

Gavin Stamp goes into some detail about the design of the Thiepval Memorial itself, which is a lot more complex than at first seems. Lutyens seemed to be a bit of a neo-Classicist and the design is simple local red bricks (of the kind found in the reconstructed nearby town of Albert, now a sort of Alamo for Britain) faced with white Portland stone for the many (about 72,000) names of the Missing (whose number include a certain J Murray of the 38th Welch Regiment, Cardiff Pals, who died on 7th July attacking Mametz Wood).

One theory is that the Thiepval Memorial is influenced, architecturally, by the nearby Basillica in nearby Albert, the symbolic church with the leaning virgin. They certainly look the same, yet Stamp says this is impossible since Lutyens's design was originally for St Quentin, about 50 miles away.

Anyway, the book is fantastic and well worth reading.

Bennetts Fish and Chip Shop, Weymouth

2007-01-08T10:55:00.001Z

Thursday, 4 January 2007.

Simply the best fish and chips of all time, cooked to order, by the old harbour, Weymouth. Freshly fried cod, due to the off season, and chips with salt and vinegar.

All this after the Jurassic Coast X53 bus from Exeter to Weymouth. The return journey is driven by a psychopathic bus driver who acts like he' s on a race track, even above cliffs on the Abbotsbury road.

Book: Escape Artist - Life in the Saddle, Matt Seaton (4th Estate, 2002)

2007-01-08T10:55:00.000Z

After watching the DVD, I set out for a day's extensive cycling, my first in several months. Down to Budleigh Salterton, from Exeter, via Clyst St Mary, Woodbury Salterton, Woodbury, Woodmanton, Lower and Higher Mallocks and on to Budleigh Salterton over Woodbury Common via Dalditch.

There is nothing quite like a long, exhausting ride on a racing bike, reaching speeds of up to 38 mph (as measured by the cycle computer). Perhaps a little lunch at the Cafe Budleigh, £6.50 for roast beef on a Sunday.

Then the old railway line cycle track to Exmouth via Littleham, through dense pine woodland and open countryside right down into the town centre. Train back to Exeter for just £2.90 single though windows that are thick with mud.

Book: Rinkagate - The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Thorpe (Bloomsbury, 1996). Simon Freeman and Barrie Penrose

2007-01-02T16:40:00.000Z

This is a sensational, brilliantly written account of the rise and fall of Jeremy Thorpe, the lying homosexual ex-leader of the Liberal Party. Freeman is the main author although Penrose was the who broke the story - Watergate-style - with his colleague, Roger Courtiour, both originally at the Sunday Times Insight team.

It reads like a John le Carre thriller which is particularly apt since, in le Carre's A Perfect Spy, the haunting father figure Ricky Pym was a Liberal Party candidate in the old-fashioned West Country back in the immediate post-war years. Le Carre must've taken inspiration from the Thorpe/Rinkagate affair as the similarities are too great and Perfect Spy was not written until the 1980s.

Jeremy Thorpe was a brilliant, inspirational leader for the moribund Liberal Party when he joined them in the early 1950s, straight from Oxford. Before that, he had been to school at Eton, hence the hidden, murky homosexual past.

He gained favour in the North Devon local party (centred on Barnstaple and Bideford - the two river towns of the Taw and the Torridge) and became their candidate in the elections of 1955 and 1959, the latter seeing him elected. He eventually replaced Jo Grimond upon the latter's retirement and was a star of the House of Commons, delivering sensational results to the Liberal Party, whose overall, national vote climbed from just 750,000 to over 6 million in the 1974 elections. However, Thorpe had a secret life.

One of the truly great characters of this story is Thorpe's parliamentary colleague, womaniser, conman and bankrupt, Peter Bessell. He was MP for Bodmin at the same time as Thorpe was in his pomp and sort of cheated Thorpe into confiding in him, or so Freeman says. He is an amazing person to hear about, a sort of Ricky Pym.

You can't entirely blame Thorpe: it was not legal until 1967 so he couldn't let anyone know.

Thorpe's feud with Norman Scott was to destroy him in the end, aided by a few years of blunders. I've heard stories about this bloke Scott hanging around Exeter, just 20 miles from where he lives in Throwleigh, near Okehampton.

Great book, fascinating read.

Cafe @ 36 Cowick Street

2006-12-19T10:21:00.000Z

The thing that's noticeable about this little cafe in St Thomas - fitted into what used to be a narrow shop-front - is the art nouveau typeface and lettering of the nameplate above the front door and window. You don't expect that in St Thomas, one of the more drab districts of Exeter, on the western side of the River Exe.

It is like injecting a tiny little piece of Paris into St Thomas, not Paris Street in the city centre where you might expect. Light, sky blue nameplate with gold lettering, all in that characteristic style of the Paris Metro. You half expect some ornate, leafy entrance arch, too.

Cafe @ 36 Cowick Street has been in operation for about six months, I would guess. Today, flush with two thousand pounds of HA money, I decide to try out the place. It is expensive.

I enter and am greeted by a black and white, chequered and tiled floor. There are a few dark brown tables and chairs running down the length of the shop, about 20 ft long. And some interesting jazz music.

The menu is the usual cafe stuff: toasted, Panini sandwiches, various fillings (£3.25); BLT; various breakfast dishes, crispy bacon, etc; tea (£1); the usual twenty varieties of coffee you get these days. I go for my usual tea; cake is £2.20 for a slice of iced Victoria sponge. A bit pricey. Burts Crisps (made in Totnes, or Ashburton, or somewhere in south Devon).

They have a newspaper (the Independent), which is refreshing, certainly for reading about the great Sunday of football for Chelsea.

Book: Own Goal - How Corruption, Egotism and Greed is Destroying Football - Simon Freeman (1999)

2006-12-14T16:38:00.000Z

This is a fascinating book, a sort of non-fiction Fever Pitch which contains one journalist's views on how football is bouyant in the year 2000 but may well land up bankrupt in another few years.

Freeman is an ex-journalist on several serious newspapers - including the Sunday Times Insight team in the 1980s - who has some interesting things to say. Basically, the greed of £30,000 A week players (£100,000 by 2005) will destroy the game. Clubs like Freeman's boyhood Brighton & Hove Albion will become extinct.

It all makes sense, until you look at the game in 2006 which has been salvaged by multi-billionaires like Abrmovich and the new takeovers at West Ham, Liverpool (both by private billionaires) and Man Utd (thankfully by a relatively poor American who has put the scum £500m into debt - may they sink quickly!).

Freeman is right, though. I'm getting fed up with watching over-rated players on £100,000 a week. That includes the whole lot, even including Chelsea players (my club): Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney, Drogba, Henry; they are all vastly over-rated. You hear all the type - "England the best team in the world" before the 2006 World Cup, then turn out to be total rubbish - and watch these prima donnas on tv, live every week and they are always rubbish.

An excellent book by an author who also wrote a book about Rinkagate, the 1976 scandal that saw the downfall of North Devon MP Jeremy Thorpe.

Well worth reading.

Sidwell Cycles

2006-12-12T14:08:00.000Z

The Claud Butler San Remo racing bike - cost £320 - has been parked in the flat for bloody four months now, despite my five efforts to fix the puncture.

I've bought and ruined about five new inner tubes, all at about £4.49 from Halfords. Cheaper than they used to be but annoying when you keep buying one after another. Unfortunately, the bike has narrow, 700x25 tyres which are virtually impossible to fix using a puncture repair kit. The patch simply will not adhere to the tube.

Similarly, the narrowness of the tyre seems to make it very difficult to fit to the wheel, meaning it's impossible to do so without levering (with a spoon or fork) very hard thereby ruining the new inner tube.

So, now it's along to Sidwell Cycles (140 Sidwell Street, Exeter) to get them to fix it. Then I'll be back on the road (hopefully).

Indeed, this is where I actually bought the bike, back in July, five months ago. The bloke in the shop - the proprietor? - welcomes me (not by name, unlike old Turley in Rusthall), and gets an assistant/mechanic from out the back to see to me.

They do a new type of puncture-resistant inner tube called "Slime", but Sidwell Cycles don't appear to have any. I settle for a normal, simple new inner tube which I know will puncture in no time.

Collect the bike on Thursday.

The Elderly Gentleman Outside Exeter Cathedral

2006-11-23T14:17:00.000Z

"It's a beautiful cathedral, isn't it?"

On the way home, I'd stopped outside the Clarence Hotel, on the newly-cobbled pavement and turning circle by St Martin's Church.

This was the sort of everyday chance encounter with a stranger that you get used to as you get older. When you're a teenager you only ever speak to other teenagers (except relatives, of course). However, age and the cold chill of early evening November loneliness make a person more amenable to a nice chat with just about anyone.

I agreed with the bloke and then realised that he was almost unique - he was from a Britain of about 50 years ago, like the major in the Ealing film, The Ladykillers, only he was a retired doctor and not a major, like Cecil Parker.

He was well-tailored in what could have been Austin Reed: grey suit (though no waistcoat); red tie and white shirt; traditional gentleman's overcoat. With thinning grey hair, probably aged about 70.

He spoke in an exquisite accent, consumately well-spoken, almost to a Brian Sewell level yet more natural. He'd been a doctor at Moorfields and Barts in London and then moved to Exeter 40 years ago, presumably when still a young man.

In the early evening, late November darkness (around 5pm) he obviously thought I was a lot younger than I am, recommending I emigrate to "Australia, Canada or New Zealand". His brother had done so many years ago (Edmonton, Canada) and he would now recommend anyone to emigrate.

He had to go, but: "Remember you met a gentleman in Exeter and he said emigrate to Adelaide". I will. This man - despite a successful medical career and the trappings of career success - obviously laments not doing so himself.

On the other hand, he left by declaring Exeter to be "the finest city in the world". The late W. G. Hoskins would be proud of this incomer to the city of Exeter.

The Heart of the Game - Jimmy Greaves (Time Warner, 2005)

2006-11-22T16:10:00.000Z

This amazing book is only £6.99 in paperback and it has Jimmy Greaves going on a fascinating discourse of football - why it is so popular, the history of the game, the different clubs, and the rich heritage of the game.

This book must be bought, something I realised after about 30 minutes of browsing through it in Waterstones, Roman Gate, Exeter.

The new, modernised Waterstone's bookstore is awful and I prefer the old layout. The new Costa coffee cafe at the High Street end of the shop is too noisy and the atmosphere is more of a cafe than a nice, quiet bookshop. The floorspace is obviously much larger, since they've taken away some partitions that previously divided up the place (on the site of the old ABC cinema, demolished in about 1989).

Anyway, the Jimmy Greaves book is a revelation. Is he a great, intelligent writer or has it been ghost-written? I wonder. It opens with an anecdote about the Spurs team the in a hotel in Leicester the night before a match back in the 1960s. The Spurs skipper, Danny Blanchflower, gives a Plato-esque exposition on why the game is so popular. Fascinating.

Dawlish off season

2006-11-20T12:46:00.000Z

I hired from Exeter Library a copy of the brilliant 1987, John le Carre tv series A Perfect Spy. My mission today is a very simple one: to visit Dawlish and locate the 'bed and breakfast/guest house' which was run by Mrs Dubber (Peggy Ashcroft) and in which Pym stayed when he was on the run from the Jack Brotherhood and the secret service.

First Great Western has admittedly done a fantatic job in introducing many, many very cheap "Cheap Day Returns" in the Western region. Today, on the automatic ticket machine in the small lobby of Exeter St David's station, I punch in "Dawlish" and find that it's only £3 return.

Alas, the train itself is not a Network South East, London Waterloo-Paignton train (or an Inter City 125 with decent, traditional style carriages) but a 2 car diesel unit (DMU) which is filthy. This is the same sort that operates on the Barnstaple route with all its splendid scenery. Yet, it obviously hasn't been cleaned for a long time and the windows are barely transparent.

In the tv series A Perfect Spy, Magnus Pym (the brilliant Peter Egan) gets the night-sleeper train to Exeter and then he's seen arriving in Dawlish on one of those red, double-decker 1980s vintage Devon General buses. Curiously - in what counts as film/tv licence - his bus arrives from the Torquay direction.

Pym gets off right by the central birdlife lakes in the middle of town and walks onto the beach, the one where he used to play football with his father, the notorious Ricky Pym (played by the late Ray McInally).

He then walks up towards the western end of the promenade where he finds the bed and breakfast run by Mrs Dubber. Easy enough. Job done.

In the station itself, there a curious cafe called Geronimo's, a sort of Red Indian-themed little cafe specialising in All Day Breakfasts, etc. I partook of the All Day Breakfast - very nice indeed, only £2.99 (plus £1 for a pot of tea), sort of bacon, hash browns, fried egg, baked beans, mushrooms, etc. Geronimo's itself, as to be expected from the name, is full of all sorts of American Indian memorabilia such as bows and arrows, models of chiefs, most of it authentic and all for sale.

Dawlish itself is a delightfuly, surprisingly big town that reaches some way back up the valley of the tiny stream - "Dawlish water"? It's full of Regency villas on its western slopes, many let out for long-term holiday accommodation.

Apart from that, the only notable thing to happen was when I was walking along the high street, towards the library, eating an ice cream cone (with flake) that I'd bought a few minutes before. There was a strange scratch and whack around my head from behind and before I knew it my ice cream had gone, whisked away by a fucking cheeky seagull that just swooped down and stole it. The sheer nerve of it.

Sandra's Cafe, Paris Street bus station, Exeter

2006-11-16T18:00:00.001Z

Sandra's has been at this site for at least 5 years as far as I can remember, integrated into the very structure of the awful, 1970s bus station at the side of Paris Street.

It is an ultra-modernist bus station, very functional yet always cold and grubby, long, cantilivered concrete roof beams projecting a good 30 feet onto the bus bays themselves and over the chewing gummed, shattered paving stoned floor. The local routes start at the western end, places like Newton St Cyres, Crediton, Chagford. As you go towards the other end, the destinations become further away, from Sidmouth and Lyme Regis, to the Jurassic Coast and then London and other places around whole of Britain.

There are various vending machines scattered around and lots of - about 25 - bus bays, each guarded by steel railings all painted yellow.

Paris Street bus station is also built on a rather steep slope so that it has two decks, one for the arrivals and departures at the top and one below for parking.

At the western, Paris Street end may be found Sandra's cafe, itself split over two decks. There is an upper, bus level entrance and a lower, pavement/street entrance. Yet, the interior is all on just one floor, not even a mezzanine level which could have been incorporated due to the 15 feet interior.

The staff wear yellow and red overalls, each with the Sandra's logo and apparantly women (mostly under 30, I'd say). There is one long counter running almost the entire length of the room, about 30 feet, a long steel tray rack at the front. These back onto the food counter which accommodates a whole series of see-through plastic/perspex food cupboards, each containing standard, non-fancy fare like scones, pies, cakes, crisps and so forth.

Behind is the kitchen, its smell of onions, baked pies, chips, eggs, ommlettes and so forth wafting through the place. You would imagine this to be an ideal, velvet, moulded case for the cliched greasy spoon; you would not be wrong. However, there is a certain charm about this place, not least the prices, which are very reasonable.

The walls are adored by several enormous murals, some, if I remember, showing exotic places around the world (not the sort you would reach directly from Exeter bus station - on the other hand, you might get a coach to Heathrow or Victoria and actually go on to see these places). Fruit machines cover the lower sections of wall.

The clientele are almost entirely old and poor. Lots of shabby people, the sort you would expect to find on Rab C Nesbitt - can they all be travellers/passengers? My theory is that they are here because they like it and probably not even going anywhere.

I would say, overall, the staff are polite and hard-working and offer some perfectly adequate food. In summer, you could even enjoy your drink and meal on the patio outside! (Watching the buses and cars and fumes travelling along Paris Street). Then again, why not the Honiton Inn, opposite?

Film: Joyeux Noel (Christian Carion, France 2005)

2006-11-16T18:00:00.000Z

This is an incredibly well-scripted, fascinating and deeply emotional film about the Christmas Day, 1914 truce between the French and Scottish on the one side and the Germans on the other. It is based on historical events, only available due to a few letters that survive to this day.

The plot/script is superb, with each side having characters and developments that all come to fruition at the scene of the truce itself. The causality is brilliant. There is also a clever device of switching between English, French and German with various subtitles depending on the country where you bought the DVD. It helps suture the plot and the audience into the day's events.

There are the two brothers from the Scottish highlands, one played by Stephen Robertson, who leave for the war in a regiment headed by the brilliant Alex Ferns, formerly of EastEnders of all things. Ferns played the bad guy, Trevor, in that awful soap series, yet here plays a tough yet reasonable commander.

There is, on the German side, the lieutenant and the tenor, the latter from Berlin, not really in the army at all, yet sent over on Christmas Eve to cheer them all up. There is even a strange cameo appearance from Ian Richardson, of all people, as a war-mad militaristic Bishop who after the even makes a terrifying speech urging the Allies to kill as many Germans as they can and to give up any fraternisation (again, based on real-life events and a speech in Westminster Abbey at the time).

They fight each other, friends and brothers are killed, but on Christmas Eve (the first of the war) they've all had enough and settle in for the night. The German singer starts singing and then the whole affair starts, carried along by the great motif of music. The Scots start playing their bagpipes, eventually matching the famous German song Silent Night with their own equally enigmatic and talismanic Auld Langsyne. It has to be heard to be appreciated.

On the DVD, the special features section has an interview with the director, Christian Carion, who is himself from Cambrai, one of the most iconic battle scenes of World War I. He explains various parts of the film but I would also recommend the audio commentary (just toggle the Audio button 2 or 3 times on the remote). Carion explains how most of the plot is based on true events, even the arrest of the cat, Felix/Nestor for high treason.

If I ever get a cat I shall name it Felix or Nestor in honour of this great film.

Film Review: Sophie Scholl - Die letzen Tage (Germany, 2005)

2006-11-14T14:42:00.000Z

This is an interesting foreign language film about Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch), a formidable member of the White Rose, anti-Nazi resistance group active in Munich during 1943. She and her brother Hans print and distribute what might be termed samizdat leaflets, an obviously exremely dangerous activity in what was the home town of Adolph Hitler.

The two are students in the university and that was where they placed many piles of leaflets in the hope of creating some sort of uprising. Unfortunately, they got caught which leads to an amazing duel between Sophie Scholl and Robert Mohr (Gerald Alexander Held), the chief investigating officer of the police. The stakes are enormous, of course (under a charge of high treason) and Julia Jentsch is outstanding as a determined, very clever Sophie Scholl, coming up with answer after answer to the unending barrage of questions and evidence from Mohr.

Mohr initially disbelieves Scholl but she persuades him she is innocent and then is on the brink of release when Mohr uncovers unchallengable evidence from Scholl's flat.

As you'd expect from a film about arrest and interrogation, most of the film is shot indoors. Initially, Scholl's flat is bright and airy and illuminated by lots of American music. Outside, on the streets of Munich, the contrast could not be greater as everything is grey, dull and austere, just the garish red, white and black of swastika flags adding any (sinister) colour.

This is a very sad and thought-provoking film and the sheer heroism of Scholl and her group is incredible, almost impossible to understand from any free country in the early 21st century.

The end is simply heartbreaking, not least the awful method of execution of such an attractive, clever young woman. This comes after the almost parody of a trial - one of the infamous 'showtrials' held by the chief prosecutor down from Berlin to the "People's Court". He is awful, like that Streicher bloke in real life. Then again, what about Lord Haw Haw? He got executed for nothing more than the broadcast of words over radio.

A must-see film.

DVD Review: To the Manor Born (BBC, 1979)

2006-11-07T18:05:00.001Z

To the Manor Born is a fantastic sitcom set in the heart of the Somerset countryside in the south-west of England, featuring romance, class rivalry/snobbery and the trials and tribulations of a rural, mostly farming community.

The acting is sensational: it stars Peter Bowles as Richard de Vere, the new owner of Grantleigh Manor, and Penelope Keith as Audrey Forbes-Hamilton, the exiled former Lady of the Manor, now living in the lodge down the road by the main entrance.

Most interestingly for me, the series was actually filmed at Cricket St Thomas estate, a wildife park for most of the past 30 years, just 2 miles from where my father came from and where I spent many happy holidays back in the 1970s and early 1980s. It is a Georgian mansion designed by Sir John Soane and stands slightly above the valley of the River Cricket - no more than a stream in its entire course where it reaches the River Axe just down the road. It is now a Warners holiday park but still maintains the wildlife park. Brilliant.

To the Manor combines lots of comedy with romance and we can all guess how it will all end up despite their apparant hatred each other.

The writer, Peter Spence, has done a magnificent job. Apparantly he used to live on the state before he wrote it.

Film Review: Punch-drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA 2002)

2006-11-07T18:05:00.000Z

This is a strange and ultimately disappointing Adam Sandler vehicle about a socially awkward yet successful businessman who has problems with women - seven over-bearing sisters and a mad, vengeant woman from the phone sex line company. Also, there is some bewildering love interest from the beautiful and beguiling Emily Watson (the only reason I hired the film from the library).

From the two Adam Sandler films I've seen to date - the other being the excellent Anger Management - he is seriously typecast as a nice but shy guy, the sort who is too embarrassed to ask out a woman. In Punch, there is a bizarre psychotic element added whereby Billy Egan (Sandler) goes around smashing up bathrooms ("restrooms" in the ridiculous American vernacular) and windows. I ended up pacing through the second half of the film at 16x on the DVD player.

No matter what film I watch, I always try and find what I like to call a "Shot of the film", a shot which demonstrates great artistry from the director and which might also add some symbolism to the subject matter. Most competent directors are able to produce one or two.

In Punch, the Shot of the Film is when Billy has been virtually frogmarched around his sister's place for an evening dinner along with the six other sisters and a number of other guests. Naturally, he cannot cope with the situation. Then comes the shot of the film: Billy takes refuge/sanctuary in another part of the house and the director Anderson frames Billy against a backdrop of a Welsh dresser type of wooden display cabinet complete with display china dinner plates and some silver, glasses, etc.

This is the shot of the film! Why? Because it sums up Billy's situation - he is hemmed in, totally on display at this social event, just like a Welsh dresser display cabinet full of plates, all for people to watch and admire.

Emily Watson is great! She's so alluring, lovely accent and a sort of quirky, unusual attractiveness. Just like in Angela's Ashes and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.

DVD Review: The Lost World of Friese-Greene (BBC, 2005)

2006-11-05T14:19:00.000Z

This BBC film is a fascinating documentary looking at a series of recently uncovered touring films made in 1925 by Claude Friese-Greene, a British pioneer of film. Colour film, too, using Friese-Greene's own colour system.

The documentary is presented Dan Cruickshank, a very personable and brilliant presenter, known to all regular viewers of UK History and various other satellite/digital stations.

The film shows how Friese-Green set out on his journey by car - a 1920s Vauxhall - from Land's End in Cornwall to John O'Groat's at the tip of Scotland. Dan Cruickshank follows the same route - indeed, in the same make of car - and has early stops at Lamorva beach, Plymouth, Dawlish and a host of other places in the Westcountry. Sadly not Exeter, though Friese-Greene must have passed through.

Cruickshank meets a whole variety of people along the way, many of whom were in the original film itself as children.

What's also interesting is the almost total lack of traffic along the way, in 1925. There were 600,000 cars on the road back then, about 40 times less than now. There were only 1,200 petrol garages and the ones that are shown - always a BP garage (with their Union Flag signboard back then) - are real gems. They were considered any eyesore at the time but would now be seen as antiques.

There is no talking in the original Friese-Greene films, just a series of rather annoying captions, such as the one ridiculing the Welsh accent, during the stop at Cardiff. At Cardiff, the great football team of the time (who finished second in Division One in about 1923, and won the FA Cup beating Arsenal in 1927 at Wembley) are introduced.

A brilliant film.

Oddfellows gastro-bar, 60 New North Road

2006-10-26T12:48:00.000+01:00

The old Thirsty Camel public house, opposite the Firehouse, was shut down a few months ago for under-age drinking. It was a dire place, wooden floors and not even cheap; a bit of sawdust would've completed the effect. It was like a miniature Butlers at the other end of town. However, along with the old Strikers bar, by Debenhams, this pub has undergone a transformation (a far more superior, upmarket one).

Strikers has been re-invented as the King Billy, a peculiar, hexagonal-shaped little bar at the foot of the vast wall 8 storey wall of Debenhams, named after the nearby multi-storey car park in King William Street. It is like one of those old coins from the 1950s (a florin?): tiny, hexagonal and of little value.

The old Thirsty Camel has been re-invented under its original name, Oddfellows, and is definitely a brand new, crisp Euro note, of a high value. It bills itself as a 'gastro-bar' and you immediately see why.

Upon entry, in what is a century old building, the interior has been completely gutted and refurbished, creating a nice island bar in the middle of what is a long, narrow inside. The bar is dark brown, mahogony in appearance, and just the right height for short people like me. The floors are real wood (perhaps left over from the Camel days), not that dreadful, laminated and shiney mdf stuff that's taken over everything these days, shops, pubs, restaurants, cafes... like an annoying garden weed you just can't get rid of. MDF is the celery-style weed that - no matter how many times you pull it up - you just can't get rid of.

There is a superb selection of lagers, ales and wines, including some from St Austell brewery down in Cornwall. All a bit pricey, of course, at about £2.90 for a pint of San Miguel.

The kitchen is entirely visible at the end of the pub/restaurant, the chef working away, the flavours and smells drifting through the place. Lots of stainless steel kitchen worktops and wares, glinting under the lights.

There is also a 'Victorian' conservatory hidden away at the restaurant end of the place, where table and chairs are laid out for eaters. They have decking in that part, too.

I predict great success for this Exeter city centre place. They have the '2 Million track' on one side, too. A good place. Excellent, polite staff, too.

Book Review: Evil Beyond Belief - Wensley Clarkson (Blake, 2005)

2006-10-17T17:36:00.000+01:00

This is an incredible and well-written account of the sick career of Dr Harold Shipman and how and why he killed anything up to 400 people in Todmorden and Hyde over a period of about 25 years.

Shipman was a failure at school despite the apparant success - he did badly in his O Levels and then failed his A Levels, needing an extra year to get any at all. Then he got into medical school in Leeds and, as they say, the rest is history.

According to Clarkson, the evil doctor did it all because of his complex relationship with his mother, who died when he was just 17. However, I can't see anything unusual about Shipman's background - he came from a small council estate in Nottingham, in an apparantly normal family, his dad being a council driver for many years.

Shipman met his first ever bird, Primrose, while in his first year at medical school in Leeds, got her pregnant, and then promptly married her. She supposedly never had a clue about what he was doing, however.

Strangely, Shipman was born in almost the same month as that other monster, the Yorkshire Ripper (Peter Sutcliffe), first practised in the same area (near Bradford), used prostitutes, and was operating at the same time. Both were extraordinary cowards as they never openly confronted their victims: only the modus operandum was different.

Sutcliffe used to sneak up on women at night-time and then, before they knew anything at all, he had already half killed them with a blow from a hammer to the back of the head. Shipman, as a respected local GP, had the fullest trust of his patients, manifested in his fake, easy manner. But, claiming he was offering proper medical treatment, he would inject them with massive doses of morphine, killing them within a few seconds. Again, they never knew what was happening.

In his surgery in Hyde, Greater Manchester, Shipman eventually had his own, one-man practise. He was now beyond any restriction at all. No other GPs to work with.

In the end, he was caught mainly due to the idiotically fake/forged will he produced for probably his last victim, Kathleen Grundy, the former mayoress. And his computer records. He killed HUNDREDS of people, almost entirely vulnerable old women.

I can't understand how the General Medical Council were so inept. Shipman was a lifelong injecting drug addict - mainly pethidone and morphine - and totally unsuited to being a GP where calm, assured judgement is the order of the day. He was convicted for drug offences in 1976 yet carried on regardless. There were no later checks. Why didn't someone speak up?

It's all thanks to the undertaker in Hyde, and about 2 other GPs (Dr Lyndsey, I think), that he was ever caught. They are very brave people.

They should have made him share a cell with the Yorkshire Ripper. One final question - why has Shipman not got a nickname? They Hyde Horror? Dr Horror of Hyde? There must be something.

Book Review: War at the Top of the World, Eric S. Margolis (Routledge, 2001)

2006-10-13T15:54:00.001+01:00

This book is a gripping, revelatory explanation of what is going on at the 'top of the world', the moutainous regions that incorporate Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet, an area that includes various conflicts, open and underhand, between regional superpowers such as China, India, Russia and Pakistan.

It is all the more remarkable in that it was published before 9/11 yet presages many of the events of the past 5 years. My copy arrived at Exeter Central Library in 2001 and the first stamp at the front states 27 SEP 2001, which means it went out on 6 September, 2001, just 5 days before 9/11.

Film Review: The Queen (dir Stephen Frears, 2006)

2006-10-13T15:54:00.000+01:00

This is a sensational, outstanding film from director Stephen Frears, the man who brought us The Deal (2003), also featuring Michael Sheen as Tony Blair. Queen is all about one week in the life of HM the Queen and Tony Blair, shortly after he came to power in 1997.

Sheen is quite simply outstanding in this film, spot-on as Blair in his early days as Prime Minister. His uncanny resemblance to Tony Blair should keep him in work for life. We see him anointed as Prime Minister by Helen Mirren, with his idiot, fruitcake wife Cherie Blair giggling in the background like a schoolgirl. The mannerisms, the gait, the speech are Blair personified.

Later on, in his early dealings with the public and the media, Sheen is perfect with Blair's silly, meaningless, distracting moving of his arms and hands everytime he speaks, as if it somehow contributes to communication.

Likewise, Helen Mirren has delivered possibly her finest ever performance. There are a lot of close-up, intimate shots of Mirren's face, at point-blank focus, capturing the inner self of the Queen. A lot of the action takes place up at Balmoral, in the Scottish highlands, and there are some spectacular shots of the dramatic landscape.

There are many, many fine performances in this film, particularly James Cromwell as an unremittingly grumpy Prince Philip, and Mark Bazeley as the media/PR guru and professional northerner (and Burnley man) Alistair Campbell, the man who writes the speeches (he coins "People's Princess) and runs the media side of things. A sort of Rasputin of communications.

One of the themes of the film is how the media and newspapers in particular work; there are lots of front pages, reviewed, seemingly dictating how the funeral of the moron, bimbo-extraordinaire Diana should be staged.

There is a lot of hunting in the highlands, lots of Land Rovers. It's quite charming how the Queen prefers an old banger of a car over a new one and you learn more about her such as when she was a mechanic in the British Army during the war.

I'm not quite sure of the significance of the hunting and stag motifs. The Queen comes face to face with a stag and later on covers up her disquiet when she learns it has been shot. Something to do with crowns and stalking, probably.

When, in 20 years time (if the world still exists), they come to make the film of how Blair took Britain to war, Michael Sheen can draw on Hitler for added authenticity.

Book Review: The Wigwam Murder (M J Trow, Constable 1994)

2006-10-10T17:02:00.001+01:00

This is a fascinating book about a very sad case, the brutal murder of Joan Perl Wolfe, a confused and vulnerable 19 year old drifter from Royal Tunbridge Wells. The chief suspect was a 28-year-old Canadian mestis, August Sangret. He was subsequently hanged (at Wandsworth Prison, south London).

M J Trow also wrote Let Him Have It, the story of Derek Bentley and his wrongful execution for the murder of a policeman on top of a warehouse in Croydon, back in about 1952. This book is just as good.

Trow sets the atmosphere well, with descriptions of Hankley Common and its nearbly towns and villages, such as Thursley, Witley, Weybridge, Guildford and so on. At the time of the terrible murder, 1942, the entire areas was awash with servicemen, mainly Canadians and Americans, but with a few British, too (Aldershot, the home of the British army, is nearby). I have a 1959 Ordnance Survey map of the area, 1:25,000 and it shows in fine detail the entire area (I bought it because I partly grew up in Sunningdale and Bagshot, just about 3 miles to the north).

Joan Wolfe was from Tunbridge Wells, in particular Goods Station Road. I grew up here, too, so the book in particularly interesting to me. However, Trow didn't apparantly visit Tunbridge Wells for this book so there is little description, other than that 'everyone knew everyone else'. That is a complete load of rubbish, of course, in a town of 42,000 people.

The "We 8 Argyle" football shirt case

2006-10-10T17:02:00.000+01:00

About 2 1/2 months ago in Exeter - back in July - a woman was brutally attacked on her way home along Pinhoe Road, in a little cul de sace called Redlands Close. She was raped and almost killed by an obviously brutal, ruthless person. Who is the suspect?

The thing that struck me recently was the big campaign - with leaflets plastered in windows in shops, cafes, bars, etc. all over Exeter - and the thought of 'what if they got it wront'? They have got the public's attention fixated on the picture of a vintage Exeter City Football Club shirt (red and white stripes, black shorts, just like Sunderland) with a very unusual logo on the back: We 8 Argyle.

This refers to Plymouth Argyle, the local rivals in Devon (and light years ahead of Exeter City who are now floundering in the Conference after relegation about 3 years ago).

So, the suspect might be an Exeter City fan who likes wearing their shirt. If so, he can be easily identified by anyone who knows him - I've never seen anyone with that sort of logo on the back. There can't be more than about 100 in the whole of the city. It is nearly unique. But, supposing the bloke in the Exeter City shirt is not the attacker? What then?

Then, it's the Yorkshire Ripper case all over again, another Geordie tapes hoax disaster. the public are only looking for this person with the Exeter City shirt. This may well be the case, as just the other week, the police were again given the whole front page of the local paper (the Express & Echo) and another suspect - this time in Gandy Street - was shown, again from CCTV footage.

I would guess the following, that the attacker:

Lives in Exeter. In particular, lives in either Whipton Barton or Beacon Heath, the area surrounding where the attack took place.
Goes to St James's Park (if only occasionally) to watch Exeter City.
Is about 6ft tall (from the CCTV images) and thin.
About 27 years old.

He might also have not followed the woman for very long at all. He might have joined from a side street, somewhere down near Polsoe Bridge. Perhaps he took evasive action regarding CCTV: maybe he knew how to avoid being followed on CCTV.

Let's hope they get the bloke, anyway.

Plymouth by Train

2006-10-09T16:34:00.001+01:00

Note: The Taunton by Train entry (previous) is actually Tuesday, 3 October 2006, though it seems it is not now possible to change this in blogger.

I arrive on a Thursday afternoon (5 October 2006) again at Exeter St Davids, this time intending to get a train to Honiton which I haven't visited since I nearly moved there about 2 years ago. But the train is just leaving as I arrive at the ticket office/main entrance. Instead, after a little look at the automated ticket machine and its many destinations - and the Departures tv screen above - I opt for Plymouth, at #7.00 Cheap Day Return. Ideal.

A sluggish 40 mile journey through Newton Abbot, Totnes, Ashburton, etc., which takes an incredible 70 minutes though the distance should only take about half that.

Plymouth station is ghastly. I thought Sevenoaks and London Bridge were bad enough, but this makes them look like the Giles Gilbert Scott's St Pancras of railway stations. Dreadful. A 12 storey tower block is about all there is, with lots of 1970s white concrete scattered around, just down the road from Home Park. Welcome to the Home of the Royal Navy it says outside. Fair enough. I head for the Barbican district.

Taunton by Train

2006-10-09T16:34:00.000+01:00

£7.50 from Exeter St Davids station for a cheap day return to Taunton. It is very inexpensive. It used to be a lot more but, apparantly, they put the prices down a few weeks ago on the Cheap Day Returns, which makes it ideal for a little break from my local station, just a 10 minute walk down the road.

I catch the 14.30 to arrive in Taunton (via Tiverton Parkway) at about 14.58. It is a nondescript railway station at Taunton, certainly not Brunel's finest work. (Just wait until you see the dreadful, Sevenoakesque, Plymouth). After disembarking the Virgin Voyager, you gown downstairs, underneath the platforms and railway lines, to exit the station, always the worst kind of greeting to a new place.

I stop and ask a woman directions, inexplicably disoriented by my location in Taunton - I've only ever seen the other end of town, the posh end. I cross the River Tone, pass the County Ground (where Botham, Garner, Viv Richards etc. must've been amazing in the late 1970s). First stop, the Coal Porter, a Wetherspoons pub, for one of their cheap, #3.99 cheeseburger and chips and pint meal.

Later, I find a superb Betfred bookmakers

Pizza Hut, Exe Bridges Retail Park

2006-09-27T15:15:00.000+01:00

This is a big Pizza Hut restaurant on the edge of the 2000 Exe Bridges Retail Park, the one that replaced Sainsbury's, originally built back in about 1988.

The main block of retail units were built much further south, closer to the railway arches (of Brunel's original south Devon railway, built in the 1840s). They accommodate Next (how awful are they?), Boots, JJB Sports and some other shop. Also, the Riverside Plaze leisure centre, nearby.

Pizza Hut was always some orphaned and stranded appendage to the main buildings, right next to Exe Bridges roundabout, by the river. It is basically surrounded by car parks on the south side and an inner road system as busy as a motorway on the northern, city side.

The restaurant is fine enough, lots of tables and efficient booking staff at the entrance, all nicely presented in their Oswald Mosley-style black shirts and trousers (bearing the little yellow, red and green Pizza Hut logo, of course).

There are two over-powering impressions, at first. One, the fact that (at 7pm on a Monday evening), the customers are almost entirely youths. Annoying, noisy, spotty teenagers, all consumed by their little in-jokes and idiosyncracies. Second, the music is dreadful - too modern, all pop music, and loud enough for a nightclub. What sort of atmosphere is that in which to eat?

The food was fine.

HSBC, 38 High Street, Exeter

2006-09-23T12:52:00.000+01:00

This main branch of HSBC - its main bank for the city of Exeter - is awful. Dreadful. This is the 'capital city' of Devon and the south west, as the city council keep reminding us (particularly on their entry signs to Exeter), yet this bank's main branch is like a corner shop.

It is on the corner next to Saint Martins lane, with Tact (the employment agency) on the other side, in a post-war brick building with green marble along some of the walls. One cashpoint machine on the outside.

It has over-sized glazed doors, heavy, bulky metal frames painted white. Yet, the interior is tiny, the size of a corner shop. Then there are only three counters - plus a couple for the bureau de change - and little interview rooms/boothes on the opposite side. The floor is that type of 1970s 'hundreds and thousands' style of fake marble tiling.

Finally, the staff are fine, certainly polite and efficient enough, but there is the awful, overloud din of Jermini over the loudspeakers, that awful, incessant ranting of the presenter accompanied by the modern pop music.

Book Review: Saturday, Ian McEwen (2005)

2006-09-19T13:53:00.001+01:00

This is a fascinating novel about one day in the life of Henry Perowne (Cornish name?), a wealthy brain surgeon and family man who lives in the heart of Fitzrovia, London W2, on the day of the mass anti-war march in February 2003.

He goes about a normal Saturday, except that he cannot sleep and witnesses what he thinks is a terrorist hijacking in the early hours. It may have been a genuine accident.

Basically, it all comes down to Perowne, with his ideal happy family, and a confrontation with a stranger, Baxter, who it turns out is suffering from a degenarative brain disease which will kill him rather quickly.

Baxter - a hideously evil yet pitiful creature - invades Perowne's family re-union at his luxury house. He threatens to stab various family members, assisted by his equally bad friend, Nigel. They use knives to intimidate everyone.

For me, the Baxter hijacking of the family re-union is very obviously a reference to the 9/11 hijackers, particularly the Flight 93 variety, who used 'boxcutters' to overpower and control the aeroplane.

An apparantly innocuous weapon is used very effectively against basically cowardly, western people, in this case of the affluent kind (just like the businessmen, etc., on Flight 93). It is up to the Perowne family to try and summon up some courage and deal with the 'hijackers' in their home.

Baxter is basically Mohammed Atta, or one of the others, and McEwan insists that Baxter's medical condition leaves him with no future. This is what, presumably, Atta and his lot would've thought - the West is in our lands and we'll never get rid of them. We cannot escape.

The Baxter attack is truly horrifying, one of the worst yet most un-putdownable pieces of fiction I have ever read.

As for the War on Terror, more generally:

For me, the so-called War on Terror is a total myth, a creation of hardline Americans intent on taking over Middle East oil. It's all about oil and ordnance, pure and simple - a bunch of neocons (aided by the poodle, Blair), war profiteers and corrupt politicians duping the public into believing there are masses of terrorists out there ready to strike.

As an example, John Major retires as Conservative Party leader, goes along to the Carlyle Group (purveyors of all sorts of military hardware - aka 'weapons of mass destruction') and then gets his old buddies/political contacts to make sure there's a war in which to create a market for arms.

How come we never invaded the Republic of Ireland when the IRA were active? Didn't hear much about a war on terror back then. It'll all lead to World War Three in due course, once the Russians put their foot down (and rightly - I hope they do).

Anyway

Gary Linekar

2006-09-19T13:53:00.000+01:00

The Big Brother of celebrities/media darlings - the repulsive, big-eared and hypocritical Gary Linekar - has the nerve to ask us all to donate cash to the likes of charities for Leukaemia. Why?

Linekar does a nice line in promoting junk food amongst children with his inane, infantile drive of tv adverts, eating Walkers crisps all over the place. Been going on for about fifteen years now. Anyone ever tell him to get a life? Do we have to see his Walkers adverts ad infinitum?

How much does Linekar make from the Walkers adverts? 2 million a year? Aided by a conflict of interest in his work for the public service broadcaster, the BBC? Next time he has the nerve to make appeals for cancer or leukaemia charities, tell the seedy hypocrite to donate some of his Walkers money, instead. Anyway, such adverts for junk food may be banned soon.

McVicar, the Journalist

2006-09-18T10:18:00.000+01:00

I've recently finished reading Dead on Time and if nothing else it demonstrates that John McVicar is a truly brilliant and skilled author. Finally, his (and Benjamin Pell's - alias Benjie the Binman) theory on how and why Barry George killed Jill Dando all makes sense.

Barry George's obsession with the awful 1970s/80s pop group Queen - a bunch of poncey students with poncey, pseudo-art songs like Bohemian Rhapsody - and the colour yellow show that he must have murdered Dando. How awful was that repetitive, dreary cacaphony which went on for bloody 10 minutes? They should've shot the repulsive Freddie Mercury before they became so popular.

Not to mention Barry George's string of phoney alibis, excellently described and explained by McVicar.

However, the thing which caught my attention while reading the book were the things that interest McVicar which also interest me. Basically:

Exercise. McVicar says his only religion is that of exercise. I couldn't agree more. I always exercise (regular 5 mile walks, etc.)
Cycling. McVicar expounds on his Klein road bike. Not a mountain bike, note, but a proper racing bike. He cycles everywhere, just like me. He even - get this! - does precisely the same as me in measuring his times on each journey, always working on a shorter route. Less time. However, he doesn't seem to have a cycle computer, which is a disappointment. He would love one.
Shorthand. McVicar decided during the trial at the Old Bailey (to gain professional kudos as well as practicable reporting skills) to learn shorthand, something I've been meaning to do for years (and started about 9 years ago, for 1 month until I'd learnt about a third). He also prefers Pitman 2000, which is the champagne of shorthands, unlike mickey mouse, brown ale systems like Teeline, etc. He allocates two whole pages to shorthand.
Touch-typing. As a serious journalist, McVicar learnt touch-typing, gaining high speeds. I did the same and have always recognised the usefulness of proper, high-speed touch-typing.
Literature. McVicar has a great skill at proper, serious writing, peppering his work with excellent little Latin phraseologies, etc., such as sine qua non. He is adept at imagery, often using brilliant little pieces of metaphor like: "He was the Ninja Jerry who could tease Oxborough Tom with the truth and never get clawed by it." That is superb (Oxborough being the name of the Met police investigation). His writing is a delight to read.

His healthy cynicism is refreshing in today's image and politically obsessed world. For example, "most PhDs are a joke". He couldn't be more right. I long ago came to the conclusion that ALL degree courses - no matter at which institution, good or bad - are a total joke. Media Studies? Politics? English? All rubbish. ANYONE can get such a qualification, literally by just turning up (and handing in anything for coursework).

I like the way he hates the hysteria that surrounds other idiots like Princess Diana and Jill Dando. A few excellent, choice words on the revolting Mary Archer, too (the one who plays 'Miss Innocent' all the time).

Perhaps McVicar is the Roger Daltrey of journalists - a sort of The Who of journalists, from London (unlike those whingeing - "why don't we like success in England" - idiots, Michael Caine and Ray Winstone).

Anyway, that's enough of McVicar.

Book Review: Dead on Time - How Barry George Executed Jill Dando (Blake, 2003)

2006-09-16T13:50:00.000+01:00

This is a fascinating and gripping account of the Jill Dando murder by John McVicar, former gangster and now self-made freelance journalist and television dial-a-pundit.

His account of the murder and trial may be questionable but what McVicar does is to throw open the viper’s nest that is journalism in modern-day London. It is a truly eye-opening and fascinating story. McVicar is the Steve Irwin of journalists – street-wise, highly competent at his trade, yet liable to suffer the slings and arrows of a stingray at any moment (in the shape of McNamara of the Met, Al Fayed or Campbell, the detective-in-charge).

This book is the All the President's Men (Woodward & Bernstein) of murder books - it is intricate in its account of how journalism works. Alright, we're talking about a brutal murder, but only of a dumb, girl-next-door type who happened to have a successful TV career. Incidentally, one who started out (after the Weston Mercury) at Radio Devon up at St Davids Hill, in Exeter. Spookily, she may well have been working at BBC Radio Devon just when I was 19, working at EBC Group Plc at Marwood House, St Davids Hill, bang opposite.

He sets out his initial theories on who killed Jill Dando, as written up in his column in Punch magazine. He points out the pathetic mistakes of the early investigation, such as not following up the only witnesses at the scene of the crime, Richard Hughes next door at number 31 Gowan Avenue, and the other bloke, opposite).

They could have afforded the police a true description of the gunman, rather than the usual rubbish E-fit that they came up with. It's all a bit like the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, 20 years before, when they also became bogged down in their old-fashioned index card system, containing the names of thousands of suspects, only this time it's the HOLMES system. I worked for Devon & Cornwall Constabulary, here in Exeter, a few years ago, and, apart from the complexity of dealin with any database containing thousands of names, the police system is also antiquated, a sort of bespoke, MS-Dos system from the 1980s.

I like McVicar, not least because he has a cynical attitude to most things. I thought the Jill Dando-Diana media fairytale was a load of bollocks; so does McVicar. Let's face it - both were dumb blondes who knew how to play the media.

McVicar seems to be candid and honest in his account. He admits that he was misguided in targetting Hughes, the next door neighbour, and that his magazine conducted something of a witchhunt against him.

McVicar also is a consummately gifted writer, even employing lots of academic-style Latin phrases and so forth. The little apparantly irrelevant narratives thrown in - like the Finnish bird, Tiina - seem pointless. But it still makes for fascinating reading, like Philip Marlowe, or something. I particularly like his attention to detail, like when he describes Hughes and his avoiding drinking and smoking in their first meeting in the pub (when they decided he was a major suspect, after being put in the frame by Mr D, the Met insider).

I've only finished half the book, but am totally unconvinced about Barry George. He may have been just some oddball with a superstar complex who got out of his depth. Maybe it was the Serb connection after all. The particle theory - that the tiny grain of gunpowder/whatever in his Cecil Gee overcoat links him to the crime is total rubbish. What other evidence is there?

Crisis? What Crisis?

2006-09-14T16:43:00.000+01:00

Following on from my application for a Crisis Loan, I go to the side entrance to Clarendon House for my 1pm appointment. Already, the room is packed.

The Crisis Loan payment office is a little appendage to the main Clarendon House building, just at the side, opposite the Pyramids swimming pool (which I used to go to years ago). It has old-fashioned steel framed grey doors and windows, a throwback to the 1970s. The counter itself is like the reception of Fort Knox, a little window with bullet proof glass, I imagine. However, there are some comfortable but immovable chairs to sit on, packed with about 20 people and 5 children. A few pushchairs just for good measure.

I go to one of the five interview rooms for an appointment with someone - a Customer Service Assistant, or Clerical Officer in 1970s DSS parlance - who gets me to sign a form agreeing to the terms and conditions of my £30 "loan". I agree, of course, and then sign the letter.

Everything is now in motion and I am asked to come back at 2pm to receive payment (an old-fashioned girocheque which I can take to the designated post office, up the road in Sidwell Street). The terms and conditions are basically that I agree to a £6.70 reduction from my standard Jobseeker's Allowance, whenever it is eventually paid.

I go for a walk, visit Waterstone's the booksellers up in the High Street/Paris Street junction, and then return at 2pm.

A middle-aged, tall thin man with a respectably clean shirt and tattered jeans is his mobile phone, presumably to a friend.

"The cunts won't pay me any money. They owe me a grand anywhere."

My sort of language - just plain old Derek and Clive (Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) - but a bit incongrous in this quiet, official type of place.

Eventually, the blind is pulled up at the payment counter and a woman runs her eyes over a list of people to be paid. I am on it somewhere, I hope.

"Mrs Sanderson", she proclaims in her best official yet unpompous accent. Said woman duly stands up and approaches the counter.

In the end, I go to the window and receive my cheque. £30, cashable up at the post office.

Not surprisingly, when I reach the Post Office a few minutes later (via Cheeke Street, past Somerfield - the old Express & Echo offices and printing works), the very same people who were in the queue at Clarendon House are now in the queue at the Post Office. I think the counter staff here know its Crisis Loan payment time - they must get this rush often, just at the same time.

"Today, Matthew, I am going to be... Jim Callaghan"

2006-09-13T12:16:00.000+01:00

Today, Matthew, I am going to be Jim Callaghan...

... when he went to the IMF, that is. Or was it Denis Healey? Did they both go?

I have had to go to the IMF of the Department of Social Security, the Crisis Loan Department. All for about £30. I don't even know what the amount will be at the moment, but the bloke on the helpline - who could hardly be less helpful - said come in at 1pm. It is now 12.19pm.

How must Sonny Jim - that amiable, famously non-university, ex wages clerk Prime Minister from Portsmouth - have felt when the British government was so broke in 1976 that it went cap-in-hand to the International Monetary Fund for a handout? What a humiliation for Britain, ravaged by stagflation. I know the feeling.

I applied for Jobseeker's Allowance (they call it JSA though spell the "JS" as just one word - Jobseeker - what sense is there in that?) 3 weeks and 1 day ago, yet have received nothing. My final week's wages from the last job (£211.91) was paid 3 weeks ago on Friday yet ran out last week. That leaves £6.31 in the bank for the past few days and no prospect anytime soon of any money. What a state to land up in.

The impatient bloke on the Crisis Loan hotline (at Clarendon House, Western Way, Exeter) was constantly irritated by any comment at all from me. Perhaps he's used to hoodlums or hoodies trying it on. He sounded about 50, a veteran of the 70s, funnily enough, just like Callaghan. Seen it all at the DSS. From when it was called DHSS to its modern 3 letter acronym. Everything at the SS is a 3 letter acronym.

I assumed that the 'loan' would be whatever JSA entitlement that I had built up and not been paid - currently over 3 weeks - yet he was at pains to say that it is an actual loan that you pay back, not linked to any social security entitlement. The idiot was the most annoyed person I've ever spoken to, professionally.

I fucking hate Clarendon House. By the Paris Street roundabout, with its new 'gateway' building - supposedly a new cinema in the making - which the council hailed yet turns out to be yet another big car park, this time with a few flats on top. Awful. Just like the new Princesshay.

Now I am in Exeter Central Library, about to embark on the 9 minute walk to Clarendon House for my Crisis Loan.

San Remo mens racing bike, Claud Butler

2006-09-11T14:58:00.000+01:00

Two months ago, I paid £320 for a Claud Butler mens racing bike, the San Remo (Triple) model, 21 speed, 22" frame. Was it worth it?

Sidwell Cycles were originally supposed to order the regular, 14 speed version. They messed up. A 21 speed, 3 chainwheels-at-the-front, version is a total waste of time. The smallest cog - ie., the lowest gears - are so low that they are simply unusable. It is surely just a marketing gimmick to add an extra cog at the front and then print on their brochures "21 speed" instead of 'just' 14 speed. Looks good on paper but actually pointless in reality.

Also, the frame is the wrong shape. It is too long. On my twenty year old Raleigh mens racing bicyle, the frame is larger but shorter. 4 inches shorter. This means that the new Claud Butler bike takes a while to get used to. In the end, though, I got used to it.

Sidwell Cycles ordered the medium size frame - against my express wishes - yet ultimately made the right decision as the large frame would have been way too long.

Overall, however, it is a superb bike. I wasted no time in going to Halfords to buy one of their cycle computers, all for the ridiculously low price of £10. Ten pounds for what would have been space age technology a mere twenty years ago. I can now go for a run down to the coast - about 15 miles - and have a constantly updated record of distance, journey time, odometer, average speed and, the best measurement, speed.

I can cycle past Woodmanton farm, an uphill struggle through tiny country lanes (little more than paths, with enormous tractors appearing at any moment as if through a hedgerow) on the way to Budleigh Salterton, join the B3179, and then enjoy the 2 mile downhill stretch through Dalditch, reacing 39 mph on my speedometer. It beats travelling by car any day, especially on a warm sunny day.

The wheels are 700x25, about 27 inches. They have a narrow tread, smaller than the old Raleigh bike of the 1980s, enabling fast cycling. The seat's a bit small and the handlebars a bit big ("oversized" apparantly), but it is a delight to cycle.

If you want a cheap racing bike, then at £320 the San Remo is a bargain. Why pay £1000 upwards for a Greg Lemond just to have carbon fibre forks? You're paying an extra £1000 for some stupid lightweight forks which are liable to break and won't even make any difference to cycling, for the amateur.

Claud Butler have a range of bicycles: racing (road) bikes, hybrid bikes and the usual idiotic mountain bikes. They are all made by Falcon Cycles of Brigg, Lincolnshire, a last refuge of British cycling, I imagine.

As for bicycle shops in Exeter, I'm not really sure who is the best. Sidwell Cycles are handy - not far from town - and offer the usual maintenance facilities, etc. Halfords, in Sidwell Street, are pathetic. The manager there wouldn't even let me try out a racing bike before buying. The Bike Shed, at the top of Fore Street, are the Rolls Royce of bike shops, with various racing bikes priced at £2000.

Krispies, Exmouth

2006-06-05T18:40:00.000+01:00

In Exeter Road, Exmouth, you can find the finest fish and chip shop for miles around - between here and Bloaters, in Sidford, probably. It's at number 51, about half way along a delightful suburban street in Exmouth, the sort you used to find in London.

Exeter Road has rows of housing which are fronted by low level shops, jutting out into the pavement. These contain a whole variety of shops - barbers, video shops, convenience stores, pubs, off licenses, a Co-op, another convenience store next door, and, of course, Krispies.

As is often the case with good quality outlets, Krispies is situated on a corner, 'double aspect' section of Exeter Road. Its lights are bright - even today, on one of the sunniest of late spring days - and the inside is a clinical, clean, efficient and savvy style of takeaway, a bit like a professional large chain of takeaways.

They serve fish and chips, pizzas (made to order) and various other foods, all of exceptional quality and value for money. There is really nothing like it for miles around, certainly not in Exeter. If they don't expand their brand then they are stupid.

The 'lightly battered chips' are a curiosity but I opt for the traditional chips, which turn out to be of the highest, most exquisite hand-made quality, cooked to perfection - slightly crispy, yet plump and filling. Also, a piece of cod, described as 'Small' yet really bigger than I expected. All at 2.70 altogether, which is extraordinary value.

£1,000 for a Racing Bicycle

2006-05-31T15:59:00.000+01:00

The Bike Shed at the top of Fore Street, Exeter, want an incredible 1,000 minimum for a mens racing bike. Pathetic.

In the old days, you could pick up a Raleigh mens racing bike for about 200 in today's money. Yet, now, you can't get one for less than 1,000 except in Halfords, Sidwell Street, who have one for 199.99 (called, I believe, Apollo).

The excuse is all of the lightweight metals, making a super-light bicycle. Fine if you're a semi-professional cyclist, going on marathon 100 mile tours every weekend. Not much good, though, if you just want to cycle 6 miles to work and back each day, just for saving money on the train - don't get me started on that - and acquiring basic fitness.

There is surely a gap in the market for a mens racing bike retailing at, say, 200-300. Even if you pay 1,000 for a great bike, it's bound to get stolen the first time you leave it locked in the street.

Subway, Exeter

2006-05-14T14:06:00.000+01:00

In the space of just three or four years, Subway, the American sandwich and deli chain, has torpedoed the takeaway and fast-food restaurant scene in Exeter. The local kebab shops offer nothing close to the quality or value for money of Subway (and charge much more) and McDonalds is desperately trying to follow suit, offering all sorts of healthy salads and subway-style sandwiches and specials. They have no chance. Likewise, Burger King.

The first Subway restaurant in Exeter opened at 45 Sidwell Street, about four years ago, up by the Duke of York pub, close to the Odeon cinema. It has been a resounding success. Subway is surely a victim of its own success: on busy Saturday afternoons, there can be up to thirty people inside, half of them queuing.

As it says on its standard menu leaflet: 24,219 stores in 83 countries. Its founders, Fred de Luca and Dr Peter Buck, must be astounded. A $9 billion food empire begun from a tiny takeaway - Pete's Super Submarines - founded in Milford, Connecticut, back in 1965.

I try and beat the Saturday afternoon rush, arriving at the small, shop-style Sidwell Street restaurant just before noon. Not so long ago, I had no money at all, so a £3.50 meal at Subway is a total luxury.

If all major food chains have their corporate logo and advertising, then Subway is the Norwich City of takeaway restaurants. Their bright canary yellow and dark green decor, and neon Subway sign outside - like a pub sign, hanging down from an awaning - and the shop front challenge the traditional, tough colours of red and black that you see at McDonalds and Burger King, near the Guildhall.

McDonalds have a branch built into the Kop at Anfield; Subway, however, is the Delia Smith of takeaways and could do worse than open a little outlet at Carrow Road.

Subway is a very successful, premier league Norwich City; McDonalds and Burger King are now Notts County, in relegation freefall. Is there any hope for them?

Commercial radio smothers any conversation - too loud by far - and the staff work assiduously, like maniacal coolies, reeling off an endless series of questions: 'would you like salad?', 'what sort of bread would you like?', 'toasted with cheese?', 'chilli sauce or barbecue sauce?'. The list is endless, yet fascinating. Never did a fast food customer get such intense customer service for so little money.

As usual, I opt for the 'Hearty Italian' bread - a good, plain and honest sub, though not crusty at all, just a gritty, sandpaper finish on top. I also go for my favourite filling, the Chicken Tariyaki. Salad and chilli sauce. Processed cheese, sliced turkey, ham and proper beef are available. Scrumptious.

Why do they not offer a check-list of items so that the staff can get right on with producing the sandwich, not asking an endless list of questions? They could get more customer through-put that way.

I collect the Sub Club stamp, too. Eight of these and you have a free meal, the sort of thing that Jared the Subway Guy - the antidode to the Supersize Me, anti-McDonalds bloke - would have had by the dozen.

I enjoy the green, vinyl benches and booths, rather than the tall stools. I never did like fixed chairs, however. Ladbrokes offer plush carpets and normal, movable chairs, as opposed to William Hills' fixed, plastic football stadium seating.

I also enjoy sitting down, admiring the archive New York Subway maps on the walls.

Exmouth by Bicycle

2006-05-04T18:06:00.000+01:00

Today I put to the test my new cycling and fitness regime - a long bike ride to Exmouth, 13 miles from Cowley Bridge.

The bike is clapped out but the will is there. I take the normal route to work, at Clyst St Mary, only it's bank holiday Monday. Continue to Woodbury Salterton, past the Digger's Rest, and on to Woodbury, the lovely village with the old, pre-war style garage.

The Maltsters pub looks inviting, I've never been inside, and I'm thirsty after 45 minutes cycling. Inside, I bump into Rita and Ulla, two people I haven't seen for years, friends of my mother's.

To avoid the traffic - and armed with my Ordnance Survey 'Explorer' touring map (1:25,000) - I take a detour down a tiny country lane via Woodmanton. This road has a great grass a mud strip down the middle, sandwiched on either side by fading, crumbling tarmac. I pass Lower Mallock and Higher Mallock farms, both displayed to some detail on the map.

They have enormous brick farmhouses and courtyards (19th century), the sort where you expect to see a stray dog yapping away. Now, however, they've been turned into modern, all mod-cons habitations for the modern professional. Going for about 1 million.

On to Dalditch Lane, down to Dalditch Common and then to Knowle and into Budleigh Salterton, one of my favourate places.

Back via the old railway line cycle route, which enables me for the first time to go over the giant railway bridge/viaduct that I have passed under so many times. That's after a pint at the Feathers pub in the High Street, and a tea down on the superb beach, Steamer Steps, kiosk.

Woodbury Salterton

2006-04-28T18:47:00.000+01:00

I began just two weeks ago, yet the cycling bug has bitten me hard. Today, at lunch-time, I go for a little three mile excursion to the fascinating, beautiful, unspoilt Devon village of Woodbury Salterton.

Before lunch, at work, I dreamt of getting out, away from the office, on the bicycle, into some fresh air and the shop I'd passed before. I knew there two pubs there, too, and I'd have just enough time for one pint.

I head out along the A3052 Sidmouth Road, taking the side lane just before Westpoint, heading off towards Kenniford Farm and Heathfield cross. Delightful! The recent rains have given way to stunning, mid-spring sunshine, which always leave Devon looking its best. Lush verdant, green fields and grass banks, with daisies and buttercups popping through, accompanied by a gentle, comforting breeze as I make my way along the country lane towards Woodbury Salterton.

The signpost says 'Woodbury Salterton 1 1/2 miles', seemingly a long way for a lunch-time jaunt. I continue nonetheless. It's a gentle uphill all the way going out, but you know what rewards that brings on the return journey.

Past Heathfield cross, little hamlets spring up, as I accompany the Grindle Brook and its valley on my left towards its source in Woodbury Salterton. Funnily enough, I work at its expiration at Winslade Park, where gives up its struggle to become a river and simply merges with the River Clyst, a lesser of the many East Devon estuaries, itself flowing into the River Exe well before it reaches the sea at Exmouth.

I enter Woodbury Salterton in a sharp descent. The old church Holy Trinity is enormous for the size of village; the Diggers Rest public house is equally impressive, a real gem of a country pub, more of a gastro-pub as is the like these days.

I take a quick half of lager and immediately bump into a colleague (off on holiday for the day), Pew. He in a party of about 20 celebrating someone's 75th birthday.

Mountain Bikes are Rubbish

2006-04-22T11:36:00.000+01:00

I've had enough of First Great Western and their annoying, paranoid ticket checks at St Davids station in Exeter. So I've begun cycling to work, instead.

Last week, FGW decided to organise a mass-ticket swoop at the main railway station for Exeter, probably allied to some great anti-terrorist exercise. They locked the handy side-gate at the station, and mounted full checks at the main barrier, manned by several nervous looking men and women of FGW, all wearing that dark, navy blue suit (with the purple trimmings and logo) and those modern, yellow flourescent tunics, as if at any moment a dense fog is about to descend, leading to a rush of ticket-dodging.

I wouldn't mind, but there is only one ticket machine - for cash - and never more than one ticket counter open (out of about 6) making it impossible to buy a ticket in anything less than 10 minutes. This is where the cycling comes in; this is where I forge alliance with Boris Johnson, that great cyclist, formerly of the Spectator, now of the front page of The Sun, the Daily Mirror and Private Eye (always pictured on a bicycle).

Why pay £2.40 a day for a return ticket that only gets me about one third of the distance from where I live to where I work? The total journey is about 6.5 miles, the train (from St Davids to Digby & Sowton station) is about 2.4 miles, leaving me with a 10 minute walk at the home end and a 35 minute walk at the work end.

Enter the bicycle! My bike is about 15 years old yet perfectly suitable for cycling 6.5 miles to work. It's also not a mountain bike. It's a traditional, old-fashioned mens racing bike. Why do grown men and women spend fucking £700 on a mountain bike? What sort of brains do they have?

Mountain bikes are the 4x4 cars of bicycles: they are actually designed for riding across bloody mountains and open fields. They would be very good for that purpose; but, like the ubiquitous urban 4x4 car, they are NEVER used for the purpose for which they were designed. Moronic adults cycle around town - on proper, urban tarmac roads - on mountain bikes, wondering why they're putting in so much effort cycling. Any adult with any basic intelligence should understand that mountain bikes are no good for urban, on-road cycling!

Did you ever see even one competitor on the Tour de France use a mountain bike!!?? Ever wonder why even the annual King of the Mountains uses a standard mens racing bike? It's because a mens racing bike is ideal for on-road cycling. It's faster, smoother, and less effort. The wheels are bigger and the tyres are smaller, making a mens racing bike ideal for road-cycling. Tell that to the morons who cycle around town on mountain bikes.

I whizz past all of the stationary traffic along Honiton Road, through Heavitree, right up to Middlemoor and then down Sidmouth Road to the giant roundabout at Sandygate, where it passes under the M5 motorway. Maybe I look strange - a cyclist amidst four lanes of traffic, giant lorries towering over me as I make my way to the front of the queue, ready for the lights to turn green.

But, the entire journey by bicycle only takes 31 minutes, compared with 60 by train (including 45 minutes walking) and even 36 minutes by car. I must've been mad not to cycle before.

I did try the 'safe' route down to Clyst St Mary, going up Quarry Lane to Digby & Sowton station, over the A379 - where a motorcyclist died yesterday - then along Old Rydon Lane to the other side of Sandygate. However, that adds about 10 minutes to the journey. It means going up-hill in order to go down-hill, whereas the motorway/Sandygate route is faster and shorter.

I can't stand those poncy, trendy people who - like the FGW ticket inspectors - have to wear bright yellow, flourescent tunics (in broad daylight) and crash helmets (those irritating, weird, UFO-shaped helmets). I just cycle in with my normal clothes on and No crash helmet. No doubt, soon, this awful Labour government will make it illegal to cycle without a crash helmet. But I'll continue without one.

Of course, I did crash the other day, after work. Just a minor little thing in the car park at work, no other people or vehicles involved at all. Just trying to zip up my jacket, no hands on the handlebars, front wheel jack-knifed, then whack, straight over the handle bars. However, my hands did the job of protecting my head. A crash helmet would've made no difference at all. I damaged my ribs, but what good would a crash helmet have done for that?

Let the experiment continue...

The Great Exeter Cafe Boom

2006-04-13T15:56:00.000+01:00

Caffe Nero x 2, Starbucks... how many new coffee shops does Exeter need?

Caffe Nero have just opened TWO new shops, one in Queen Street, on the site of the former Birmingham and Midshires Building Society (whatever happened to them?). Another in High Street itself, just opposite McDonalds.

Starbucks have nearly completed their new cafe, on the site of the old Copper Mine amusement arcade, also in Queen Street, though in less popular area and with no prospect of tables and chairs outside in the summer as the pavement is too narrow. Effings, opposite, is a failure already, I would guess.

Book Review: The Missing - Andrew O'Hagan (Faber, 1995)

2006-04-04T15:04:00.000+01:00

Book One - The Candlewick.

The thing that struck me about this book – from over 10 ft away, over-looking me from a skyscraper top shelf in the Fiction section of WH Smith – was the book’s title and its front cover photograph.

The Missing. The word conjures up images and thoughts – what or who is missing? I liked the front page (Getty) photograph, too; a black and white, documentary photo of an urban, typically barren council estate scene in Anonymous Britain, circa 1980.

The photo showed something so totally distressing as to be equally unnerving – unlike the little girl in red, lost amongst the chaos of the Warsaw Ghetto in Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List (1995, also), this photo featured an empty children’s playground, overlooked by blocky, inhuman towers, and an unoccupied red children’s swing. Just still in the desolation, a mirror image of the lost girl in the ghetto. Never has a front page summed up so perfectly what a book’s contents are about.

I grabbed the book and looked at some of the critics’ reviews. Tim Adam (of Elle) compares the author – one I’d never before heard of – to my literary hero, George Orwell, and in particular his brilliant Down and Out in Paris and London. That’ll do nicely; purchase made.

The Missing is a story of dislocation, hope, alienation, loss, terror and urban chaos. It is about an urban underclass in Glasgow, initially, but then moves on to the New Town and London. That’s all in a remarkable first section, entitled Book One – The Candlewick.

O’Hagan – born just one year after me – discusses his ordinary yet happy childhood, accompanied by TV programmes that I’ve mentioned to many people my age but who no-one has ever heard of, namely Mary, Mungo and Midge. That was a brilliant animated series about a girl, a mouse and a dog, who all work in harmony (the mouse sitting on the dog’s nose, leashed to the girl). This cartoon is also set in a Tower Block, one of the main themes or motifs of this brilliant book.

There is a definite ‘living in the sky’ theme throughout the book, nowhere better en-concreted than than great city of Glasgow, which I visited last year, and which has seemingly hundreds of tower blocks, as you enter the city centre via the motorway (another little motif).

There is the constant description of new housing estates and the danger of the Missing being lost forever under these new boxes. It’s all leading to somewhere, this book, and I think I know where, though that will have to wait until I cover Book Two, some other day.

Yeovil Junction

2006-04-03T16:34:00.000+01:00

On Saturday, 1 April, I set off for St David's Station, the main train station for Exeter, undecided about what to do for the day.

It's Saturday, I have £50 in my wallet, and I have the day off. It's a sunny and mild early Spring day; beautiful. One of those days where the weather system throws a few giant cotton buds just to liven up a pure blue sky.

Shall I catch the X53 Jurassic Coast bus to Weymouth, or get the train to Yeovil Junction and then walk to Yeovil Pen Mill for a lovely extra little rural train ride down to Weymouth. Maiden Newton, the Stone Age chalk figure on the green hillside, Yetminster, Upwey and the great Regency town itself, Weymouth.

In the end, I cast aside all financial considerations and jump on the 12.10 Saturday service to Waterloo, London. I head off up the line on the turbo diesel - a good 80 or 90 mph - and pay 13.90 for a Cheap Day Return. Stopping at every station along the way except the miniature St James Halt: Pinhoe, Whimple, Feniton, Honiton, Axminster Crewkern, and, finally, Yeovil Junction, right in the middle of nowhere.

Only after a 10 minute halt at the passing loop that now is Chard Junction, my very own ancestral home. This means a glimpse of the River Axe and a tiny footbridge and weir, the one we used to visit thirty years ago. I can picture myself there now, 9 years old, home-made string and jam jar improvised fishing device, no fish. Only Barry could catch a trout on demand.

At Yeovil Junction, there are a number of foreigners, Eastern Europeans, all wondering how to get into the town centre, about 1 and a half miles away. They probably work in factories in town, perhaps Westlands, or maybe the famous Portuguese factories in Chard, several hundred just 15 miles down the road.

I used to think that Yeovil Junction was the station where Ian Carmichael got off when he went to visit, by train, Alistair Sims's School of Lifemanship in Yeovil. But, no, it must've been either the old Town station or perhaps Pen Mill station.

I walk along Newton Road into town, about a 20 minute walk, past some delightful green rural scenery, and Newton House. Plus a Ham stone, sandstone agricultural building.

The town is brilliant, a typical market town, yet big and high-tech even during World War One when it hosted one of the country's first ever aircraft manufacturers.

A visit to Ottakars bookstore; Ladbrokes to waste #7 on gambling, and, unusually for me, a Pepsi and ice in the Wetherspoons.

I stroll down to Pen Mill just to take a look, but it is already too late to get the train to Weymouth.

Back home to Exeter, arriving at 8.00pm along with a number of youths from Honiton out on the town in Exeter.

Just select the favourite, Each/Way

2006-03-14T17:18:00.000Z

Today, I won my first ever 'professional' bet on horse racing. That's excluding the Grand National, of course, which the whole country bets on every April. That doesn't count.

I've been inside most of the 'bookies' in Exeter - dotted along both Sidwell Street and the top of Fore Street, at the other end of the High Street. I've been in Corals, Ladbrokes, Stanley James (now ToteSport) and William Hill, of course. But only to get the Weekend football coupon, for my customary 1 pound bet, seven selections usually. I only won once, and that was only about 7 quid. Now it's time to step up to horse racing, the professional gamblers sport, the Sport of Kings.

There is a Teach Yourself book that I actually bought, last Sunday in Waterstones, Roman Gate. 8.99 and worth every penny. It tells you about how to bet, the different types of bet and the different strategies to consider.

I now know about Lucky 15s, Yankees, Tricast, Patents and so on. I know how the odds work, the difference between betting on the Tote and in your high street bookmakers. Fine. Well - oday it paid dividends!

Each-way is the obvious bet - at least I now know what this is. It is really two bets; a straight win bet and a 'place' bet, all put on together, in one. My first EVER non-Grand National bet on the races was on Brave Inca, the Champions Hurdle, at 4.00 at Cheltenham, on the first day of the famous Festival, just 100 miles from here. £3 each-way on the 7-4 winner, Brave Inca, ridden by the master jockey, Tony McCoy.

I'm actually getting the lingo right-away, and I've only been in the 'job' since last Sunday! I know the difference between 'flat' and 'steeplechase', the different grades of race (Class 1 to Class 7), and the distances, handicaps and everything else! Brilliant!

Really, there is a certain atmosphere you get in betting shops that you experience nowhere else. You get the excitement of the big race - this week is the Cheltenham Festival, the greatest of all - and you get forty tv screens to watch, simultaneously if you want. You get loads of old blokes - never any women! - and a room full of smoke. The have nice refreshment machines, now, tea and coffee, chocolates, and so on. Really, you could spend a whole day here.

Screwed up sheets of paper everywhere, a garish blue decor if you are in William Hill or Corals and a garish red decor in Ladbrokes. I prefer Ladbrokes. The staff are young, polite, neatly presented, and there's a nice-looking Polish cashier in the Sidwell Street branch.

My 3 e/w got me 12.47 return (including the stake, 6), not bad for a few minutes work. That's 6.47 in winnings, the most ever.

BRAVE INCA - YOU WERE BRILLIANT. TONY MCCOY - YOU ARE BRILLIANT.

Paignton Zoo

2006-03-05T12:35:00.000Z

Today's 'work' was a delightful trip with the company to Paignton Zoo; my first ever visit and was I impressed!? Paignton Zoo is the Lion of zoos - a fantastic, wonderful, enormous 'environmental park' full of the wildest animals imaginable, right in south Devon.

We set off from Sandygate at 08.45am, two yellow Hookways coaches full of staff, a genuine Carry On at your Convenience of works trips. Not W C Boggs, of course, but the Payment Agency, a collection of civil servants, all delighted to travel with colleagues - friends, really - down the M5 and A38/A279 to Paignton.

With our clipboards, and divided up into about five groups, we wandered around the park like that hilarious bunch in the 1962 film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I'm not sure if I was Spencer Tracey - the policeman - or Mickey Rooney. Or Peter Falk. Anyway, there was no Big W, just a series of questions about various animals, all answered by diligently reading the title plates to each animal. My favourate has to be either the tiger or the gorilla.

A Visit to a Police Station

2005-09-22T13:36:00.000+01:00

I await PC Charming outside the dormant police station for my 1.30pm appointment with legal correction and admonishment. This police station operates on a seemingly part-time basis even though the car park is full of vehicles, including a riot van, abandoned on this most sunny, warm Indian summer of early Autumn afternoons.

In this quiet town, the riot van is like a football super-sub, a powerful, muscular Wayne Rooney of police vehicles awaiting its big chance but, alas, confined to the bench forever. Perhaps not until Christmas will it be brought into action when the town's pubs fill up, revellers frolic in the one main street and the odd drinker succumbs to seasonal over-exuberance. Or maybe when the new, insane licensing laws come into force.

Crediton Police Station is a 1970s building hidden away in the upper reaches of the town, on the hillside by the large secondary school. It looks more like a banal, bland suburban semi than a police station; perhaps that is a measure of crime in this small, dull mid-Devon town. Everything is still except for a gentle breeze swaying the roses and a feisty squirrel making its forays across an idle cul-de-sac.

For all the busyness of the car park, the police station itself is deserted. Even the doorbell produces no effect, not even the reassurance or satisfaction in hearing an unanswered bell. No response at all. It is the opposite of Assault on Precinct 13, this outpost of law and order rendered a Marie Celeste of an operation, an abandoned fortress of justice in a desert of crime. The frontier. However, a police car draws up a few minutes later.

Two police officers enter the premises at the rear while I await my fate by the front door; they take several minutes to boot up the operation until one eventually greets me, again outside. He accompanies me into the building, via the rear, and we head for the reception desk. I now feel like I'm in a hotel, only the Hotel of Misdemeanours with nothing en suite. Now begins the rigmarole and bureaucracy of arrest and temporary detainment at Her Majesty's pleasure. It is like an extended hotel check-in.

They don't search me this time but I am presented with various leaflets and books informing me of my rights and so forth. This includes a book on PACE, a 200 page volume - a blockbuster of arrest - ideal if you are spending the night in the cells and can't sleep.

Kingswear and Dartmouth

2005-07-10T23:30:00.000+01:00

On a sweltering, hot sunny Sunday afternoon in July, under a clear blue sky, there is only one place to head: to the West End or London Palladium of tourist jewels in Britain. And that is Dartmouth and Kingswear at the mouth of the River Dart estuary in south Devon.

From Exeter, by car, there is a neat little by-pass - repeatedly signposted as 'Ring Road' - known as the A380; it is a dual-carriageway which skirts the urban sprawl of Torbay (Torquay and Paignton) and takes you straight to the A3022 and Brixham. Here, you may turn off for Kingswear, reached by an ever-narrowing little road.

Park about half a mile at the top of the hill that leads down to Kingswear - away from the crazed double yellow lines - and you have a delightful stroll down to the station and the estuary, which blinks its spectacular presence between the terraced and detached houses.

Cross the Dart by passenger ferry and then explore Bayards Cove and its Tudor castle and on towards Warfleet and Dartmouth Castle.

Paignton

2005-07-09T23:38:00.000+01:00

At night-time, Paignton becomes the Las Vegas of Torbay; it has more amusement arcades than Torquay and Brixham put together, and in its central boulevard probably more strollers and revellers together than in either of the other tourist monsters.

Take a brief walk inland along any number of tiny side streets and you pass the mass of tiny guest-houses, each with its proud sign stating its great attractions and why you should choose their place over any rival: Sky TV, en-suite bathroon, breakfast room... the list is endless. And endlessly enchanting. These hostelries are seagulls around the great chip shop or trawler of the town itself, though one which never enjoyed any seafaring traditiona and owes its very existence to the arrival of the railway in about 1850.

The seagulls are fed by the endless mass of tourists sardines, whose shawl arrives not from the Bay of Biscay but from Birmingham, among other places.

For me, the greatest delight is the railway station and its steam trains. The sound of steam, shunting and whistles still enlivens this delightful seaside paradise, altogether a throwback to the 1950s.

Auchterarder

2005-06-15T22:04:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday, we all set off from Exeter for Gleneagles (Auchterarder) for at least two weeks of labouring.

There are six of us - from Mig Manpower, Exmouth - basically labourers at the beck and call of Ian McHay, the site foreman, a tough, well-built bull of a Scotsman. No-nonsense and initially angry at our puny, pitiful efforts at participation.

The project is run by Arena Structures, specialists in temporary exhibition marquees, tents, buildings, etc. We are sub-contractors/sub-contractees and at the very bottom of both the hierarchy and the building. The main structure is a vast, temporary barn, 150ft wide and 100ft high, which seems to come in one enormous kit, like a giant model from a toy shop. It is three weeks in the making, one week in use - as the media centre of the G8 Summit, Gleneagles - and then three weeks in the dismantling.

There are sundry other structures, of varying sizes, all on the site of the Equestrian centre, opposite the Trades entrace of the Gleneagles Hotel, the famous, legendary golf course. Several policemen patrol the site, keeping an eagle eye on all of us, lest one of us should be a terrorist planting a bomb (which would not be very difficult, were you that way inclined). In the early stages of its construction - though with all of the main structure assembled, its vast steel and aluminium girders in place - the whole structure wobbles, as if dismayed at its future role under the gaze of the world's media. It could all collapse, just like the forthcoming shenanigans of the Summit.

When the structure is in place, the plastic roofing and walls must be put in place, the job of Mick, the fifty year old Irishman. When you have done this a hundred times, it must be easy, but we have little understanding of what goes where, etc.; it is like arriving late at a house party where you don't know anyone. The sheeting is contained in big red plastic covers - like a hot air balloon kit - placed at precise points around the structure, about thirty in all; or perhaps like scarlet serviettes around a dinner table.

Mick has the voice of a tenor, booming, and it echoes around the place - he must be hoarse - usually from the top of a mobile crane, 100ft up in the heavens. We remain on the ground, awaiting the next command from on high, however. When Mick's work is nearly complete, the building has a series of vast white sails dangling from 100ft gables at each end, like a ship ready to set sail.

They have little patience with us but continue nonetheless. McHay is to Mick as Bush is to Blair; the one is more powerful than the other (one is a superpower, the other a vassel, though they both need each other in order to survive).

The secret is to do this ten times then you know where you are; you become the tent itself rather than a little pin in the base. The air is filled with the coarse groan of diesel generators, the reverse warning beeps of numerous industrial vehicles and people shouting from one end of the building to the other; most have become adept at their own unique form of sign language, however, as they communicate various instructions.

There are Polish, Portuguese, Germans and any number of foreign workers here, each relying on the sign language, a sort of lingua franca of tent monkeys and foreign workers. McHay, the site foreman, speaks a tough, crude brogue - it all sounds Glaswegian to me - which I, surprisingly, have little trouble understanding.

Meanwhile, the policemen - in their yellow, flourescent tunics - look on, hands in pockets, just familiarising themselves with each new face; how many people are new today? can we trust those three who arrived the day before? It could be the building on the Pyramids, a mammoth task, long ropes covering the entire structure, attached to workers at each end.

Well, this goes on for twelve hours everyday, even in the driving rain, which has been persistent for two whole days now. Everyone is waterlogged, yet the show must go on; it is a wonder I haven't yet gone down with pneumonia. Just the occasional thirty minute break, when everything comes to a halt for a well-earned rest. This is just long enough for a little excursion into Auchterarder, 1 1/2 miles down the road and the Co-op for refreshments, cigarettes, etc. We converge on the Co-op like starving seagulls on a trawler yet refuse to acknowledge each other, for that would be to become over-familiar. Most have removed their yellow flourescent bibs and blue hard hats, yet we all know each other from twelve hours, daily, in close proximity.

After two days of rain, everything is saturated, including the 'team spirit' which is close to leaking at various stages. Even the simplest of tasks - like picking up a PVC door - becomes a juggling trick, slipping through the fingers like a block of ice. Wooden blocks, however, begin to weigh like steel; 2m steel stakes are gritty with the sand of the equestrian show floor, enough to rake and shred one's hands, particularly when one's gloves have gone missing.

Outside, the thoroughbred horses trot around their reduced compound/field, chomp grass and mutter the occasional neighing, awaiting the return of their freedom. I chuck the remains of my apple, a little titbit of equine empathy.

Turf Hotel, Exeter Canal and estuary

2005-05-30T20:44:00.000+01:00

Passing the Swan's Nest, there is a little road - Station Road - that climbs up a gentle gradient to cross the railway line. It is a man-made obstacle and distinctly out of character for you are already on Exminster Marshes, the flatlands on the western bank of the Exe Estuary. The station has long since departed.

After the bridge, and past the forlorn Lions Rest public works on the left, the road narrows and the tarmac quickly gives way to what is now little more than a dusty gravel track; it narrows, burrowing into tall bushes on either side, enjoying the cosiness and tranquility of a country lane amidst the bird sanctuary, yet it is still large enough for a car. Several vehicles struggle to pass each other, like revellers in a busy nightclub corridor, drunk on their surroundings and the intimacy of a forced, fleeting embrace with like-minded souls. they appear to stop, cars almost touching, like a little hug between those in the know; then they drive on, one sated, the other expectant. The euphoria of spectacular landscape. And hospitality.

Further on, there is a small car park, already near full. Again, it is like the nightclub, only this time a busy WC, a frustrating place where people hope to discharge their vehicular obligations; they pray there is no queue and that there is a little slot available, for to leave now would be to leave unsatisfied, unfulfilled, a rimal urge nagging away at the heart and soul. The drive to experience the Devon landscape at its most spectacular. On a sunny August bank holiday Monday, the urge reaches climactic proportions, an annual pilgrimage; or a migration, just like the starlings next door.

The Exeter Canal is set several feet above the marshes; indeed, its very existence has emasculated the marsh, transforming it into rich pasture land like that of mid-Devon. Only, flat as an ironing board. Herds of Friesian cattle wander around, luxuriating in thte rich clumps of grass - there is no trace left of the former swamp - whole fields mottled by their black and white hulks. A pastoral medley of rich green, black and white.

ParcelArmy, Marsh Barton

2005-05-12T07:22:00.000+01:00

ParcelArmy is housed in a giant warehouse in the very heart of Marsh Barton, an ageing post-war industrial estate in the south-east corner of Exeter, just below the river. Most of its buildings are 1950s, red brick and in an advanced state of crumbling and decay; they ooze post-war austerity and are just ripe for demolition. The whole estate is laid out in a grid, as if in tribute to the original Roman settlement.

But the ParcelArmy warehouse is rendered in the modern industrial estate vernacular, the type you would find in Exeter Business Park or Matford, though it's been on this site for at least twenty years.

When you finally penetrate the modern security door next to the 'customer services' entrance - not hard since it was open and the number pad was temporarily obsolete - you enter a vast warehouse full of red lorries and parcels; and lots of dust. Enormous angled steel girders hold up a perspex roof that is now browned and faded, frustrating the course of normal daylight; the electricity bill is twice what it should be.

There are thick layers of dust, often encrusted, and paper and cardboard boxes everywhere, mostly housed in makeshift 'cages' and scattered around homemade wooden worktops. The whole place is like something out of 60 Minute Makeover.

There are dozens of warehouse people - coolies - all draped in the red ParcelArmy bib, like so many Chinese communists, though they are not waving little red books. Chairman Mao would be proud of this place, a sea of red. Or Bill Shankly. The coolies are applauded by the roar of HGV engines revving up like frustrated beasts, eager to return to the hustle and bustle of their natural habitat, the jungle of the road at rush hour. They are fed their natural food - a meal of hundreds of parcels - by small, angled and portable conveyor belts that deliver from one smaller lorry to its larger parent, like the reverse of a bird regurgitating for its young.

A radio blasts out Radio 1 from a corner - a series of moronic anthems - and occasional voices shout light-hearted jokes, bandying just to pass the time of day.

Everyone wears a red flourescent bib, a very sensible idea, each bearing bold letters, PARCELARMY, like hordes of Chinese communists beavering around, each with its purpose, like one tiny ant playing its part in the greater heap. However, there is little vehicular activity at this time, most transportation and industry given over to the movement of the 'cages', little steel trolleys that carry parcels about the warehouse. This place is all about parcels coming in and parcels going out; there is little collection on site, just sorting and yet more sorting. About 20 per cent of movement is missorted or redirected parcels.

My job is to deal with the problem parcels, those which have an unknown destination or those rejected by the addressee; the bastard parcels. This means scanning each parcel and then placing on each a white sticker bearing a large number, the sort that can be easily identified, from a distance later on, for re-delivery.

Within moments, my nostrils are twitching from the dust and my hands are blackened and slippery from handling parcels, which now slip through my hands like mercury. The orphan parcels will not be fostered out and wish to remain in their orphan cage.

The Boss approaches me and introduces himself: Steve Margin. He is a good sort, a throwback to the pre-Thatcher, union days of the 1970s. He is short, wears a grey moustache and a bald head and is pleased to be hospitable; unlike the woman from the office. She is surly and tells me off for placing a problem address parcel in the wrong place. I begin to feel like the parcel in question.

I return the following morning at 7am for a full days' work - eleven hours, right through until 6pm. The Golden Arrow agency, in town, sent me here.

To be continued...

Reg Keys and Sedgefield

2005-04-29T02:22:00.000+01:00

I have only recently discovered that Reg Keys is standing against Tony Blair in Sedgefield, County Durham. Fascinating. I hope Keys wins.

I have just sent an email to the Keys website offering support (no money). But the thing that jumped out at me is the address for the campaign headquarters - Newton Aycliffe. In my dim, distant past, I remember that I spent 3 months living and working in Newton Aycliffe (at the Flymo factory, working on an expert system).

Newton Aycliffe is basically a post-war 'new town'. It looks it, too. Of course, there is an ancient village at its core - or, rather, on the edge, next to the old A1. I have very mixed memories of this place, where I was 26 and doing a summer work placement as part of my MSc course. I spent about 10 days living here, firstly at a woman who provided bed and breakfast to people from Flymo, mainly from Sweden since it is a Swedish firm; secondly, I spent 3 terrible nights in another council house, before moving on to Durham, 15 miles north. The contrast could not be greater; like moving from a cardboard box on the Embankment to the Ritz Hotel.

In the second place, an old woman - a friend of the bed and breakfast woman who didn't want me there on account of her little tax-free scame with the people from Sweden (I needed to claim housing benefit) - let me pay £10 a night to sleep in here flat. It was a total slum. Filth everywhere and 3 Alsatian dogs raring to tear me to shreds every time I moved.

Newton Aycliffe has a population of about 45,000 so it has thrived since its inception (under the post-war Labour government, I presume). But it is full of tiny council bungalows and bereft of any civic presence at all. It is truly drab, its shopping centre a barren concrete jungle not unlike the infamous estate in Tottenham where PC Blakelock got so terribly massacred. Otherwise, it's famous for the largest, most violent youth detention centre in Britain. Don't go there on holiday.

On the other hand, it is surrounded by some of the finest countryside anywhere in Britain. I think once I actually walked all the way from Newton Aycliffe to Durham (about 15 miles) when I walked out on Flymo one day, past Ferryhill and all of the old pit villages.

Anyway, good luck to Reg Keys.

Chelsea versus Liverpool, the Mint

2005-04-27T23:18:00.000+01:00

Another epic night of both football and drinking at the Mint. And an Ann Summers party on the pool table.

When you sit down and prepare for the big match - possibly the biggest ever match in English football - and you see a notice on the back of a chair, blocking the pool table, which says 'Reserved' you assume it is a pool match, or something (although the Mint pub is not in any pool league... that's what made me start wondering). Then, ten minutes into the match, you see a whole bevvy of young, attractive women fumbling around bags full of lingerie... What do you do? Continue watching the match or alter your view to the left to look at all of these gorgeous women? I didn't know which way to look.

J is here, down for the night from Glastonbury. A brilliant, pulsating match, 150 people in the place, the atmosphere just electric. A classic night at the Mint. Brilliant.

Exeter Chiefs versus Pertemps Bees, County Ground

2005-04-23T17:50:00.000+01:00

The decripitude of the County Ground is such as to make the old Stamford Bridge - or Plough Lane, or even the old Wembley stadium - look like a modern Stade de France; it is appalling.

Of course, the Chiefs are soon to move to their new stadium out at Sandy Park, by the M5 motorway, a welcome improvement though nothing like as grand as the local Express & Echo paper would have you believe. From the plans on the wall in the old clubhouse at the County Ground, it consists of just 2,400 seats in one stand with the rest standing around most of the ground. Nevertheless, today I pay my first ever visit to the County Ground for the purposes of watching rugby.

The approach from Cowick Street, in St Thomas, is flat; you can hear a slight commotion from somewhere and the rugby ground - which dates back to about 1920 - is obviously not far away. The Longbrooke pub will benefit to some small extent, though today the crowd cannot not be much greater than about 2,000. They are mostly spread out around a tiny perimeter, above the speedway track and the banking which is mostly taken up for car parking; about 150 cars line the edge of the track, as well as a Stagecoach bus over the other side.

The old cinder track below remains, offering another year of speedway. The small grandstand is full and, for some odd reason, the only entrances and exits are on the grandstand side; there is no access to Ferndale Road on the Marsh Barton side.

I have no idea where Pertemps Bees are based; how stupid to reveal nothing of your origins in the club name.

Exe Island and the Queen Victoria Pub

2005-04-20T23:30:00.000+01:00

This lesser known Exeter pub is in one of the oldest surviving streets of the city, Tudor Street, on the edge of the old Exe Island district, just below the city wall. Indeed, it is next door to the famous Tudor House, an Elizabethan town house, one of the oldest buildings in Exeter, long since returned to pristine condition. It is time the Queen Victoria enjoyed the same renaissance.

The old Exe Island district was once a furnace of industry, brewing and squalor. It began just below New Bridge Street, about fifty feet away, where there once stood an older, smaller, arched stone bridge, the sort that you might find propping up a railway line in Cold Blow Lane in Millwall, or anywhere in south London. Altogether, it was an entrance, a border, an escape route and a trap - those above passed happily by, on their way out West; those below entered Exe Island for a day of toil. The newest bridge - a 1970s, streamline slab of concrete - is a measure of how much this whole area has changed since the 1960s.

Exe Island - really a salient of shoreline on a bend in the Exe, as distinct from the ‘true’ islands of Shilhay and Bonhay - was a world away from what exists now. After shaking off the Courteney yoke, the district grew to become the Venice of Devon, its leats, mills and factories like an overfull suitcase, packed in tight by the belts of the river and the city wall. Then it vanished.

Every old building was cleared years ago leaving just this side of Tudor Street as a remnant from the past, facing all of the new arrivals and making a defiant last stand. The Bonhay cattle market left years ago, cast-out to Marsh Barton and then Matford. In a delicate, brilliant sleight of hand, the landlady has placed on the wall an 1889, large-scale Ordnance Survey map; you could spend one hour in the pub looking at this alone, such is the story it tells.

Now, you might wonder what customers are left for a pub here. But the Queen Victoria has been refurbished and re-opened to create a fantastic, metropolitan-style oasis here, down by the river, amidst the dreary 1970s banalities of Renslade House office tower and its like. The new terrace outside should make many new friends come the summer (or even its colder fringes, given the Stella Artois stainless steel gas heat canopies).

From outside, you approach what looks like a typical Dublin bar, its shiny black glass panelling contrasting neatly with the lighter shades of the surrounding buildings and townscape. Heavy, prominent gold lettering proclaims: QUEEN VICTORIA. The pub itself is invitingly set back 15 feet from the pavement.

Passing the usual, obligatory disabled ramp, inside you will find an interior full of wooden floors and wooden panelled walls, fireplaces and balustrades. No expense has been spared (according to the local press, to the tune of £265,000). They haven't used that ghastly, light, shiny and slippery, modern MDF rubbish; here, it is real, dark wood, both relaxing on the eyes and comfortable on the feet (with just the right level of acoustics). It is all part of the authentic 19th century Victorian mini-theme, though in an appropriate, suitably modern rendition. This old pub has fully landed on its feet, though there is no sawdust.

The effect is complimented by a traditional style double-aspect, corner bar, backed by glass hallmarked mirrors – just like in Dublin – housing a well-presented array of liquor. The beer is Whitbread, Worthingtons and the usual lagers. Shame there are no real ales, though; if only they could bring in some Otter or Abbot, the effect would be total.

Once word gets out on this place, it’ll undoubtedly become a part of the pre-club circuit at the weekend, even if it is a slight detour. For the younger element, it has all of the computer games, fruit machines and ‘The Music’ (2 million song internet jukebox). It’s also a handy staging post for a journey from the city centre to St Thomas. In fact, it deserves to become a destination in its own right. Perhaps it could do with Sky football and a pool table, though, in the modern fashion.

There are at least a thousand people - all potential customers - on its doorstep: the mighty Renslade House with its five hundred office workers, the new flats at Powhay Mills (on the old Little Bonhay), and the riverside millionaires of Princess Alexandra Court. And that's excluding Fitness First, the only place of hard labour left on Exe Island. The Queen Victoria must surely hope to draw in some of the 500 lunch-time crowd from the nearby BT premises, too.

Here, the menu is superb, all local meat and vegetables, sourced from Exmoor and other local producers, and reasonably priced (£9.95 for a 10 oz rump steak). Brand new kitchens await the patter of order chitties as a Riley snooker table awaits the arrival of Ronnie 'The Rocket' O'Sullivan at the Embassy World Championships; action is inevitable. The only drawback is the reduced floorspace though this adds to the continental, bistro ambience.

There are numerous little table and chair sets, ideal for either a romantic tete-a-tete in the evening or a business showdown at lunchtime. For a more leisurely, extended drinking session, there are adequate comfy chairs.

This is the closest pub to the city centre that has such a distance before it meets another pub; there is surely no rival within 600 yards. Punch Taverns have done a tremendous job in creating a meeting place of history, leisure and business in this most under-rated corner of Exeter. It deserves major success.

Perfectionism

2005-04-17T13:38:00.000+01:00

I have spent years lost in a maze of perfectionism, never travelling far from the start due to an overwhelming urge to go back to the middle and try all the other routes before even remotely venturing towards the edge. It is a chronic disability.

When I studied film at Exeter College back in 1997/98 – an A Level at evening school, taught by the brilliant Jo Johnson (the best lecturer I have ever had the pleasure of being taught by) – as usual I became caught up in this ridiculous idea that in order to understand film you had to know it from every conceivable angle. Screenwriting, producing, directing, etc. In fact, I had to become a professional screenwriter before I had any chance of becoming a film critic. And that’s ignoring semiotics which, of course, is a whole discipline in itself.

They are all key elements to film if taken as a giant discipline in its own right but it is an approach which is, nonetheless, a ridiculous, impossible perfectionism.

It’s like trying to ferment a vegetable that will never have any alcoholic properties. No matter how hard you try, you will never produce a real drink and will never have any chance of becoming drunk; the best you can hope for is a teetotal, sterile and bland carrot juice drink.

Take John Hurt. He is surely one of the greatest English actors of the last forty years. His performances are incredibly perspicuous - Dr Stephen Ward, Timothy Evans and Winston Smith, to name just three. There is no-one better than him at offering an acute, inner world of his chosen character and then projecting via his exquisite voice and facial nuances. And yet he says he is just pretending; he never got too bothered about mastering everything. He isn't interested in Stanislavski or anything like that. He just goes out and does the job. When he finished at the Royal Academy, he just went out and got his first job within a few days, on The Wild and the Willing (1962).

Just go out and do it. That is the key.

John Hurt interviewed by Geoff Andrew, The Guardian, Thursday, April 27, 2000:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/Guardian_NFT/interview/0,4479,214857,00.html

Tramping in Exeter

2005-03-23T06:27:00.000Z

For the second day running I have stayed up all night and so I set out for Worker Ready at 6 am. They must give me some work sooner or later.

My chances with all of the other employment agencies in Exeter are at an end; they all want references I don’t have and when I step through the front door and into their smart premises they look at me like I am a tramp. There is simply no chance anymore.

The job I was offered at Tesco, Exe Vale – Home Shopping Assistant in the 'dot com' section - has vanished. It was only a matter of time before they realised they’d not taken up my fake references and when they rang last week to enquire that was the last I heard. I am not even suitable to do other people’s shopping. My BT landline phone has been made receive-only and my mobile ran out of credit weeks ago - after several days stuck on 12p - so I can’t phone them to check, even if it were worthwhile.

This morning, by way of preparation, I’ve been reading Orwell’s first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). How depressing. I am now one of the characters in the book, a desperate, unemployable, middle-aged virtual vagrant. I have accommodation but the rent is weeks behind (£500) and it is surely only a matter of time before I truly join the world of the streets. The Nether World (according to George Gissing). If I do, I think I'll hitch up to London and do it properly. If you are to dine at the table of homelessness and despair, then why not make it a banquet at the Ritz?

My last hope, Worker Ready, moved several weeks ago to Sidwell Street. They used to be based in Paris Street but the whole Southernhay side is due for demolition. Perhaps that means some chance of employment; the employment of destruction.

There's something both unsettling and welcoming about Worker Ready. You have to get there early for any chance of work and you meet other desperate people eager for any work even at £5 an hour; many are foreign. It's like one of those scenes from the factory gates during the Great Depression, with masses of workers desperate for even one day's work. The Controller behind the counter has it in his power to save a person or abandon a person - it is that simple. If you are the lucky one, you can spend a whole day in a factory in either Marsh Barton or Sowton; as long as it's not Howmet, you can't complain.

On the other hand, it is a friendly place and they offer free coffee and newspapers. You have either The Sun or the Daily Star and GMTV on the small TV screen high on the wall. I hate GMTV except for Kate Garroway, who is f****** awesome (and only a year younger than me).

I also prefer Sidwell Street to Paris Street. Their new premises are more suited to their purpose, both larger and away from the exposure and ersatz chic of Paris Street. If this agency is the last chance soup kitchen of opportunity, then why not place in the right part of town?

In Sidwell Street, you have more privacy and parking; this far end, near Blackboy roundabout, is the only surviving pre-war architecture this side of Queen Street, nearly a whole mile distant along the great, ancient thoroughfare that runs through Exeter down to the River Exe. It also has extortionate convenience stores such as the Co-op on the corner and the small newsagents opposite which - incredibly - is still going.

There seem to be a lot of people from Yorkshire and Lancashire in Worker Ready, too, both staff and workers. They're a nice bunch, really.

Worker Ready really is to the unemployed and poor what a soup kitchen is to the tramp; it offers same-day cash payment at the end of your shift. Eight hours' work and you suddenly have £40 in your hand, bypassing all those nasty bank overdrafts and managers (or customer service assistants).

This is my salvation. Appropriately, although I am not religious, the Sidwell Street Methodist hall is bang opposite, gleaming from its recent restoration. This building - saved from the destructive hand of the city planners in the immediate post-war period - is a true Exeter gem, an ornate, almost rococo style building, of a kind that would not look out of place in pre-war Dresden. It is a miniature Frauenkirche, though it carries no recognition amongst Exeter people whatsoever. Its recent unveiling coincided not just with its centenary (May 3rd), but also with the inauguration of its spectacular, re-built Dresden equivalent.

The Cafe Royal has two entrances. The public face of this London institution is on Regent Street, a sort of art nouveau, sheltered entrance that welcomes the affluent customer into an expensive interior. The staff entrance is at the back, in Glasshouse Street, and is the opposite in every respect. I once had the misfortune to spend three months working here, twelve hour shifts of wine waiting.

Sidwell Street methodist church. Contains some superb pictures and a history of this excellent building.

http://www.sidwellstreetmethodist.org.uk/

The Exeter Building Boom

2005-03-15T07:43:00.000Z

The most telling fact was buried away somewhere in a reader's letter in the Express & Echo. The new houses and flats - now 170 - to be built on the County Ground in St Thomas must be built 2 ft above ground level, in case of flooding.

Well, St Thomas was developed as a major suburb of Exeter over the past hundred years. Of course, St Thomas church has stood for centuries and any old map of the district will show a few dwellings several hundred years ago, mainly the fine, Elizabethan Cowick Barton manor house on the Cowick Lane ridge and some buildings by the River Exe and the original crossing itself. But now the developer Bellway is to squeeze in 170 new flats and 4 storey houses, all in the six acres of the old County Ground.

By the way, is St Thomas even Exeter? The recent Boundary Commission controversy highlighted the historical association of the St Thomas district with the city of Exeter, the other side of the river. I tend to include it as a natural part of Exeter.

Bellway paid about £12 million for this site and I suppose they must make enough money to recover the cost. Maybe they paid too much in the first place. It's a cramped site, tucked away behind the tiny Victorian terraces of Regent Street and Ferndale Road. Indeed, some of the old County Ground was sold off years ago, so there is even less space now.

I make the following calculations for new housing in central Exeter:

Isca Place : 167
Princesshay: 200
County Ground: 170
Misc. 300

Basically, there are about 900 new flats and houses currently being built right in the middle of Exeter. Then, add about another 2000 for all of the new sites further out of town, such as Southam Fields, Gras Lawn, Topsham Road Naval Depot, and so forth, and you have a collossal increase in the population of Exeter. And that's not including the new town at Whimple (East Devon) and any number of other developments. Is it a good thing?

Even on one of my favourite walks, I notice a new house going up in Rosebank Crescent, just squeezed in on a portion of old garden, I presume. When will the boom end?

Discovering Exeter 6 - West of the River. Hazel Harvey. Exeter Civic Society 1989.

'Allo 'Allo

2005-03-03T09:56:00.000Z

It’s egregiously sexist, it makes fun of what was a very serious matter, and it makes the Germans look endearing and amusing. But, it was fantastic!

‘Allo ‘Allo was a fantastic 1980s British sitcom, set in the fictional French town of Nouvion. Rene Artois was the café owner and his plight was to appear accommodating to both the Germans and the French Resistance, not your ideal grounds for humour, you would imagine. But, his café was the perfect vehicle for such a scenario, all assisted by probably the most attractive actresses in Britain in the 1980s.

Kim Hartman is some beauty. What can you say? Never did a German military uniform conceal such a wonderful sight underneath.

The Orphan Building

2005-03-02T23:54:00.000Z

At the very summit of the St David’s Hill area of Exeter, there is an orphan. This orphan was born in 1979 and has lived in the same place her entire life since; she never left home. Only, her parents left a few years ago and, like many, she found herself lost. Now, after a series of foster parents, she has had to reinvent herself to keep up with the times. This orphan is a building.

On the outside, Maxwood House is a nondescript, 1970s office conversion. It hugs the pavement - desperate for company - reaches up fifty feet, and offers nothing more pleasing to the eye than brown bricks, squares of crazy paving stone cladding , and a little vertical, streamlined glazing.

It is like one of those poor, unattractive and abandoned children in a Romanian orphanage, the type you see on the TV adverts. It is the essence of 1970s urban architecture, adapted for the tiny plot of suburban land it occupies. It also towers incongruously over the district’s oldest building, Walnut House, a very attractive, well-formed Regency building, just the other side of the road. One is in all of the local history books, acclaimed and admired by everyone; the other never gets a mention. You could say that one is always in Cosmopolitan, turning heads, while the other never even makes the Big Issue.

I once knew the orphan very well, perhaps even intimately. I knew her parents, too. She was created by a building firm, perhaps the greatest the South West has ever known.

It all started with Jack Slowman back in the pre-War days when, among other things, he did some work on the Airport. He was so successful that Slowmans - the original firm - quickly outgrew its own company and began to expand, cleverly acquiring other local contractors along the way, each with its own specialty. In the end, ABC Group PLC was formed, and at one time it was the only truly local firm in the city that was quoted on the London stock exchange.

Well, by the 1970s this proud construction firm had a burgeoning office department, employing all sorts of accountants, draughtsmen, lawyers, and so forth. But they were scattered all over the place, in little terraced houses, contractors‘ offices, etc; there was no ‘headquarters’ as such, poor communication was endemic and there was little company ethos and socialisation of which to speak. Slowmans needed an HQ.

MP3

2005-02-20T05:47:00.000Z

An MP3 player is a brilliant, sensational device. It’s the size of a matchbox, as light as a small apple and contains five CDs of music. That’s brilliant.

When you think that twenty years ago you all you had was a ‘walkman’, a clunky, chunky cassette player that weighed a ton and had batteries that ran out with all the machinery inside, then you know an MP3 player is pure brilliance. It really is the new 'information age', of greater significance than even all of the hype. For once.

For just £35 you can get the Napa player. You can put on all of your favourite stuff, certainly enough for a one hour walk, just listening to Spirit in the Sky by Doctor and the Medics as you pace up that hill getting ever fitter. Just save your CDs on Windows Media Player and then ‘copy to device’ and away you go. 256 MB of music.

There’s no clumsy machinery inside, no jumping in the song and the batteries last much longer. You can also play Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy by The Tams (among Morrissey’s Top Ten songs from his favourite hits appearance on Radio 2 back in 1985). I first came across this great song from one of those free CDs in the Saturday newspapers - probably the Daily Mirror - a few weeks ago and then found out that the great, enigmatic Morrissey had loved the song years ago. How cool is that?

When you walk along - preferably climbing the Duryard Valley Park - you can do some real, powerful, 'blue sky' thinking, the sort that they discussed the other day on the Jeremy Vine show (Radio 2). Many listeners called in and they discussed things like the constant communication - mobile phones, email, etc. - that is the bane of modern life. You just don't get any time to do any genuine thinking. Well, if you just pound the pavement listening to your favourite music, you can do some real thinking. You can contemplate your next business scheme, or maybe World War Three, which is just around the corner.

As they say on howstuffworks.com, the MP3 player is not even new technology; it just adapts existing PC, compression and audio technology for a new, sensational consumer device. Get one.

Nine Pints

2005-02-19T23:28:00.000Z

There's nothing like watching a lunchtime football match - Arsenal v Sheffield United, FA Cup 5th Round - down your favourite pub. In my case, this is the Mint, at the top of Fore Street, Exeter.

This pub was renovated - expensively, by the look of it - about a year ago; it has paid dividends. There are more people in this pub than ever before. Even during the week. And that's not just because of the cheap, £1.50 lager (weekdays, weekends 7-9pm).

It's all a bit sleek now; swish, shiney, light wooden bar and neon lights behind the counter which change colour constantly. They even have Mint uniform for the bar staff now. All very professional and yet they've kept their old-men customers aplenty. At the weekend, they're all joined by masses of young, incredibly attractive women. There are loads of them.

Well, when you've finished with the Sheffield United game - they got a thoroughly deserved draw and replay, courtesy of a last-minute penalty - there is yet more football to come. It's Saturday afternoon, after all. Neil Warnock is one of my favourite managers; he could work very well in the Premier League, where he will probably take the Blades this season. He is that rare thing in football - a manager who is managing his own, home town football club. Get on!

You have the Sky One football service and the charming, very likeable Jeff Stelling, the presenter. He's been doing this show for a few years and is the epitomy of charm and professionalism. He really is an unsung hero of British television.

Today, tellingly, Stelling is joined in the studio by Phil Thompson, assistant manager at Liverpool. That just about sums it all up. Liverpool booted out of the FA Cup by Burnley; Phil Thompson with nothing much to do on a Saturday afternoon. Maybe it gives Liverpool some rest before Bayer Leverkusen, midweek. (A hard week's football coming up with Barcelona v Chelsea on Wednesday).

Anyway, it drags on, I only have £13 but somehow manage to drink nine pints by the end of the evening. This includes a quick visit - with E - to the new Zephyr bar, just a few yards further up the hill. £1.23 for a pint of Carling - how ridiculous can it get? What happens when the 24 hour drinking arrives?

J very kindly picks me up at the end of the evening.

Budleigh Salterton

2005-02-15T21:03:00.000Z

No month is ever complete without a visit to the delightful, typically English resort of Budleigh Salterton. And never more so than in the summer.

This is the real start of the Jurassic Coast, where the enormous red sandstone cliffs - 200ft tall - line the pebbly beach which stretches for probably three miles past Budleigh Salterton. In the summer, you have a quaint little kiosk serving teas, cakes, snacks, ice creams and stuff, and you can sit there just admiring the sea and the quietness, sipping a mug of tea, watching the occasional seagull trying to make a living. A read of the sport section goes down well, too.

It's 75p for a mug of tea although, regretably, they don't let you have your own tea bag - always the best way of making a cup of tea - but just top-up the tea pot now and then (a bit of a rip-off, really).

I've chatted a few times to the old woman who runs the place. Indeed, the little concrete patio is a nice place to have a friendly little chat with a whole variety of people (they seem mostly to be locals, not holidaymakers). Of course, if it's a hot and sunny day and too crowded on the patio, you might have to try placing your white plastic garden chair on the chunky pebbles, difficult but possible.

Budleigh Salterton is built on a hill that slopes down to the estuary of the River Otter, at the very far, eastern end, towards Otterton Ledge. Here, you can see the famous line of about ten pine trees, just standing there on their own, sheltering plain grasslands. (They appear in most postcards from this town). At this point, also, the cliffs have petered out and you have a shingle bank beside the Otter; if you want to reach the other side you now have to go about two miles inland.

I never go this far along and always prefer the western end of the beach. Most of the town itself is actually a good few feet above sea level and there is a point - at Rolle Road, in the middle of the town - where you walk south along a little lane towards the sea and look straight into the sky, going uphill slightly. This is just above the kiosk.

There are walls and blocks of flats and houses on each side and as you walk along you just see metal handrails and, hopefully, a clear blue sky at the very end. When you actually reach the clifftop, the whole panorama ahead is surely as fine as anything on offer in the south of France. It could be the Cote d'azur but for the pebbles. You have the whole sweeping bay before you, stretching on the right over three miles towards Littleham Cove and Straight Point (with the private Sandy Bay invisible, just the other side).

In the summer, you could have one thousand people on the beach below. The kiosk could have a queue of thirty people and people are streaming up and down the steps constantly.

This town is the surely the antidote to the noise and clamour of Exmouth. You won't find any nightclubs here, just fine, traditional English shops, like butchers, cafes (and too many estate agents, of course). It has no town square, just a narrow high street, shop-lined until they give way on one side to a small stream and grass bank.

The town is big enough to accommodate most of the high street banks and even a Rover car-dealership on one side. There are classy restaurants and delicatessens, too, and the usual glut of charity shops, including Oxfam. It is the only town of its size that has no major supermarket, just the small Co-op down the end.

Today, I came with C and M, the two Portuguese friends from Exeter. It is February and bloody freezing - the recent mild spell has been taken over by a blast from Arctic, it feels like.

I drove the usual, longer but quicker route, through Pinhoe, Blackhorse Lane, past Exeter Airport and then out to Aylesbeare and Woodbury Common. We stopped at Woodbury Castle for a few minutes, at the summit of the barren heathland of the common. You can see the sea from up here, about five miles away; in the summer it is so brilliant and wonderful.

I must do some research on what John Betjeman wrote about Budleigh Salterton.

Guide to Budleigh Salterton (with pictures):
http://www.budleigh-salterton-guide.co.uk/

East Devon Area of Oustanding Natural Beauty:
http://www.eastdevonaonb.org.uk/default.asp

Axminster and Sub-contracting, I presume

2005-02-11T19:50:00.000Z

How do you enter the business of sub-contracting? That is the question.

Is it easy? Is it difficult? Is it possible to just enter the trade as a painter and decorator? Painting can't be that difficult. There are simply MASSES of new flats and houses under construction in Exeter and east Devon; it is just a question of getting in on the action and making some money... a lot of it (so say people who currently do this for a living).

I saw an advert in the local paper for tradespeople for a 'project' in Axminster. Time to take action.

Mr C sounded positively enthusiastic when I spoke to him on the phone; there is an acute shortage of people doing this for a living - the newspapers are full of such stories - and I took no time in suggesting we go out onto the site to meet the foreman. We promptly got in the car and left for Axminster.

The historic market town of Axminster is famous for... carpets. But it should also be famous for new flats since there are tons under construction right now.

The town is delightfully placed on a hill right next to the vale of the River Axe; it may even be more scenic than Honiton (next to the River Otter). The Axe meanders its way past the town - its centre, at the top of the hill, rendered in sandstone - just a few miles from its completion at Seaton (Axmouth).

The development we looked at is two dozen flats and they all need painting... now! The site foreman suggested we take a look around and left us to it; it was like we had been in the business for years as we walked around the ground floor, quietly surveying the place and pretending we knew what we were doing. Other workers stopped what they were doing and stared at us, as if we were three Abramovichs walking around Stamford Bridge for the first time.

Well, we stood around in a quiet, deserted room for twenty minutes, admiring the plasterboard and concrete floors, unfinished ceilings and cables everywhere, wondering what the hell to say to W, the site foreman.

There are a mass of white electrical cables dangling from the ceilings, hanging down like in a jungle. You had to wade through, piercing your way through with your hand and raised arm as you made for the next room. We were in the deep interior of this enormous, four storey complex.

We wandered around the ground floor, room-to-room, awe-struck by the sheer industry of the place, trying to discover the layout of each flat; in fact, we were like Dr Livingstone in the darker reaches of a new continent, explorers trying to penetrate the complex world of construction and renovation. In our case, how do you find your way in? Would this be our elephants graveyard?

Could we blow it before we even started?

In the end, I told the foreman we would come back on Monday to take a more detailed observation and begin preparing a full quote. He believed us, for sure. Like a true businessman, I offered my hand and we shook, agreeing to discuss matters further; he could have been Stanley.

On the way back, you can see flats under construction... everywhere. Just flats, houses, and more flats, all under construction, all over east Devon. There is tons of this work around, no question about it. In Exeter, there are new, vast complexes of flats and offices sprouting up all over the place; like mushrooms, new ones just appear overnight.

Do you buy a cheap, second-hand white van? There was a white Vauxhall van for £1,200 at the garage in Sidford (we went again on the A3052 on Saturday, via Colyton). If you are doing two dozen flats, do you go out and buy £1000 of materials? Who knows. We need to investigate further; much, much further, if this is not to become our Kabrabasa rapids.

Havana

2005-02-05T23:28:00.000Z

The first thing I noticed when I walked into this place was the giant mural of the Latin American revolutionary and guerrilla warfare hero, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. It’s about ten feet high, from floor to ceiling, and he looks directly out at the dance floor. What would he make of this place?

The funny thing about this image is that it is a world-famous icon yet not iconic; everyone has seen this image and it used to be plastered on student walls all over the place. But to most people the image has no meaning beyond being a famous picture of someone they probably couldn’t even name, let alone knowing what Guevara actually stood for. So, it is just a literal image.

But there is a strong Cuban ambience in this restaurant and music venue, Havana. It’s like stepping into the Buena Vista Social Club, even more so than the Timepiece up in town on a Sunday night. You half expect Ibrahim Ferrer - who appeared with the rest of the club at Carnegie Hall, in the film - to walk on stage at any moment. I've never tried the food here, but they play some great Cuban music. They even sell big, fat cigars, though no Havana cigars, for some reason.

The building is the old Kennaway bonded warehouse, built in about 1812. I think they used to import wine and tobacco, all brought up the canal at a snail's pace. Now, the only stuff that enters the building is turned into guacamole, tex mex and stuff like that, I imagine.

Tonight, there must be at least 150 people in the place, all spread over one vast floor 80 feet long. As usual, they have a live band, playing all manner of modern music, none of it Cuban (although they play a version of Spirit in the Sky, that great tune by Dr and the Medics). It is only when they pack up, at about 11pm, that the Cuban CD goes on and you are transported to the real Havana.

The drinks are too expensive, £3 a pint; the barmaids are all very attractive.

Havana restaurant website:
http://www.havanagoodtime.co.uk/
this same outfit also has Al Farid, a Moroccan restaurant, and Cohiba, a Spanish restaurant.

The Biography Project, Che Guevara pages:
http://www.popsubculture.com/pop/bio_project/ernesto_che_guevara.html

'Che' Guevara was a great anti-imperialist, yet a bit gung-ho; he advocated first-strike nuclear war in 1961 and personally participated in mass executions after the revolution in Cuba. What can you say?

On the other hand, although he was a senior government minister in Havana in the 1960s, he resigned/was sacked and then went back to his favourite activity - fomenting revolution in the Third World. He especially liked jungles. Makes a change from resigning to 'spend more time with the family', wouldn't you say?

He is like the opposite of that mild-mannered shrimp, fake and toady, Hilary Benn, the Henry Holland of British government (the Alec Guiness, timid shrimp, bank clerk character in Lavender Hill Mob).

Isn't it sick that you get people who benefit purely from who their parents were? Like Bush and Benn? It's just so crass that Hilary Benn gets into British government purely on account of who his father was; just a shame that he is a shadow of Tony Benn, the legend of post-war British politics.

Who is the current 'Che' Guevara of British politics? George Galloway?

Robert Fisk

2005-02-05T18:59:00.000Z

I have tremendous respect for Robert Fisk, the famous journalist who has written on the Middle East for at least three decades.

Fisk's knowledge of the entire region - historical, politcal and geographical - is surely second to none, certainly in the world of journalism. I have read many of his excellent articles in The Independent newspaper (of London) which describe events in Iraq from a non-Bush/American/orthdox viewpoint.

He is usually given front page billing, and rightly so (usually accompanied by a centred picture and the usual brilliant presentation of the Independent, even in its new tabloid format). They are a revelation and so refreshing (and justify the newspaper's name and supposed ethos). This is proven by their heavy linkage from 'alternative' websites (and even conspiracy websites).

He understands all of the changing alliances, former 'good' regimes that are now considered 'bad', and vice versa and so on. He is like a living antidote to the growing trend towards Orwellism, the re-writing of history.

But, today, he has written his worst ever article for The Independent (The sins of our fathers, the folly of man and the art of documenting history, Independent, 5 February 2005). Not surprisingly, it is not about Iraq or foreign affairs; it is a sort of personal memoir on the craft of journalism, historical documentation and modern writing. He says he wrote it by hand.

He talks about how computing and modern data communications have changed the art of journalism and writing but for the worse; how his old telex transmissions were real, on paper and readily available now as historical documents, unaltered in any way (he keeps them all at home). To illustrate this, he refers back to his own notes, some of which document an anecdote whereby Tony Clifton, of BBC Newsnight, met Saddam Hussein back in the late 1970s and was personally driven by the 'dictator' to demonstrate how he was loved by the people on the streets of Baghdad.

Predictably, Clifton now denies all knowledge of the incident - this is the onward march of Orwellism in its most predictable and lamentable form, the altering of the past to fit in with current political orthodoxy. We will undoubtably see a lot more of this in years to come; indeed, in the end, there may even be what you might term 'political software' which will render any past document in a modern, politically acceptable format. You won't even need a Winston Smith to do the drudgery of re-writing.

Fisk seems to be saying that modern IT, laptops and the digital archiving of information lend themselves too easily to alteration, and that's ignoring the practical difficulties of writing with a keyboard.

But then, just like the idiot journalist Jasper Gerard in the Sunday Times Review Section, he uses modern, idiot-moron language, like sentences that begin and end with 'Ouch'. Fisk has just plummeted in my esteem, from the Pantheon of foreign affairs journalism (along with Gareth Jones) to the dungeon of Simpsons-journo-rubbish.

I would say two things to Robert Fisk:

1.) Learn to type. I can hardly believe that a journalist such as Robert Fisk - forty years in the business - has never learnt to type. It is inconceivable. Try learning to type; it will make writing on a computer effortless (just like this article I am writing).

Computer programs such as Word are brilliant for writing any document. You can structure a document using outlines, change the format, style, order and presentation of the document until it is just right. Then, you can archive the final, authentic document and perhaps even save a copy on good, old-fashioned paper.

Okay, it is a nightmare trying to maintain an archive on a computer (you land up with a mass of files and end up deleting the wrong files; I've done it at home many times). Also, they are susceptible to Winston Smith style alteration.

2.) Eliminate any modern, colloquial, Simpsons-moron words like 'Ouch'. This is moronic and also a total double standard. It is an insult to serious readers. How can you complain about modern technology, the alteration of historical fact, and everything, and then use modern, moron language which is designed to reduce the population to moron level? It is hypocritical.

Words like 'ouch' in a serious article in a serious newspaper demonstrate the need to conform to modern trends and stuff - in a way, it is just like using Newspeak.

The Robert Fisk article was a total disappointment.

Darts Farm Shopping Village

2005-02-04T16:14:00.000Z

This is one of those sort of 'concept' shopping experiences, just like something from middle America. I don't know whether I love it or hate it.

For one thing, there are simply too many bloody people in the place; all of these retired, affluent middle-aged people with nothing better to do than spend more and more time perfecting their already perfect homes. All at a price, too.

The prices are ludicrous: £1.69 for a 100g chocolate bar, sold to mugs who think they're gaining added value or something (the stuff is probably lower quality than an 80p Galaxy bar). And the bar is wrapped in cheap, blue paper and in a stupid, long, narrow shape (about 10 inches long). Everthing here is expensive.

Darts Farm tries to be too many things: garden centre, supermarket, DIY, clothes shop, furniture shop and other things, all under one roof. You can buy a trampoline, pub-style table soccer games, sofas, and Exmoor organic beef. And an aquarium and a new tree or shrub, should you need one.

It is a large, flat building, with just one floor, built on a slight incline that leads up to Clyst St George. Below is the meandering River Clyst, close to where it meets the River Exe, just the other side of Topsham. The Clyst is the border between Exeter and East Devon, placing Darts Farm in the latter, close to Ebford. Curiously, I always thought the Clyst was the Exe until I took the trouble to look at a map one day; it is, however, a large, significant tributary, probably the largest river to join with the Exe at any point in its sixty mile existence.

The upper part of the building is entirely new and impressive, with angled steel roof girders sloping down, covering stone-tiled floors and stuff, all enclosed by large, floor-to-roof plate windows. It's the sort of place you'd expect in Alaska. On the other hand, it's just an upmarket version of Mole Avon and Trago Mills, thrown together and marketed to richer people.

The Fired Earth shop is just full of yet more over-priced yet high quality stuff, armchairs, tables, cooking things and a lot more. They are sell those Arga cookers, the type that run on coal and take up half the kitchen.

The restaurant is fine except it's too busy and too noisy. You can hear the din of two hundred grannies and pensioners chatting away and eating. The whole thing requires about twenty waiters by the look of it, too. I would estimate at least twenty minutes to order something as simple as a coffee, so what's the point?

And then there's the modern, pathetic obsession with endless choices. If you order a coffee you must choose from about ten different types: latte, cappucino, espresso and all the rest. Why the fuck can't you just order a cheap, ordinary cup of instant coffee? It must all be about money, charging £2 for a coffee (the bloody machine costs £400 I imagine).

Marwood House

2005-02-04T15:55:00.000Z

At 12.40pm I went to visit the thirteen Signpost flats in Marwood House, up at 60 St David's Hill, Exeter.

Devon & Cornwall are redeveloping Copplestone Drive so it's probably time to 'move on', as they say these days (but this time literally). It may be possible to remain at Copplestone but it means months of noise, disruption and uncertainty while they convert the three big blocks to larger flats. And that's after a year of building up at Highcroft, at the very top of the drive.

In fact, there is far too much building going on in Exeter these days altogether. The old Birkbeck Halls - just two hundred yards away - have now been demolished, reduced to a big pile of rubble. The University have just built enormous student halls right at the top of the hill beside Highcroft, as well, all visible from miles away. Why they used bright, yellow bricks instead of dark, green or brown bricks is beyond me; from Exwick these buildings are a terrible eyesore. What can you expect?

There're hundreds of houses going up at Southam Fields, by Middlemoor; The Higher Barracks have dozens; Isca Place by the Central Station has 167 flats going up; Princesshay - the ghastly, money-inspired scheme in the heart of the city - has another 200 flats going up, too. What will the population of Exeter be in ten years' time? (about 120,000 at least).

Anyway, Marwood House is a pleasant surprise. Really, some of the flats at the very top of the building - an old office building - are like modern, trendy loft apartments, the type you'd pay a lot for privately. They have skylight windows, a superb, modern interior with fitted kitchens and plenty of space and, all-in-all, are large and bright.

From the top floor, you can see way out towards the Haldon Hills on one side and Bury Meadow and Exeter College on the other side; very appealing. They've spent a fair amount of money on the place and they're very tempting. I may well move there, if possible.

Below is Walnut House, one of the oldest houses in the St David's area of Exeter, dating back to about 1790. Nearby is the St Davids Community Centre, an excellent place for evening classes and various other activities (it now even has a cafe).

The most spooky thing is that when I worked at EBC Group (now Rok) back in 1987, at Queens Terrace, I used to deliver the wage slips to the head office which was actually in this same building, Marwood House. The Signpost official showed me around the entire building today - 13 flats, spread over four floors - and it was just like returning to 1987, walking around the entire building delivering the payslips to all of the office staff.

Weston-super-Mare

2005-02-02T20:02:00.000Z

No-one knew where the Wetherspoons pub was.

I tried the assistant in the Library on the Boulevard, just a few hundred yards from the seafront and town center. No point, even after she'd tried searching on the internet for some time (an elementary task, surely? - Wetherspoons website and then their list of pubs somewhere in the site?).

I asked an old man, walking towards the town centre.

'Sorry, I'm just visiting.' At least he directed me back to the town centre, all delivered with a nice, friendly smile.

Anyway, in the end I rang my brother, J, who works for the town council, and we agreed to meet for lunch at 12.30pm. The pub is called the Dragon Inn and, like many of their places (the one in Barnet, the Cerdic in Chard and the Perkin Warbeck in Taunton) it is a long, narrow affair, all decorated in their customary dark, wooden veneer style interior with a few bookshelves here and there. I've just tried searched the Internet to find out and - within about 15 seconds - it is at 15 Meadow Street.

Fine, really, except that this one was thick with smoke and full of even more small groups of hardcore, daytime drinkers than normal. In Wetherspoons pubs, in the daytime, because their prices are low, you always see people like this, many pissed-up by 1 in the afternoon. They are always middle-aged men, shabbily dressed, though sometimes joined by the odd drunken woman, and they always speak too loudly (almost shouting). I blame it on the excellent range of real ales in Wetherspoons: Spitfire £1.59 and Burton's £1.39.

That was at lunch time, after driving J to Weston-super-Mare in the morning and then, as usual for me, deciding to hang around a while and explore a town that I had never seen before (only very briefly). What else do you do when you've nothing to do anyway?

I drove out to Uphill Downs, in the south of the town, a fine suburb with large Victorian mansions along the way before settling down to bungalows and other retirement-style dwellings. Then a brief treck up the hill to the old church, a disappointing view from graveyard at the top, and a decision to get back to Weston town centre as soon as possible. I had wanted to walk out onto the peninsula at Worlebury, but couldn't work out how to get there.

The Library, on Boulevard, is as good as any other town library I have entered in England. It reminds me of Hove Library, a Victorian red-brick building - not ideal for these modern times - but adapted to the modern age. It's potentially draughty but not today, even though it's very cold outside. They have a few posters of a new Campus Library but there's no information on where it is.

At the entrance there is a fine selection of secondhand books, all for 40p, so I picked up Dinah Lampitt's The King's Woman. I doubt if I'll ever read it and really it's just because my mum says she used to know the author on the train down to Tunbridge Wells, from Charing Cross, back in the 1970s. On the jacket it says the author lives in Mayfield so she certainly would've used the Hastings line.

The library has a display on the Holocaust - something I am becoming more and more sceptical about - and I pick up one of their books, after a brief look at the Lipstadt book on Holocaust denial. I spend about forty minutes reading the Diary of Anne Frank, a well-spent forty minutes.

It's always funny how when you read something that really captures your imagination - a book, a newspaper, the Internet, whatever - the time just flies by and you wish the library would stay open forever.

Anne Frank's diary is not the greatest book ever - a sort of early 'blog', before the genre or term was ever invented - but it is very poignant, especially when you know the outcome. Actually, to read the last ever entry is sad and then the appendix explains how she landed up in Auschwitz and then Belsen before finally succumbing to typhoid. What a dreadful, terrible and tragic story. She was only 15 when she died.

Also, a fantastic copy of Desktop Publishing by Design, the book I used to take on loan from Exeter Central Library several years ago until it vanished, out of print and sold off by the library. At last I am re-united with this masterpiece of DTP and book design; maybe one day I'll even go through it on Quark Xpress.

I found this book in the Oxfam shop - they have two in Weston-super-Mare, one a dedicated bookshop - and got it for £2; excellent.

I went back to the Dragon Inn, at 3pm, briefly, and found the crowd had thinned out; now, at the entrance end, there were about six men just like me, alone, savouring a pint and a cigarette, all looking lost deep in thought. All were middle-aged. We were all sat there - me with a half of bitter - facing out towards the street, all looking out of the window as if waiting for someone or something to happen. I think we all knew nothing ever would happen.

After meeting J in the loud, brash and ex-bank pub known as Barcode, we drive back to Glastonbury in the ever-reliable Renault 19. This pub, Barcode, has very loud dance/techo music playing, even at 5pm on a Wednesday evening; imagine what it must be like at the weekend. Weston-super-Mare evidently is a party town, awash with so many pubs among its small streets and big squares that you could accommodate one hundred 18-30 coaches easily.

We drove through some fine villages that deserved exploration in their own right: Wedmore (the home of King Alfred for a while and the place where he agree peace with the Danish) and Bleadon and Meare. Axbridge, too, which has some fine Elizabethan timber houses.

Then, at about 7.30pm, I return to Exeter on the A303 (but this time not stopping at Cartgate roundabout services). I know the roundabouts by heart now: Podimore, Cartgate, Hayes End, etc. I try to look out for the remains of the old Taunton-Chard canal near Ilminster but it is too dark, though I know the new road passes over its remains.

Back to London

2005-02-01T15:58:00.000Z

The uncle, L, returned to London today by coach from Paris Street bus station, on the 12.45pm coach.

Quick cup of tea in the bus station canteen, Sandra's. This is a full of poor old people, very depressing as that's how I may well land up.

I visit Exeter City Council and their housing department, nearby, to put in a claim (no job, no income).

Drive to Weston-super-Mare in the early evening (leave 16.25pm) to collect J and then on to Glastonbury.

Coffee Pot, Guildhall Shopping Centre

2005-01-28T21:10:00.000Z

With L, my uncle, and my mum, we had coffee in this long-running cafe near the entrance to the Guildhall Shopping Centre.

I can remember this place back in 1984 when I first arrived in Exeter and was a student at the college in Hele Road (for just three months, of course). Nowadays, its customers are mainly middle aged going on old. It should suit the three of us very well then.

There is a very attractive young foreign lady behind the counter and she is later joined by her friend who arrives by bicycle, parking just outside, next to the old granite pillar at W H Smiths. Nearby, two people are in conversation about foreign affairs and economics, an unusual subject for most people these days.

A man arrives, sits down, lights his cigarette and starts to read some business documents. He looks a friendly chap, deep in his own thoughts. I recognise him instantly as the owner/proprietor of Queen Street News, which he must've run for the past twenty years, at least. Whenever I have been in that shop, he has always been there, though his assistants come and go.

Of course, Queen Street has seen a number of changes since the mid-1980s. The old C&A department store shut down about four years ago, replaced by a Tesco Metro store, direct competition for the Queen Street News man. He also has to compete with the forlorn Costcutter in the Central Station arcade; that's two newsagents selling stuff cheaper than him. However, he seems to manage okay. Actually, he's also got the Sainsbury's metro store in the Guildhall to compete with, too.

'The pound now buys two American dollars.' The older man is talking to someone else sitting back to the window. This is where I enter the conversation!

'Well, they say the American economy is on the brink of collapse, the dollar sliding towards catastrophe.' We have a delightful conversation about this and also the history of Exeter, which L joins.

The older man says he is 83 yet seems quite disappointed when I say that I would've said 70. Really, he could pass for 65. He says he still enjoys his annual visits to Slovenia and its capital city, Llubjana - not Llubjanka, as the other man says (the ex-KGB hellhole in the middle of Moscow, as I point out). There really are a number of international connections in the city of Exeter; quite refreshing, really.

They take their leave, the younger man - about 50 - introducing himself as 'John'. I know I have seen him many times in the past, as well, though I can't quite place where. He is like a smaller, older, grey-haired version of Frank Worthington, the maverick 1970s footballer. He has long silver hair and sideburns and a moustache. I must try and remember where I have seen him before.

An Exceedingly Good Survey

2005-01-28T20:10:00.000Z

I was walking from the High Street in Exeter towards Martins Lane at about 2.30 in the afternoon when one of those customer survey women, with a clipboard, pen and ID, stopped me (right next to Clintons Cards). She was aged about fifty five, very well-spoken; in fact, quite posh.

'Would you like to take part in a customer survey in the Clarence Hotel? It will only take a few minutes. You can have a coffee.'

Well, how could I refuse? I wasn't doing much anyway so I accepted her invitation, my first for several years (since the chocolate bar survey back in about 1991).

'Yeah, fine.'

She led me down the narrow Martins Lane and around the corner and into the Clarence Hotel, currently undergoing major refurbishment. This meant passing Tact Personnel, that awful employment agency, and the Ship Inn.

The room was upstairs, past a number of old oil paintings, mostly of venerable persons and some nautical stuff. It's actually very plush inside the Clarence Hotel and quite easy to see why it is five star. It has thick, expensive carpets and very well painted walls.

On the laptop computer, going through the preliminary stuff and then the questions/survey, it took me about five minutes to work out what the hell it was all about. It's funny because it reminded me of a radio programme I had listened to on the BBC website the other day. That show - a great, fantastic show - was I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. This show is chaired by the great Humphrey Lyttleton who must now be about 80.

Anyway, one joke - from the introduction to the programme, always the most interesting part - was about Rudyard Kipling, the noted poet and novelist. The show was from Royal Tunbridge Wells, and Lyttleton joked that Kipling lived in nearby Burwash and that his most famous poem was If. That's the one which goes: If you can keep your head while all around you are losing theirs... then why not treat yourself to one of my exceedingly good cakes.

Well, this survey was all about cakes and confectionary and was actually, finally, all about Kipling cakes. They have new packaging and they want to know what people think about their reputation and stuff. Surprisingly, there was no way of mentioning the 'exceedingly good' catchphrase. It did ask, however, how old Mr Kipling was - about 70 I suppose, the perfect age to be a dedicated cakemaker.

I'm sure Mr Kipling has visited Exeter before; he's probably even had tea in the Clarence Hotel. I think Mr Kipling is an exceedingly good person as well as a great cakemaker. But he is so enigmatic that no-one has ever seen a photograph of him. If Mr Kipling opened a coffee shop and bakers he would be the most successful ever, for sure.

I think Mr Kipling is the John Betjeman of cakes though he's probably teetotal; he only has afternoon tea and cakes. If they'd met in Exeter they would've gone to the famous Deller's Cafe - the Cafe of the West in Bedford Street - and had afternoon tea (and they would never be stopped for a customer survey along the way). It would be like that sweet, touching, final scene at the end of the film Remains of the Day where Mr Stevens meets Miss Kenton for the last time and they have tea, accompanied by a haunting Blue Moon. Perfect. (It was actually filmed in the Winter Gardens Pavilion in Weston-super-Mare).

I left the Clarence Hotel and the survey with a pen, after my awful cup of coffee. Why didn't they offer me one of Mr Kipling's cakes?

For the full history of Mr Kipling and his great cakes:
http://www.mrkipling.co.uk/downloads/info_pack.pdf

This page has some great pictures of Deller's Cafe and its ornate interior:
http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/EM/1940s.html

Relative from London

2005-01-27T14:36:00.000Z

After an absence of one year, L arrives from London by coach.

How long will this last, the re-union? He is a very spontaneous person - certainly when in Exeter - and is likely to vanish at a moment's notice, even at 2 in the morning. It is a fleeting visit from an unpredictable, volatile person.

George's Meeting House, Exeter

2005-01-20T15:14:00.000Z

The new Wetherspoons pub - George's Meeting House - opened a few days ago. Was it worth the wait?

This is the old George's Meeting House, some sort of non-conformist chapel built in about 1790. Wetherspoons have spent a lot of money on it and built an extension at the back, creating more seating. There is also a new garden area, all in a cramped bit of land between here and the next chapel, next door.

I find it uncomfortable. The furniture is awful - it may look good, but unless you like sitting bolt upright for dinner then it is no good. How can you enjoy a few hours of drinking unless you sit in a relaxing sofa or armchair? Perhaps that's the intention, to create customers who only stay for a short while, enough time to eat a meal (which are more expensive here than in any of their other places).

The food is all local stuff - they make a big deal of this on the menu - and the whole place looks more like a restaurant than a pub. It has dozens of sets of small tables and chairs - all lined up symetrically - occupying the entire floor, except for a couple of leather sofas at the side. Really, it's like a cross between a posh cafeteria and a chapel - do they insist on prayers before eating?

It is a vast, cavernous former chapel with an echoing wooden floor and all of the old seating on the upstairs gallery reached through a tiny, pokey little wooden, creaky stairway. Even the old pulpit is still there. It's no smoking too.

I cannot see this place gaining any popularity at all. There is no music, no football and no smoking. Even the prices are now nearly as high as anywhere else, the main reason for going to a Wetherspoons in the first place. I don't think the White Hart Hotel, opposite, will be too bothered; it has been around for 300 years and will surely see out this place, perhaps within another three.

A Grecian Fairytale

2005-01-19T22:30:00.000Z

‘It’s a beautiful sound.’

The young man, standing on the terrace outside the Stoke Arms, was absolutely right. There was a feint roar coming from some place in the near distance, below, just five hundred yards away. We both stood there, at night, amazed, looking at the neon glow reaching right up to the stars above the houses which stretched right down to the ground, St James Park, unseen yet unmistakably there, somewhere.

There was the faintest, tinny sound of a stadium announcer, each time followed by the tremendous roar of a large crowd, the largest seen in this part of Exeter – anywhere in Exeter – for many, many years.

‘It's a fine sound.’ I agreed.

The glow was concentrated in a small part of the town and didn't match the surrounding humble, terraced houses. It seemed to rise, a vertical torch, reaching right up to the stars. It was eerie, not least for the sounds that never normally accompanied it. It could have been straight from the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the bit where the space ship finally lands and the strange people emerge from the space ship. Only, in place of the spooky, five chords of synthesiser, there was a different form of communication, a unique one known only to true football fans. It was the sound of 9,000 people. It was no less profound.

In a way, it was a close encounter, yet of an even more surreal, unexpected kind. For tonight, in a balmy, swirling evening, under low, heavy clouds, a strange collection of stars had been visited upon Exeter. A team of superstars. They had come to a funny little place, hidden away at the very end of Sidwell Street and Old Tiverton Road, a very old part of Exeter. A far cry from the mega-stadiums and mega-fame of the Premiership.

A tremendous, fantastic run in the FA Cup had all come to a final night of magic and pure fantasy, here in the city of Exeter. St James' Park stands amidst the old Grecian district of Exeter, an area the imperial Romans would snub as they lived it up within the old city walls, some two thousand years ago when Exeter was established. Their villas and heated baths were the Old Trafford of Exeter... now Man Utd were to undergo the Grecian experience!

During the day, throughout the city, you could feel the electric, the buzz of thousands of little groups of people, caught in gossip and chatter about the great event about to take place this evening. People who normally had no interest in football were willingly swept up into the cauldron of a city experiencing mass emotion. They had become metal filings drawn to the magnet of a common wish: heroic achievement against the odds, national recognition and fame, and the impossible!

The whole city was now united in pure love and devotion of its little band of heroes. Exeter City were playing the mighty Manchester United, and all here in a quiet, sleepy little city in Devon.

The local newspaper - the Express & Echo evening paper - had done a tremendous job in telling the story over the five weeks leading up to the tie. Its coverage seemed to get bigger and bigger day by day, first two pages, three pages, four pages. This evening its paper was even thicker and heavier than normal: Eight page special souvenir pull-out. And that was ignoring its eight pages at the back of the paper in the Sport section.

The frenzy had all started with the Third Round draw back in December... and then continued... and continued... and continued. And continued still! Exeter drew at Old Trafford, probably their greatest result since it all started back in 1920 in the old Southern League. The Man Utd manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, said it was his team's worst ever performance!

The national media immediately sensed that something unusual was happening between Man Utd and Exeter City and that it would continue in that small, sedate university city down in Devon.

And for this strange visitation they were all there... the national press, BBC1 for live television coverage to an audience of seven million. Radio 5 were live in the morning, their breakfast programme broadcast from Exeter (well, Ide, three miles away).

In the morning, all of the national papers carried features on the match, the miracle of £80,000 Exeter City facing a team of £70 million superstars.

This bizarre mis-match was all about the tiny man facing the giant, the classic David versus Goliath. It seemed to take England right back to a nostalgic past not seen since the 1950s; it could have been a fantasy from an Ealing film, like the small man against the giant corporation in The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953) or The Man in the White Suit (1951).

They all said that if Exeter won it would be the biggest shock of all time. It surely would. Perhaps even greater than when Yeovil Town, of the Southern League, beat mighty Sunderland back in 1949, not far from here. Maybe it is a Westcountry tradition, like an Ivor Dewdney pasty. Perhaps, to use a pasty metaphor, Exeter are Ivor Dewdney - sold only in Exeter and Devon and full of local, wholesome ingredients - and Man Utd are Ginsters, made in Cornwall but manufactured in the millions and sold and supported nationwide.

That Sunderland team cost £60,000 in 1949, just £20,000 less than the Exeter team to play tonight; it now costs £100 million to assemble a championship-winning team. Exeter's highest paid player is Sean Devine, at £1,800 a week, it is said. Man Utd have players earning £90,000 in one week, an awesome gap.

Well, it was now the moment of truth, just five minutes away from kick-off. How would our team - tiny Exeter - fare against the giants? Would they freeze? Would they do us proud? Did we even have any right to expect anything from them?

With M, I entered the Stoke Arms - what a commotion! The place was absolutely packed, and with all manner of people.

There were people you would never normally see watching football: a batch of female Spanish students; old men awoken from years of apathy; the landlord from London; even Ry, a friend of Ol down the Mint. A whole community was drawn to the greatest spectacle in Exeter for many a year and a scene repeated in every pub throughout the city, without a doubt.

The place was heaving, everyone jostling to get their drink and sit down before the match. There must have been over one hundred people, most sitting at tables neatly lined up in rows, facing the big screen. It was a chapel, its congregation united in paying homage to its heroes. There was nowhere else to sit, of course.

In the end, we found a place right at the back of the pub, on a little platform set up for the darts board. A chair each and a view of two screens - the big screen at the front and the tv screen to the right.

'What are you lot doing up here? You in the 1 and 9 stalls?' The landlord - the Londoner who sounds just like Mike in the Young Ones - was in high spirits. A very decent bloke and a great sense of humour. A fine landlord.

The team which drew at Old Trafford now contained household names, more Exeter players than I had ever been able to name in the past: Dean Moxey (aged 18, born Exeter), Andy Taylor (aged 18, born Exeter), Sean Devine, Steve Flack, Kwame Ampudu, Alex Jeannin, Paul Jones, Scott Hiley, Gary Sawyer, Danny Clay, and Santos Gaia.

It started gingerly, barely a touch of the ball in the first half. Exeter City held off the ball too much, barely gaining even a touch. Man Utd exploited this and were allowed almost total freedom to launch wave-after-wave of attack. They duly scored after nine minutes - the superstar teenager Cristiano Ronaldo - and we feared the worst. Was it all just hopeless optimism or wishful thinking? A rout?

The pub crowd was subdued. But, slowly-but-surely, we gained the right to cheer... very loudly, even for the slightest effort. A nutmeg on Ronaldo (playing him at his own game!) and the wildest of cheers for the most simple throw-in awarded. 1-0 at half-time.

At the interval, time for refreshments. Another pint of Stella Artois always refreshes and lightens the spirits, but with Exeter City on BBC1 - broadcast from just 500 yards down the road - an orange juice would've had the same effect; this bunch of heroes were intoxicating.

The second half began and - as I hoped for and even suspected - the great manager, Alex Inglethorpe, had had a little word at half-time, probably to the effect of: 'we've nothing to lose in this game, we may as well do this club and city proud and go out and enjoy ourselves'. Put simply, Exeter came back out to take the game to the superstars. They succeeded!

Exeter started closing down the Man Utd players more quickly, not allowing them any comfort. Then, they started playing! We started passing the ball around and launching little attacks, down both flanks. Steve Flack used his giant presence to cause trouble and some goalscoring chances arrived.

The BBC showed several close-up shots of Alex Ferguson and he was looking more and more frantic, chewing his gum even faster than usual and appearing worried... seriously worried! Exeter had them rattled!

The cheering and emotion in the pub was reaching - to use the Nick Hornby cliche - fever pitch. None more so than when Sean Devine had the ball in the back of the neck... disallowed for offside.

Ivor Dewdney pasty website:
http://www.ivordewdney.co.uk/
I actually prefer Ginsters pasties, but Dewdney's have a fine reputation.

Two New Stadiums - Sandy Park and Westpoint

2004-12-30T01:27:00.000Z

Exeter Chiefs, the owners of the old County Ground in St Thomas, sold off their ground to Bellway, the developer. They created a problem in order to make a lot of money. They didn't give a damn about their tenants, the speedway club, Exeter Falcons.

Exeter rugby club would like to remain withint the boundaries of Exeter City council and have therefore secured a site for their 'new stadium' at Sandy Park, right next to the M5 at Sandy Gate. Exeter speedway are now homeless and desperate to build a track at the Westpoint showgrounds, on Sidmouth Road. However, the two may have problems.

The proposed rugby stadium is a pathetic, mickey mouse little effort, a tiny, paltry stadium of only 8,000 capacity, all hemmed in at what I would describe as the A379/M5 armpit, near the giant Sandy Gate roundabout. The 'stadium' will have just one grandstand, probably housing just 2,000 spectators; the rest will stand on old-fashioned terraces, none more than ten steps deep. The odd rugby ball may even land up on the M5 below, causing a massive pile-up.

Rugby is a quiet sport. Exeter Chiefs will never get more than a 5,000 attendance, and practice days will make no noise at all beyond a few loud-mouthed, boisterous rugby morons shouting the odd obscenity (when they're not grabbing each other's private parts in the scrum and drinking each other's piss down the pub afterwards. Are rugby players gay?). Speedway is a very noisy sport, with practice sessions making no less noise than match-day events. What is the solution?

Simple! The solution is for the speedway to take the Sandy Park site where they will race away right next to the real thing, another race-track, the M5 motorway! There will be absolutely no noise problem at all for any neighbours since Sandy Park is right beneath a motorway and is noisy day and night. The terrible din of speedway/motorcycle engines will make no difference when accompanied by the sound of hundreds of vehicles passing every minute above.

However, the rugby club, in their so-called '£50 million development' need to make some money and stay in the limits of Exeter City council, which is, in fact, the M5 motorway. Hence, the other side of the M5 - Westpoint - is actually in East Devon District Council. But Westpoint is also in open country side and right next door to a village - Clyst St Mary - and has lots of neighbours who don't like the sound of engines revving and late night practice sessions. (Who does?). There is no enormous M5 embankment to block off the noise and keep it hidden away in the A379/M5 armpit.

Sandy Park has been marketed as a £50 million scheme. Really, the whole scheme is a £2 million rugby stadium combined with a £20 million tennis/David Lloyd Centre (for the wealthy, £100 a month/corporate bunch) and £28 million of houses, to be built by Bellway on the old County Ground. Typical. Where is the ambition? Where is the vision? What will they name it? The M5 Stadium? The M5/A379 Armpit Stadium? It is a joke!

If the city and county planners had any intelligence at all - whatsoever! - they would place the Exeter Falcons speedway stadium by the M5 (it is a noisy motorway, after all!) where there would be no complaints whatsoever over noisy speedway. Then the rugby club could go to Westpoint instead. How's that for a solution? Either way, one of the two clubs must leave the city; since the rugby club initiated the whole scheme, let them leave the city and head off to Westpoint and East Devon.

Exeter Chiefs Rugby Club and the Sandy Park, mickey mouse development:

http://www.exeterchiefs.com/?Page=32

This page has an aerial photo of the proposed stadium development, showing the pitch/stadium itself totally hemmed in at the corner of the M5 and the A379. Pathetic!

Around Heavitree

2004-12-29T20:22:00.000Z

Due to a fuel crisis, I left the Renault in the place where I usually park for work: the City Trading Estate. This is a small, superb new trading estate just off the Sidmouth Road, near the M5 at Sandygate. It is at the eastern end of the ancient Quarry Lane, which ran all the way from Heavitree and Wonford down to Bishops Court quarry which itself dates back several hundred years and is still operational today. Its fine red dust peppers the entire area; its insatiable appetite for red sandstone has allowed the creation of the Bishops Court Industrial Estate.

The City Trading Estate has about ten large, corrugated steel clad warehouses, the type favoured by such modern retailers as Original Style Ltd, a specialist in ceramic tiles and interior design. Indeed, they are so trendy that they were honoured two years ago by a visit from Tony Blair, the infamous war criminal. They have a notice board near the front door with pictures and newspaper cuttings of his visit. However, I think he called in because it is only two hundred yards from the M5 and he couldn’t be bothered to visit Exeter city centre.

The estate is built on an incline, leading up to Apple Lane footpath, another old lane which leads over the single track Exmouth branch line to the former lunatic asylum of Digby. In Victorian times – R Stark Wilkinson, 1886 - this vast building would have been a rural sanctuary, set out in the countryside of East Devon with no motorways, no railway lines, no distractions whatsoever; a haven of tranquillity for its depressed souls.

It has now been sold off, converted into flats and joined by hundreds of new houses, all forming a vast new estate. There are some interesting apartments in the old hospital, particularly those corners of the old towers; you might call it 'quadruple aspect', in estate agency parlance. Alas, there are hundreds more on the way, too, at Southam Fields, nearby; the former Southam Farm and its fine buildings have simply vanished.

Is Exeter to become a vast new metropolis?

This is just about the eastern limit of Exeter City Council before the M5 and East Devon District Council. So the new rugby stadium at Sandy Park, three hundred yards away over the A379, on the western banks of the M5, is only just within the city limits.

As usual, from the plans in the Express & Echo, the stadium will be hemmed in on two sides by roads - it is to be built in the very armpit of the M5 and the A379, two very busy roads - allowing no room for expansion whatsoever should the club become successful at a national level.

It has all been marketed as a £50 million scheme yet the stadium will entertain a paltry 8,000 spectators, some housed in a tiny grandstand. Typical. Where is the ambition? Where is the vision? What will they name it? The M5 Stadium? The M5/A379 Armpit Stadium?

Really, the whole scheme is a £2 million stadium combined with a £20 million tennis/David Lloyd Centre (for the wealthy, £100 a month/corporate brigade) and £28 million of houses, to be built on the site of the old County Ground in St Thomas. It is a joke!

If the city planners had any intelligence at all - whatsoever! - they would place the Exeter Falcons speedway stadium by the M5 (it is a noisy motorway, after all!) where there would be no complaints whatsoever over noisy speedway. Then the rugby club could go to Westpoint instead. How's that for a solution? Either way, one of the two clubs must leave the city; since the rugby club initiated the whole scheme, let them leave the city and head off to Westpoint and East Devon.

At any rate, Apple Lane is surely destined to become one of the busiest thoroughfares in the whole of Exeter, a far cry from its Victorian days as a tiny, rural footpath leading to... Sowton village? Similarly, the residents of Baxter Close and Clyst Halt Avenue - en route to the stadium from Digby and Sowton halt on the Exmouth line - are about to enjoy some very busy Saturday afternoons!

At the Rydon Lane end of Quarry Lane, yet more beautiful meadows have been given over to modern housing, their new roads and closes taking shape just like a short session of Sim City 3000. How long before Exeter’s population reaches 150,000? Ten years? Another five hundred flats are underway in the city centre (Isca Place and Princesshay and assorted other places).

Wingfield Park, the home of Heavitree United Football Club, is on the crest of a hill just off the main road, at 2 East Wonford Hill. Only its clubhouse – the Knoll, formerly Park Villa – is visible from the main road. This is a large, cream, Georgian house on top of a hill and there is no sign at all of a football pitch. There is not much to recommend further investigation. As a fan, however, of football grounds of all sizes and descriptions, I take note of the club notice by the main road, its list of upcoming fixtures, and decide to walk up the short driveway for the first time. There must be a football pitch hidden away somewhere.

Refreshingly, the scene at the summit is idyllic! Behind the tennis courts - there must be at least eight - you wonder where on earth the football pitch can be for this looks like a tennis club. But the ground rises still further and there is no other place to look.

Sure enough, past the tennis courts, you come, through a line of hedges, to a wire gate bearing a notice: £1 admission, includes programme. And there, in the distance and through the gate, is a large tract of open land: a football pitch. On the right is a grandstand, tiny but large enough to incorporate a large awning proudly stating: HEAVITREE UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB.

This is what I call ‘real football’, even more real than that available at St James Park, two miles away. God knows what league Heavitree United are now in, but I can easily imagine watching an FA Cup match here in September – at the most preliminary stage imaginable – and admiring the simple essence of non-league football and the Haldon Hills in the distance. After the match, you can retire to the social club for a friendly pint.

Wingfield Park has a large football pitch, all neatly surrounded by a small fence painted a brilliant white, all in the most careful manner. The main entrance to the ground proper is a mere three yards from the goal-line; there is no terracing at all and the 'grandstand' has about fifty seats. The goal area is worn away and there is a modest wall around the perimeter, enough to keep out any non-paying fans but not the view of the 1940s houses that surround this delightful football ground. It reminds me of Underhill, the home of Barnet Football Club, but without the slope.

I imagine the biggest derby match at this ground would be a visit from Clyst Rovers Football Club, another gem set at the end of a runway at Exeter International Airport.

It also reminds me that Heavitree Park is next door – a collection of very expensive Georgian villas - and that Wingfield Park is therefore a goldmine, probably at least £1 million of prime residential property estate. Who owns it and will it survive?

I head on into town via Fore Street, Heavitree, past the Blessed Sacrament church for Catholics, past St Loyes. The gate to St Loyes is open so I take the opportunity of looking inside for the first time ever; it has an enormous quadrangle inside, just like a barracks, yet a fine place to sit in the spring.

LINKS
Heavitree Social Centre (Heavitree United Football Club social club):
http://www.clubsline.com/social/heavi.html
Contains a picture of the place from the main road and some details of facilities and history of the place.

Exeter Chiefs Rugby Club and the Sandy Park, mickey mouse development:
http://www.exeterchiefs.com/?Page=32
This page has an aerial photo of the proposed stadium development, showing the pitch/stadium itself totally hemmed in at the corner of the M5 and the A379. Pathetic!

Catholic Church of the Blessed Sacrament, Heavitree (Exeter and East Devon Diocese):
http://www.plymouth-diocese.org.uk/parishes/exeter&devon/heavitree.htm

References:
3/Heavitree – Trevor Falla, Discovering Exeter series.
This is Part 3 of the superb Discovering Exeter series, in association with Exeter Civic Society, nine small but detailed books on different areas of Exeter. They contain superb descriptions of different areas and many interesting maps and photographs.

Honiton

2004-12-28T20:34:00.000Z

Two hours in the Stoke Arms pub - my temporary new football home - to watch Aston Villa vs Man Utd on Sky TV. A disappoinging result, of course, but a fine pint of Guinness before heading off for a drive.

Mig and Cos get in the car and we head for the Black Horse pub at Clyst Honiton, another pub I have never been to but would like investigate. It is closed. Well, why not continue on to Honiton?

Along the old A30, past Rockbeare and the Jack-in-the-Green and Hand and Pen and then to Honiton for a visit to the High Street and the Carlton Bar and Brasserie. This a sort of 'modernist' pub, playing loud disco music - like something from Pete Tong - and not many customers, but interesting nonetheless. A young man at the bar is, presumably either drugged up or drunk, doing all manner of erratic, spontaneous dance movements with his hands as he sits on a stool by the bar. We finally discoverd the location of Spanky's nightclub, although it is shut tonight.

Back via Exmouth. A quick visit to the Sidwell Street kebab shops.

Among the Emigres (Stoke Arms inn)

2004-12-26T22:59:00.000Z

It is a strange thing to visit, for the first time ever, the Stoke Arms pub, up at the beginning of Rosebarn Lane and the big roundabout, in the north-east of Exeter, only to mix with one French person and two Portuguese. But that was the situation on Sunday night, at the height of the Christmas season.

The Stoke Arms pub is monolithic; it is a traditional, sort of London-style, enormous, purpose-built pub, which stands several feet above the roundabout that is the busy junction of Prince Charles Road, Rosebarn Lane, Old Tiverton Road, Union Road, Stoke Hill and, finally, Mount Pleasant Road. It is one of the busiest roundabouts in the whole of Exeter, though its servants are all small, very old roads (apart from Prince Charles Road, probably post-War).

I understand that George Gissing, the great writer, was familiar with Rosebarn Lane, once a country lane between hedges – going up to the very top of Pennsylvania and Stoke Hill – though now entirely suburban with large detached houses and prim, well-kept front gardens. The Stoke Arms is, in a way, the pivot between all of these different social milieus: the council, the post-war detached affluent and the traditional, terraced Edwardian affluent, now split into untold numbers of student bedsits. At Exmouth Junction, it also used to have five hundred railway workers on its doorstep but they have long since vanished; the ideal spot for a two hundred apartment complex, I imagine.

Now, the Stoke Arms’ hinterland is the infamous Beacon Lane Estate, just behind, so you wonder what the place might be like. Would it be similar to the Devon Yeoman (another pub I have never visited). Then again, it is near to the studentville of Union Road so there may be a heavy university presence. Who knows?

The Stoke Arms is really two pubs in one, a lounge bar and a saloon bar, both of equal size yet separated by the main door. At this point you must make your choice since there is no other way between the two. It is like a forlorn metaphor for the old British class system, long since disintegrated (?). Upon entering the Saloon Bar – my natural habitat – I immediately came across M and his two friends, the Frenchman Morgan and Carlos, the Portuguese.

There is the most extraordinary music playing on the jukebox, accompanied by Morgan, arms aloft, singing, waving his arms wildly, totally engrossed by the music of his homeland. The rest of the pub is quiet, just enjoying a pint. Probably bemused by the whole spectacle. The paradox is almost freakish – a traditional, surburban, English pub buried away in an unheard of part of Exeter, rocking to the folk strains of Roscoff or Morlaix. What sort of jukebox is that?

‘Ziss eez... zee musique of Brit-annee.’ Morgan is ecstatic.

He also has the real, authentic French accent, almost a parody of Rene Artois, the cafe proprietor in the great tv series 'Allo 'Allo. Or Eric Cantona. I am beginning to prepare myself for excited talk of seagulls, sardines and trawlers. The blue and white rugby shirt completes the cliche.

We play pool, doubles, for a while (on a silly red table).

Actually, the Stoke Arms is a very nice pub; a good range of beers and a nice atmosphere, nice people and... an awesome jukebox. The Music jukebox is one of those modern ones, all linked to the Internet which means... you can literally select any song ever recorded and published anywhere in the entire world. Hence the music of Britanny in Stoke Hill.

On its front, the jukebox proclaims: 2 MILLION SONGS. When you think that, twenty years ago, you had a large jukebox - the size of a piano - yet only 100 songs to choose from, you realise the sheer power of modern technology. The smaller the jukebox becomes, the more powerful it becomes, linked to that greatest jukebox of all, the Internet. The Music jukebox machine is barely the size of a pub condom machine yet, when you think about it, it has a similar influence. Music has always been a great social cement and the more of it the more cementing that will be done! Women have always loved dancing more than men; if only I were John Travolta.

As we leave the Stoke Arms, Morgan claps and waves goodbye to all of the regulars. Some of them even reply 'goodbye'. A muted response to an emphatic gesture. Now for the Timepiece.

Midnight Mass at St Davids Parish Church

2004-12-25T04:39:00.000Z

Christmas Mass at midnight in the local parish church, St David’s, in Exeter. This is my first visit since the same event last year, but this time with Z and J.

Actually, Z remarked that the interior is ‘gorgeous’ and it certainly is; the church only dates back to about 1894, but it is built in the traditional, classical style, all in some sort of light-coloured, local stone. Limestone on the outside but Bath stone on the inside. Its stone-vaulted, barrel ceiling is superb and large, much larger than you would expect. It has the look of solidity and space, obviously reflecting the wealth of this inner suburb of Exeter and its large houses. It was patronised by the Thornton West family, who also built Streatham House (now Reed Hall in the middle of Exeter University). The old Hele grammar school is the other side of the road, now Exeter College.

According to the St Davids website, John Betjaman thought this church "the finest example of a Victorian church in the South West". It is easy to see why. However, next year I shall try the other church in the St David parish, the church of St Michaels and All Angels, in Dinham, which has a spectacular spire, the highest west of Salisbury it is said. It even has some kestrels in the spire (and an appeal/blackmail that if a certain sum of money is not raised the whole thing will be demolished). In fact, I’ve never been inside St Michael’s so that is next on the agenda. Of course, these days even churches are locked up during the day so the only way in is if you turn up for Sunday service; I am not even an Anglican.

We arrived at about 11.45, expecting a round of Christmas carols and the like, but it is more a hardcore religious service, lots of fanatics in the congregation. The regulars are very polite and accommodating, one senior, non-ecclesiastical man guiding us to some seats at the side. Very decent of him. One young lady nearby is praying deeply; either very troubled or very religious. She is dressed in purple and black with lots of beads and bangles and a nose ring; quite attractive, really.

Sadly, at about 12.15, the minister directs us to page 6 of the service booklet and I note that it has 14 pages; a long way to go. He is about 55 but makes some trendy references to 'Posh and Becks' as well as the war in Iraq and a number of other modern issues, all greeted by a round of laughter and applause in the congregation.

By the time the holy communion starts, it has become too much – especially after six cans of Carlsberg – so it is time to leave. More and more people are queuing up for communion and I can see this taking at least ten minutes even before the final section. Perhaps another young woman along the pew has the right idea when her communion takes the form of a dispensed mint from her Minto box. The hymn Oh Come All Ye Faithful begins as we exit the building. Did we leave too early?

Walking through the graveyard I notice the new flats – Morwenna House – in the corner which is in fact where I may land up living not too long from now. This is really going back to where I started when I was twenty because they are the old offices of EBC Group, now known as Rok. Although I was based in Queens Terrace - I forget which number - I had to deliver the pay packets to what is now Morwenna House (then simply 60 St Davids Hill), a chore which took anything up to thirty minutes. That's including Walnut House, also nearby. Everything has come full circle.

In fact, it goes back further than that! I remember about three days after first arriving in Exeter – in 1984 when I was 17 – I was given directions by Exeter College to their construction faculty which involved passing through this graveyard and church. That’s now twenty one years ago.

St Davids church website:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/stdavids/

Chard, Somerset

2004-12-22T20:43:00.000Z

The town of Chard, in Somerset, is a fine town: a large, well-designed town with some excellent classical buildings; an industrious town, with a few old mills; an interesting town, hidden away in the southern part of the Blackdown Hills, with two streams in the high street, one flowing south to the English Channel and the other north to the Bristol Channel. However, it is also an abandoned town, both the canal and the railway long-since vanished. All it has left now is the original A30, that famous old trunk road that ran through this place

The history of the Chard-Taunton canal:
fohttp://www.ruishton.org.uk/gallery/canal/index.htm#thereasonwhyr decades.

Customer Service

2004-12-16T14:05:00.000Z

'Good evening xyZZZZZ.... can I help yoUUUUUU.'

It's the rising intonation at the end, just like the Australians in Neighbours, that finally gets to me, especially when you've heard it every evening, endlessly, for two weeks. And when it's a fat, middle-aged man who sounds like an excitable teenage woman, totally delighted, speaking in a camp version of a Devon accent, then it's definitely too much. Time to leave. Time to 'move on', in the modern, annoying American, urban vernacular.

I hate 'Customer Service'; absolutely hate it. I hate the whole culture of sounding nice and delighted to people you have never even met before. There are millions of people in Britain who perpetuate this phoney charade, right now as I write. Millions, sitting down, wearing those annoying little black headphones with the spindly microphone covering your mouth, automata speaking to the clouds. It is not natural.

When I worked at Middlemoor, once, the manager took me aside - I'd been there six months on £6.25 an hour, for nights - and told me that I didn't sound suitably delighted and eager on the telephone. There had been complaints. One night, an officer rang up - at 5.00 am, if you please - with five cases ready to be put onto the system, over the phone, a call that would take at least ninety minutes, all flat-out typing, breakneck speed, tired, aching fingers at the end. How can you sound delighted at that?

In his secret little broom cupboard, packed full of recording equipment - like something out of a CIA, Cold War surveillance unit in Berlin - my manager, sat down on his chair, played the tape back at me; okay, he was right, I did sound grumpy and annoyed. I MAKE NO APOLOGIES! I reserve the right to sound tired and grumpy at 5 in the morning, when I've been up all night, working since 10pm the night before. It is not natural; even less so on £6.25 an hour.

I returned to my chair - 'workstation' - and took another call. I considered my position as I spoke to another officer, looked around me, wondered what the hell I was doing up at this unearthly hour. £6.25 an hour? I took another call... then a third and final telephone call. I would speak to my manager, or 'Supervisor' as they prefer.

'J... I just came to say that I am leaving... I've had enough.' He took me into the canteen, tried to persuade me to stay, but I was adamant. That was the end of that. He took my security pass. Goodbye, thankyou very much!

The parcels firm where I work now - I'll call them XYZ, based in Sowton - is disgusting. Like other parcels firms, the place is dirty, cheap, untidy and grotty. The offices are cramped and ad hoc, the furniture twenty years old, about the cheapest you could get. It is even worse than a professional customer services outfit; at least they all have shiney, brand new furniture, offices and carpet. Nice places, on the surface. This place is a dump.

There are old boxes and piles of paper everywhere, shelving askew, a lino floor that's falling apart, a front door that doesn't work properly; it must have been the cheapest premises available, certainly it looks it from the outside. It is shabby, utterly derisory (though not as bad as the other parcels firm I worked at for one week, RSI, based out in Broadclyst, which was a portakabin inside a warehouse).

My current job involves typing... endlessly. Three hours of endless typing - no customer service, thank God - but endless, boring, mundane typing. The input of countless consignment notes, stupid little addresses to be found on the side of the card, a whole process that if the firm had any brains could be automated and computerised.

The final ignominy is the clocking-in process. Okay, this is mainly for the warehouse staff, but it is insulting. It belies a lack of trust; and a con. One minute late starting and you lose fifteen minutes' pay; six minutes late finishing and you receive... nothing. My departure is imminent, perhaps even tonight.

I need to get back into the Technical Writing business, and quick. That means learning new skills and quite some dedication. Do I have it in me?

Cathedral Close

2004-12-09T14:46:00.000Z

The junction of Martins Lane, Catherine Street and the close itself, just by the ancient church of St Martins, is probably the Piccadilly Circus of Exeter, certainly a pedestrian version. To stand here at lunch time on a working day is to see an endless stream of very busy people, mainly office workers, all making their way to wherever they are going. It is like a busy cross-roads but with no traffic lights.

Sometimes people collide, make a brief apology, and then walk on. However, I was just standing there, in no particular hurry, observing the Big Issue seller on the usual spot at the corner of the Royal Clarence Hotel. Why the hell do they continue to sell that awful magazine? What is the point?

This time a young woman, who was well-dressed, clean-looking, called out repetitively "Big Issue, sir?" time after time, as though it really was a big issue. Well, there is no issue and I am sick and tired of being pestered to buy their stupid magazine. Admittedly, she did call out "Happy Christmas" to people when they had passed on, but it is annoying nonetheless. It is irritating. I don't mind if a drunk asks me for some money - particularly if they say it is for drink - and I usually offer 50p if I have it. That is fine.

I remember about a year ago, in Paris Street outside the Honiton Inn, a drunk and vagrant approached me and explained, very carefully, that he was an alcoholic, was on the streets, was signing on but didn't have any money for a drink as his girocheque had not arrived ... could I help? Well, of course I could help and I dug deep - in my very shallow pockets - and managed to provide a £1 coin, just to ease his distress in whatever small way I could manage. That is what I call real begging, of the most honest and heart-felt kind. I know what it's like to need a drink, to dull the pain. It is something that many people need at a certain stage in their lives; I would not begrudge anyone that small salvation. Another two £1 donations/contributions and he is well on the way to a very strong bottle of cider. Good luck to him.

I went into the SPCK bookshop, just on the opposite corner (Martins Lane and Catherine Street) for the first time in about ten years. This place burnt down a few months ago but has been restored to its ancient condition, the more so the higher up you go inside.

It is pokey, particularly right up on the third floor, but it does have an interesting collection of antique books, including a few on Exeter. Westcountry Old Books (David Neil) operates from the top floor, which is just like a private study, complete with writing desk and correspondence; its most treasured and expensive items are locked away in glass display cases, a bit like the Royal Albert Museum.

And a great view from their top window, looking out onto the Close itself (the very scene of the first pages of Bram Stoker's Dracula, if you ever read the book).

Oddfellows Hall is a fine building, just behind St Martins Church, what I would say is typical of pre-War Exeter; lots of character and some interesting local stonework. A small building, hidden away in one of the many nooks and crannies of Exeter, yet displaying enormous character and architectural interest. Who were the Odd fellows? Were they ancestors of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau?

It's dignity is, however, tainted by the Raw shoe shop next door, its ridiculously loud dance music blasting out endlessly through its open door; same goes for the Piccolo's cafe/bar next door, respectively.

Today, I visited two churches, an unusual event. Firstly, the Cathedral. They recommend contributing £3.50 upon entry, but it is voluntary and I never give such money to anyone voluntarily! The gift shop inside seems to expand by the week, full of the most kitsch, ecclesiastical trinkets and junk imaginable - miniature, silver-plated models of the cathedral and various school stuff like pencils and erasers. But also some interesting books, pictures and china.

What look and sound like a professional singing medley are in preparation - at about 1.30pm - right in the middle of the main floor, under the apex, singing, practicing, performing eccentric little movements with their bodies. Who are they? Some outfit from London, the Guildhall School of Music or something? No, they are West Exe Community College, that delightfully named, recently-rebuilt school out in Alphington, near the Sainsbury's supermarket (brand new school under construction and Premier league, floodlit hockey/soccer pitch and so forth).

On leaving the cathedral there are about another fifty of them all heading towards the great church for their evening concert, a night of fame in front of hundreds of paying guests. Their uniform is dark, navy blue and black... just like my old school in Kent. Perhaps on this very night will be borne the next Charlotte Church... or Joss Stone (who comes from Uffculme, ten miles up the M5).

Then, it's a quick look inside St Martins Church, today holding a large sale of Christmas cards dedicated to almost every charity imaginable. You can take your pick - whole boxes arranged on the tables according to charity: Mind, Sane, Help the Elderly, or something... The list is endless. They are all £3.99 for ten cards, of varying sizes, 40p each with probably only 5p going to charity. Pathetic.

It is often said that the close, in a broad sweep starting in the far, north-eastern corner, displays the whole gamut of building styles and ages, from the most ancient to the most modern in the south-western corner. This is true. It ranges from ancient, thirteenth century red stone, half-timbered buildings to modern, 1950s rubbish made from concrete. The old Exeter bank - towards the latter end, beside the old St Petroc's church - is a fine eighteenth century classical building.

It reminds me a bit of the illustrious Pantiles in Royal Tunbridge Wells, a more modern version of the same theme. One sad thing was that in the Pantiles, in about 1989, the council saw fit to literally 'fill-in' a beautiful old garden, sandwiched by the terracing, with flats, albeit old-style and designed to blend in with the rest of the Pantiles. I wouldn't put anything past the town planners of Exeter City Council.

I would normally forget all of this, despite the early hour, with a quick adjournment to the Ship - 'next to mine own Shippe...', the famous Frankie Drake quote on the door - but today I have to go to work at 4pm. Never mind.

What do all of the ever larger number of Spanish students make of all of this? They wander around Exeter in small bunches, only identifiable by their enviable youth, dimunitive stature and dark, black hair - just like me - and the occasional burst of foreign language overheard. They are very welcome, as far as I am concerned.

Indeed, there are more permanent foreigners in Exeter now than ever before, brought to this ever-greater metropolitan oasis - set within the great, green rolling hills of the Devon countryside - like bees to the honey pot of the University, probably 10,000 students by now, and the flourishing local economy and service sector (£5.50 an hour, thanks). There are also more restaurants and pubs in Exeter than ever before, most serviced by migrants and students, I would imagine. The latest addition, Wetherspoons in South Street, opens.... very, very soon!

In fact, the great actor from Plymouth, Charles Dance - the very epitomy of the traditional, noble English gentleman in hits ranging from Jewel in the Crown and Gosford Park to Tmavomodrý svet - recently spoke in the local paper about the reputation of Exeter and how it had a certain sophistication compared with its great maritime and industrial rival forty miles over Dartmoor and the South Hams.

It is this very green in which I now stand, Cathedral Close, that is responsible for the modern Exeter (if one excludes the Roman contribution, perhaps the original establishment of the city, here). For in 1050, the now tranquil market town of Crediton was quietly abandoned by the great Diocese, which decided to move to Exeter. The Diocese - a bit like the FA of today - decided to build its new Wembley stadium in Exeter and not Crediton; otherwise, we could have been writing of Crediton today.

I also - for the first time ever, since it is not open to the public - had a quick walk up the drive of the Bishop's Palace, over in Palace Gate. This really is a fine area of the city centre, not much changed from several hundred years ago. The Palace itself is the typical Heavitree red stone, very much medieval in appearance. Since it was all built and paid for by forced contributions from their congregation, over hundreds of years, I think they've got a bloody nerve posting great signs stating 'Private Property'. Who do they think they are? It was like forced taxation.

In a way, the Church was like an early invention of privatisation, all backed by brain-washing and a great ideology. They took the money by making ordinary people feel guilty, built their great churches and manors, and then banned everyone from looking at what they paid for. Great.

LINKS
A history of the SPCK bookshop in Cathedral Close (and some of the other nearby buildings):

http://www.dc.eclipse.co.uk/spck1.htm

Contains some excellent photographs; also, in its history of the Clarence Hotel, some details of the visit of Nicholas I of Russia, later the Czar. Incredible.

The Watchmaker of Sidwell Street

2004-12-08T13:17:00.000Z

After my usual, twice-weekly, five mile walk into town up the steep hills of Argyll Road and the Duryard Valley Park, and then down Rosebarn Lane into Exeter, I was passing the Odeon when I saw the watchmakers, opposite. This reminded me of something.

The eastern end of Sidwell Street is a new part of Exeter, mostly re-constructed after the war and the outside of David Cooper Watchmaker Ltd is not very promising. It is a modern, red brick building, its ground floor shop glazing all holding up about four floors of flats/maisonettes above. It is ripe for redevelopment.

Also, there used to be another watch maker sort of built into the corner of the Odeon cinema - 2 Odeon Buildings - a cubby hole in the corner just large enough to accommodate a watchmaker. But David Cooper now has a fine shopfront, maroon with heavy white lettering in one of the more modern fonts. Very professional.

In fact, about three months ago, when I was floundering in the Wormwood Scrubs of poverty, unable even to afford a sandwich, I tried to sell them a watch which they didn't want, of course. This is a professional, serious watchmakers and they don't accept any old rubbish, such as Rotary, even if it did cost £100. However, I have another Rotary watch and the battery ran flat several weeks ago; it's only since I started the new job that I now need to know the time and I've been carrying around a bedside alarm clock. Even the clock in the Renault, on the dashboard, has stopped working.

There was a time, perhaps from the age of 20 to 25, when I never used a watch. In truth, I rarely needed to know the time anyway, but I also got used to taking note every time I passed a clock or listened to the radio. There is an art to it and I found that you nearly always knew the time to within three or four minutes, sort of topping up every time you got the opportunity. But it does take quite some effort of mental concentration to operate in this manner and so in the end I started to wear a wristwatch.

I remember when I worked as a door-to-door canvasser all over Los Angeles in the summer of 1990, my manager - a dubious, sanctimonious, 'godly' man at Friends of the United Nations, a 'charity' that attempted to raise support for the UN (?) - told me that he had once operated the same system. Incidentally, this was a summer exchange/visa system under the auspices of BUNAC (Bowling Green Lane, near Farringdon, whose offices I visited to complete the paper work); I later worked for a similar, though better charity, called Citizens for a Better Environment (so successfully, in fact, that they tried to persuade me to stay on when I said I was returning to Britain).

"Do you replace batteries in watches?" I showed him my watch.

"Yes, of course; take a seat."

He took my watch to the watch repairer at the back of the shop, visible through a specially made window. He was busy at work and looked like a total professional, surrounded by the accoutrements of his trade, various machines and lots of clocks and watches. Screwdrivers and vices of varying descriptions. This was a truly professional watch shop. Unlike H Samuel who do no repairs at all and simply advised me to go to Debenhams. I would say that David Cooper Watchmakers are the Royal Clarence Hotel of Exeter watch shops (with H Samuel the corner cafe, or perhaps McDonalds, as it were).

The proprietor - Mr Cooper - reminded me of the Gunsmith (the actor Syril Cusack) in the film Day of the Jackal. He was very - inordinately, perhaps - polite and totally dedicated to his work, just the sort of attitude you like to see in a professional. He could almost have said 'will the gentleman be standing?' had he been in the firearms trade.

The shop was a delight, its walls covered in watches and clocks of every known genre and make. There was a James Stewart (of Armagh) grandfather clock for £5190 and various other makes and types, including a Barograph with plotting arm and so forth. I imagine there is a scientist of some sort at the Met Office who has been there for thirty years, relocated from Bracknell, and has been into this very shop, an obsessive of horology and barometers.

There was a Snell grandfather clock, too. And, as it was just turning 1 o'clock, I was treated to the reality of 'on the hour' in a true watchmakers shop, a whole euphony of chimes and bells; there might even have been a cuckoo clock. Perhaps Orson Welles, in the great film The Third Man, was wrong to ridicule the Swiss, after all.

In the mean time, Mr Cooper finished with his existing customer. He paid and then departed, saying that he hoped to return again.

"I very much hope so, indeed." said Mr Cooper, the epitome of politeness, and it was then that I discerned a definite Ulster accent, possibly Belfast though less harsh and mellower. I wonder if Cooper is an Ulster name?

Meanwhile, his assistant, the workman, just four minutes later presented me with my watch, now ticking away very well. He was delighted and so was I. £5.50, a very large sum for me these days, but a job very well done, all in good time.

If you require first class service and professional watchmaking expertise of the highest order then there is no other place to go in Exeter than David Cooper.

David Cooper Watchmakers Ltd:
http://www.exeter-clocks.co.uk/

Exeter City draw Man Utd in the FA Cup 3rd Round

2004-12-06T13:07:00.000Z

This is the great, fantastic draw that they just needed...

Ian Huxham was on TalkSport Radio today talking about this amazing draw, the day before. He was right to sound utterly amazed. He spoke about the 3rd round tie, saying - jokingly - that if Man Utd played a few reserve players, you never know...

I love Ian Huxham. I remember him parading down the touchline at St James's Park, back in July, when the Brazil Masters visited, in front of about 7,000 at the Park. He went on the pitch at half-time, with a microphone, talking to the crowd, from the Doble Stand side of the pitch. He is a natural showman, total charisma, every inch the part. He spoke to the crowd, urging us to recognise the great Brazilians, show some support and create some atmosphere. Not only does he love the club - anyone can see that - but he is a local man and he is a credit to Exeter City. Even his name comes from a local village, Huxham, near Stoke Canon. He is superb. A great media operator. He deserves to go on from this and be even more successful in the Premier League.

This match has actually secured the entire future of the football club. If Man Utd get 50,000 at £20 a ticket then that's £1 million, shared 50-50, with £500,000 for Exeter City. They need to raise about £700,000 by next October so they have just about done that. It is all thanks to Dean Moxey and his great goal on Saturday in the 2nd Round when City won 2-1 against Doncaster Rovers.

This is great news for Exeter City. Strangely, I went into the Red or Dead campaign shop in Bedford Street last Wednesday and he spoke of needing that amount of money, the man in the shop, and they have just done it! I thought that if they beat Doncaster then they might get Man Utd; they have just done it! Brilliant!

Last Saturday, Southampton were 10-1 to win at Old Trafford, which must make Exeter about 50-1. They may, however, be shorter odds than Yeading, who are to play Newcastle United; Yeading are two leagues down from Exeter.

London Heathrow

2004-12-05T23:44:00.000Z

The call came late. On Saturday night, calling J in Israel, I was politely asked if I could travel to London to collect the family, J, Z and G, from Heathrow Airport. Naturally, I didn’t hesitate for one moment to offer my help. I always like to help if I can, in whatever small, tiny way.

I haven’t been to Heathrow for seven years, since I was at DHL and went on a two day business trip to Brussels, Terminal 1. I've only been to London about twice in the last five years, as well.

That was last night (Saturday). Today, Sunday, I awoke at my usual early hour – about 6am these days – and prepared to leave for London. First stop was to visit mum to get the money for the fuel; then, on to Glastonbury to pick up the superb Mitsubishi Carisma and drive to London.

I arrived at Glastonbury at about 11.45am. There was the problem with finding the keys – placed in a too obvious place of the garden shed for the front door and the kitchen drawer for the car keys – and then off to London. I chose the A303, directly, via Kingsdon and Podimore and then straight to London on the M3 via Richmond, Kew and Ealing. Well, the plane was cancelled, of course, just as I suspected and the arrival time of 15.40 was put back by three hours to 18.40. Ideal for a quick visit to L in Madeley Road.

I nearly crashed in Kew, just by the London Welsh rugby ground. Driving along, feeling very tired and fiddling around with stuff in the car, I suddenly looked up to realise I was driving too fast – only 30mph – for the conditions and was about to hit the car in front. I braked suddenly, the wheels locked, despite the ABS, and I had to avoid the car in front by aiming for the pavement. I did, of course, look very carefully and if there had been people walking I would have had to hit the car in front; but, there was no-one there and I went onto the pavement. This is pure luck. The driver behind, not surprisingly, kept well back for the next mile.

At Kew Bridge, I noticed my old haunts of seven years ago: the Strand Café and then the Brentford/Chiswick roundabout leisure centre where I used to play squash and visit for lunchtimes. I also noticed the Ask pizza restaurant just on the south side of Kew Bridge, which, in a way, was where I started out back on August 12, 1997; I was taken for a meal there by my new colleagues at lunch time. What a fucking disaster. For, it was here that they took me in my very first lunch hour on the day I started, in my minute career as a Technical Author (Graduate Trainee).

I also noticed the large Vantage West building on the Great West Road bang opposite where I used to work. I noticed the new flats in Brentford, right near Kew Bridge, which were only under construction back then. I noticed Gunnersbury Park, which I used to walk through on my way to work from Elthorne Park Road, about three miles from where I worked at Chiswick roundabout.

Then up Gunnersbury Lane on the North London Circular, past the old house of Sid James, and to Larry’s. He was not in. I then thought I may as well go to Eileen’s to kill the extra three hours I had to spare.

At Eileen’s they have a new security system on the door, unlike ten years ago when anyone could just walk in, so I had to phone her on mum’s mobile phone to get her to open the door. I rang her.

But, at that very point, L turned up and opened the door. Naturally, after a few pleasantries at Eileen’s, I suggested to Larry that we adjourn for a pint. The view from Eileen's is spectacular, worthy of a flat of a million pounds. Eileen said that is why she stayed there.

At the Grosvenor pub, near where I used to live, in Hanwell, we had a nice couple of pints (well, me just one, as I am driving). I used to love that pub, a traditional London pub, only, strangely, hidden away in a very back-street area and totally incongruous with its surroundings. However, I passed a few evenings playing pool there on their enormous pool table.

We go to the Fox pub, as well, hidden away down by the canal in Hanwell, somewhere I never discovered back in 1998, my last time in this area. What a long time. There are a couple in the corner - he about 45, her about 30 - the most in-love couple I have ever seen. Perhaps there is hope for me, yet.

Drop L off at Eileeen’s and then off to Heathrow. The roads around Hounslow are so busy with traffic. But, I met J, Z and G at Terminal 1 – where there is not even a bar – and then back to the main Arrivals car park and a ten minute hunt for the car; where the hell did I park it? I love the moment where you meet someone from the airport. I have only done this about three times before in my entire life but it is great to meet people at the airport, just like in the great film Love Actually.

They have a cordon keeping people back about 10m from where people walk through from their plane and it is superb. It is dramatic. You just wait there, the suspense building up as you see group-after-group arrive and walk on and it is never your person or people. You can just imagine how the great Richard Curtis stood and watched this same scenario, thinking of his next film. It is like a National Lottery scratchcard, scratching off one symbol after another and wondering if the next is your symbol.

There are a lot of people - I will now call them M people, after my cousin, the drivng specialist and obsessive (five years of 60 hours a week driving) - who hold up placards for various businessmen arriving at the airport. It is so impersonal. A placard that reads 'Racheed' and a driver who looks both concerned and bored at the same time. He is just doing his job. I even ask one of them if there is a bar in the Arrivals section of Termina 1 but he sounds bemused - in an Irish accent - and I go off to buy a tea, instead.

J came through looking upwards for a bar as I had said I would be in the bar. Just a tea in the Costa coffee bar, £1.39. There is something strange about places like this; you have a lot of people who work there - mostly foreigners, for some reason - who are completely oblivious to the sheer drama of the place. There are people arriving in Britain for the first time ever, visibly excited to set foot in Britain, survive customs, and then meet their loved ones. Yet these workers are completely disinterested. Perhaps you have to be a one-off, day visitor, to appreciate the drama.

J had promised me a bottle of Laphroaig whiskey – at my suggestion (well, after he had said he would buy me something in Duty Free) – but they don’t operation customs in intra-European flights these days, of course. I am a very humble person and I don’t expect anything from anyone and certainly not a ransom for collecting someone from the airport. It is the very least I can do to help someone.

At Fleet Services - the old service station, the first on the M3 heading west - J produced some money, about £100, and offered it to me. No, I can't accept anything like that, certainly not for something so routine and dutiful as collecting your brother in London, particulary if you have nothing else to do, and I declined. "Well, £20 would be fine, thanks."

G looks unbelievably tired; well, he is only just five years old.

We eventually find the car, somewhere up on Level 4. And, then, it is off to Glastonbury for the return journey. I am slightly annoyed that the car park ticket machine does not allow you to retain the ticket which you had in the first place; this is the essence of a souvenir, documenting your past from documents. Never mind.

A short debate on whether to go to Hounslow first, to get some fuel, or to just carry on via the M4 to the Westcountry. We chose the latter, arriving at Fleet in a very short thirty minutes. Thank God we didn't go to Hounslow, the traffic was awful.

At around Chicklade we entered probably the worst fog I have ever seen, visibility reduced to about ten feet. J was driving so I advised him to slow right down. This is sort of Salisbury Plain country, quite hilly and drifting fog is probably not uncommon. Then, a quick stop at the Sparkford roundabout services, in particular the 24 hour Spar shop, very handy indeed.

Actually, earlier in the day, I had even managed to call into the South Somerset Tourist Information centre by the Cartgate roundabout and services, it usually being shut when I pass out of hours. But, inside, they have some of the finest free leaflets seen anywhere, stuff on all of the splendid market towns in south Somerset: Crewkerne, Somerton, Yeovil, Ilminster and so on. Their staff are very helpful, too. In fact, it is incredible that they still operate the place in the middle of December.

Castle Cary is a delight, too. Really, the lesson is to come off the main road - something no-one ever seems to do these days - and visit some of these places out of the way. Montacute is another fine place, typically the yellow, gold Ham stone village with the enormous Elizabethan mansion.

News Review section, Sunday Times - the Journalism of the Simpsons

2004-12-05T01:11:00.000Z

I used to like the News Review section of the Sunday Times, but after reading the article They're Out to Get Me. It's all a Conspiracy (Sunday, 5 December, 2004), I had no choice but to write to its author, Jasper Gerard, a total moron pretending to be a serious journalist. Gerard makes Norman Shields - the idiot journalist in the Norman Wisdom comedy, Press for Time (1966) - look like Malcolm Muggeridge or Gareth Jones.

THEY'RE OUT TO GET ME. IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY. SUNDAY TIMES, 5 DECEMBER 2004 - SUB-O LEVEL/GCSE STANDARD OF WRITING (WRITTEN IN 10 MINUTES?)

Dear Sir,

After reading your pathetic article, above, I feel I have no choice but to comment on what is, sadly, the most appalling and amateurish piece of writing that I have ever seen in the News Review section of the Sunday Times. I can only assume that you wrote the article in about ten minutes or that you are simply a totally incompetent and amateurish writer. (Or a 13 year old masquerading as a serious journalist on the Sunday Times).

I would point out the following faults:

SYNTAX
Your work displays a sub-O Level standard of English grammar and the basics of syntax. Take the following example:

But last week Galloway won a libel action against The (sic) Daily Telegraph, which claimed he had received bungs from Saddam after finding some papers in Baghdad.

Does your sentence, above, mean that Galloway received bungs because he found some papers in Baghdad? Try actually thinking about the construction of the sentence – the ordering of clauses – before writing. You should have written this sentence as:

But last week Galloway won a libel action against the Daily Telegraph, which, after finding some papers in Baghdad, claimed he had received bungs from Saddam.

In the latter sentence – my suggestion – the reader does not become confused about who received bungs and why. Your sentence makes it look like Galloway received bungs because he found some papers in Baghdad.

I would suggest, Mr Gerard, that you get some remedial tuition in elementary English grammar and syntax.

ATTEMPTS AT RHETORIC/FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Your attempts at rhetoric and figurative language are embarassingly hopeless and pathetic.

Take the following example:

You talk of ‘Gorgeous George’ all the time; this is a boring, banal cliché and shows no originality at all, especially as you use the phrase repeteadly. Your attempt at a joke - in using the phrase Lord Galloway of Gorgeous - is what you would expect from a 16 year old, never mind a professional journalist on the Sunday Times.

You speak of ‘young British squaddies’ being ‘fearful in Fallujah’. Is this a serious attempt at alliteration or some sort of reinforcement of what you are saying? It is pathetic, amateurish, facile rubbish, just what you would expect from a 13 year old writing a school essay. Your banal phrase was obviously written to fit your limited writing skills and limited knowledge of the war in Iraq, as it takes no notice of the total absence of British troops anywhere near the town of Fallujah. British troops remained at Camp Dogwood, just running a few sorties in its environs; get your facts 'write'.

Similarly:

‘everyone bar the coffee cups’? What the hell does that mean?

‘yes it would be good to have honey for tea’. What does that mean?

CHILDISH/TEENAGE STYLE OF WRITING
You actually begin entire paragraphs with words and phrases such as:

‘I’m left thinking, yeah, right.’ (Which is not even punctuated correctly. To be effective, it should have read: I'm left thinking: 'yeah, right!')
‘Hmmm.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Hang on George.’

How old are you, Mr Gerard? You write like a 10 year old American child, someone who obviously spends too much time watching rubbish on 'telly' (as you put it), such as the Simpsons.

In your mugshot next to the article, you look about 35 years old, or thereabouts. However, you write like a 13 year old. I am very sorry to be so critical; it is just that I began reading what I thought would be a serious, interesting article on George Galloway but realised I was reading complete rubbish. Please, Mr Gerard, spend some more time thinking about your writing before getting it published. You owe us all that small grace.

Many thanks

Frankie, Devon.

LINKS
GARETH JONES
This is a link to a tremendous, fantastic and comprehensive website on the giant of war reporting and serious journalism, Gareth Jones:

http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/index.htm

Gareth Jones - independently of Malcolm Muggeridge, his equally sublime and ground-breaking fellow-journalist - visited the Ukraine in the great famine/genocide of 1932-3. He produced some of the greatest factual journalism of all time, I would suggest, and deserves far greater recognition. He also wrote about the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, de Valera, Lord Craigavon and Ireland, China/Manchuria and other matters. He wrote for the Western Mail, Manchester Guardian, Times, Evening Standard and other papers. He wrote on rural Wales and Ireland and America; check the website for every single article.

Gareth Jones spoke fluent Russian, German, and four other languages; he did not use slang and colloquial rubbish, and would never sink to using 'Simpsons' - had it existed back then - in professional, serious newspaper writing. I would even venture to suggest that he was a greater writer than the mighty Orwell. Even George Gissing.

In his work for the Western Mail, he wrote a series of reports on social and economic conditions in Wales and visited many towns and villages, including Merthyr, Barry and those of the Valleys. In one article, he discusses the work of the Workers' Educational Association, that fine B & Q/Do it All of education which, to this day, has in nearly every large town in Britain a little hall somewhere continuing the good work. (I once attended a WEA course, back in Brighton, in 1992).

Alas, Gareth Jones was killed by bandits, in China in 1935, at the age of 30. Otherwise, he would have been a literary colossus of the 20th century, without doubt.

MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE
Try this link for the writing of Muggeridge on the Ukraine famine and genocide:

http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/muggeridge5.htm

Malcolm Muggeridge - see his article Most Terrible Thing I Have Ever Seen - is credited with telling the West about the terrible famine and genocide in the Ukraine, during which cannibalism was rife.

Cadbury, Copplestone, Coleford

2004-12-01T17:55:00.000Z

Moorhayes Park at the northern edge of Tiverton is one of the finest new housing developments anywhere. In one small part, they’ve even kept an old oak tree and built a square around it, with black iron railings. It looks like it’s been there for years, just like an old square from an ancient village, yet two years ago the whole area was just open country.

The houses are not the old Bovis boxes, but traditional style houses that are built to look much older than they are. It is similar to the Prince Charles development at Poundbury near Dorchester, only on a miniature scale. I think there is a lot to be said for traditional building styles and they are definitely an improvement on the modern 1970s boxes, which are simply obscene. Brian Sewell would be utterly appalled at the 1970s houses around Britain; I think he would approve of Moorhayes Park in Tiverton. So would Dan Quickshank.

There is a similar development - King's Heath - under the Barrett Homes development banner - near the old Digby hospital on the eastern outskirts of Exeter, all built on open, greenbelt land. The meadow was wonderful to walk over during a lunch hour from Middlemoor but, alas, no more. It has gone. The new houses are sort of neo-Bath/Georgian style crescents, containing five storey houses. They look good. Altogether, there must be one hundred acres of land under development, the norther part more run-of-the-mill, almost box style stuff.

The town of Tiverton itself is actually a lot larger than I ever realised, probably going up above fifteen thousand by now. There is a point – by the basin of the Grand Union Canal, perched above the town on a hillside – where you can see the entire town laid before you. Tiverton is hilly yet still stretches on for three or four miles with the usual industrial estate nearby. As for the canal, this deserves greater exploration, perhaps a walk all the way to Sampford Peverell, about five miles way.

The A3072 passes Bickleigh; then on to Crediton, via Cadbury and its old hilltop castle which I once explored. This is just like Pilsden Pen, only a lot smaller; really, it is just a series of earthworks on top of a hill in the typical pre-history style. There is a fine church here, too, its graveyard set on a hillside in the midst of open country, enjoying some splendid views and some quiet serenity.

There are a whole series of tiny villages scattered around what are known as the Crediton Hundreds, a sort of local government area and tradition going back hundreds of years; there are similar ‘hundreds’ all around England, I understand. Devon County Council don’t officially maintain the tradition, yet they are on all of the old maps.

Newbuildings is a typical such village – or, rather a hamlet with just a few buildings – and I passed here today, my first ever visit. It’s near Sandford and it contains several of the famous Devon longhouses, a sort of ancient dwelling built of cobb walls and thatched roof. These buildings are so solid that they simply stand for hundreds of years. The windows are placed on a sort of ad hoc basis, of different shapes and sizes and apparantly random. There is some sort of saying, which I can't remember precisely, which says that all you need is a good pair of boots (the foundations) and a good hat (the thatched roof). Newbuildings also has a few pre-war council houses, now worth about £250,000 I should imagine.

Driving through the country lanes of Devon is a delight. They are barely wide enough for one car, hemmed in at each side by a seven foot tall hedge, many lanes so under-used that a line of green grass marks the centre. You have to be extra careful with on-coming traffic because any extra speed can easily lead to a shunt; I know because it happened to me in May 2002 at Culvery Bridge, near Venny Tedburn. As you amble along, third gear towards the crest of a hill, when you reach the summit you are suddenly presented with the most spectacular view of the Devon countryside, a view lasting for miles, with a whole patchwork of green fields and hedges before you. And there is always the promise of a hidden country inn at the next village, the older the better. They always serve real ale, too.

This is the very hinterland that I covered at the end of 1985 when I worked as a labourer on a sort of New Deal type programme. We went out by truck and repaired church yards all over mid Devon, particularly Stockleigh Pomeroy, Morchard Road, Lapford and places. It was all run from a shed down by the Devon County Council depot behind Crediton railway station, about aa three minute walk from Mill Street. I became a master of cutting a dead straight line for a path. Two months of this was enough before I took my leave, however.

I was with M and our mission was Coleford, to visit the motor mechanic. However, having by-passed Crediton and landed up in Sandford en route to Copplestone, we were now lost. But… there was an old workman, busily sweeping the entrance to what looked like a farm.

‘Please Sir… do you know the way to Copplestone?’, M asked.

‘Take thar road there…’, he replied, his Devon brogue simply a throwback to the days before the mass media and the removal of the Devon accent. We duly arrived at Copplestone, at the Cross. Then a side road to Coleford, arriving at the motor mechanic just about one mile away.

S, the motor mechanic, has a wonderful workshop, strewn with masses of old cars and spare parts, tools, an old 1932 Ford 8 under renovation and the man himself who is a complete master and expert at motor mechanics. In many ways, it is an idyllic lifestyle - you work on the car, radio playing, no-one to push you around, your own boss, enjoying the sound of the occasional train passing, just a hundred yards away on the old Barnstaple line. When you need refreshment, you visit the New Inn one hundred yards away.

He provided the advice on the brake problem and then a quick stop at the New Inn, Coleford. I went to find the toilet, standing around, not quite knowing where it was.

'Hello... hello... hello.' This was spooky because, when I looked around there was simply no-one there, being about one o'clock in the afternoon.

'Hello... hello... hello.' Christ, what is it?

Well, of course, it was the pub parrot, in its cage, sounding incredibly like a real person. A cheeky person, really, just like the miner bird in Carry on Behind that insults people and tells them to get stuffed.

Torquay

2004-11-29T18:00:00.000Z

Alphington and the A30 to the A380, Devon Expressway, for a day trip to Torquay; very promising. However, it is too bloody cold today, a harsh chill in the air despite the clear blue sky. It must be as low as about 5 celsius.

Parking near the Princess Theatre, on the seafront, you notice that this building is a bit worn out. It must be at leat forty years old by now. It is the classic 1950s urban design, nice foyer with some outside sheltering, yet all beginning to fade and look a bit too old-fashioned. I can't remember, but it's probably the usual festive stuff inside, Aladdin, or something. I think if I had a family I would be quite into that sort of thing, now.

Quick visit to Burger King for one of their superb Whopper meals; their hamburgers are much better than McDonalds, coming in a superb bun and some real, fresh salad. At £4.19, pricier than McDonalds but probably a lot healthier. This is all thanks to the generosity of M, as usual, as I have no money at all. It is very decent of him. Will I ever deal with my debts, earn some money, and have any liquidity ever again?

Nothing in Adecco, the employment agency in Fleet Street, to produce any enthusiasm. Just Admin Assist jobs on £5.50 an hour. However, I take note of the new Hog's Head pub at the very end, and the bar next to Burger King, hidden down the alleyway, where I remember having a drink in about summer 2002, while I was working at Middlemoor.

In the trinkets shop, just on the corner of Fleet Street, next to the Spar, a woman talks to the shop owner about the weather. Isn't it true that the British do always discuss the weather? She says it's very cold now.

'It is... but we've been very lucky so far this winter. It's been good up till now.'

The Fleet Walk Shopping Centre is really most impressive. It is like a smaller version of the Victoria Place shopping centre in Tunbridge Wells, sort of blended into the street very well; in fact, you don't know it's new at all until you go inside and up the escalators to the shops.

The Living Planets sea life centre has been finished, its huge netting setting a curious new landmark for Torbay. I suppose the penguins are entering their favourite time of year now. Maybe they'll even get some snow this winter.

From down by the marina, you can see three large tower blocks on the hill, going up towards Meadfoot Road. The three blocks of flats are identical, all about twelve stories. Yet, what is interesting, is that some flats - on an apparantly ad hoc basis - have knocked out their outside walls and windows, and brought the new wall a yard or two inside the flat to create some fine balconies. The view from up there must be tremendous, particulary in the summer, perhaps sipping a lager on the balcony, looking down at the hive of activity that is the Quay.

Return to Exeter via Babbacombe and the coastal road through Shaldon, Teignmouth, Dawlish, Starcross and up to Exeter, in time to beat the evening rush hour.

Unfortunately, this did not afford time for a visit to Teignmouth town itself, location for one of the finest Norman Wisdom comedies - a rare, late colour film - called Press for Time (1966). Filmed almost entirely in Teignmouth, Norman Shields goes on a series of bus chases, clumsiness and the rest, all in his new job as a journalist. There are shots of Ivy Lane and down to the River Teign and the Salty, opposite.

The Bedford Street Shrek

2004-11-25T14:03:00.000Z

I was walking along the High Street in Exeter, turning the corner into Bedford Street to go to the Post Office, when I saw at my feet … a monster. It was just past mid-day.

I stopped, hesitated, unsure whether to run away or stop and stare in disbelief. A hideous, dwarf-like creature with a one hundred year old face, pasty, bony, wrinkled, shrivelled skin masking a tiny head and a bizarre mohican hair cut, along with mule-like, goofy, gappy teeth and giant, rubbery hands. What on earth is it?

There were now fifty people alongside me, all forming a semi-circle around this mysterious beast, sat down against the wall at the corner, cornered. It was trapped. I withdrew several yards and turned to see for myself what it was. It was talking, all in a low-pitched, husky, gravely and incomprehensible mutter, like the missing link from the Amazon. Or a Peruvian, human Shrek pygmie, a miniature John Mills' village idiot in Ryan's Daughter. Think of a skinny Quasimodo without the hunchback.

There were some children there, too – a few looked enchanted, utterly amazed at the spectacle before them; most looked away in timid horror, burying their faces in their guardian’s chest. The beast just carried on muttering, its rasping, guttural tones sending a shudder down the spine. Then it made a sudden move towards some people, a group of teenage girls, at the far side; they scattered, shrieking. But it stayed put, stuck on a square rucksack, its tartan trousers looking suspiciously big for the torso.

It was, of course… a street entertainer (hidden somewhere inside the rucksack). I gave 'it' 50p.

It played the flute and had a nice line in hand gestures, dabbing its hollow forehead now and then, even tapping it hard with its juggler's baton. But then the show stopped, after five minutes, and a big man slowly appeared from inside the square ruck sack. He climbed out and thanked the audience. Whoever this man was - and he was at least six feet, quiet stocky - he needed the dexterity of Frankie Dettori and the escapology of Harry Houdini to shrink himself to such a small shape. No wonder his legs were in agony as he stood up.

This man was at least as good as any of the brilliant clowns and street performers at the Sidmouth International Festival, last summer. Outside the old market place, in Fore Street, several clowns performed in front of audiences up to three hundred and you never thought that the next could possibly be as good as the last - but they always were. There was one who looked just like David Hemmings, only twenty years younger, dressed in black trousers and waistcoat, white shirt, sweating, and cycling around on an eight feet tall unicycle. Superb. Add a few flaming, juggling batons and you get the picture.

Just like the incredible busking, multi-coloured, folk banjo, ukelele and mouth-organ combo-duo I saw in the high street in Barnstaple last summer, as well. Imagine a man sitting down, arms and legs attached to five musical instruments - including a large, multi-coloured drum with stage name painted on front - and mouth attached to a harmonica; and then playing everything simultaneously.

The Sidmouth Festival, of course, has an incredible line-up of folk music acts, as well, including some traditional English music that just takes you back to a different, bygone age and a simpler life. The free, ensemble music in the bar of the Anchor Inn was pure brilliance; also the larger, concert-style performances in their stage outside at the back. Don't forget the slick Marine Inn on the sea-front, a delight in summer when there is a blue sky outside and football on the ten screens inside.

Sidmouth International Festival:
http://www.sidmouthfestival.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/music/2003/sidmouth.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/sidmouth2004/

Too Stupid to be President

2004-11-24T13:11:00.000Z

One of the most brilliant political websites on the Internet – excluding antiwar.com, rense.com, spiked-online.com, and all of the superb conspiracy sites such as Propaganda Matrix, Alex Jones's Prison Planet – is a satirical site called Too Stupid to be President. As its name suggests, it's all about Double Yooh (Winnie the Pooh).

I only discovered this site a few days ago and it’s taken me that long to go through their backlog of material. But I’ve been through it all now and realise that it is simply brilliant. The most amazing feature is the series of animated cartoons, all featuring George Bush, his cronies and his administration.

Take the cartoon Get Stupid. This begins with Bush – in his typical, moron, neo-Ronnie Corbett persona – addressing the United Nations over the grave threat of Iraq and Saddam Hussein, prior to the invasion and occupation. There are two giant video projection screens and Bush addresses the audience, describing the evil menace of Saddam (and his kitchen microwave). Then he goes off to meet Dick Cheney in his mansion – here, the fun begins!

Dick Cheney is now Dr No, complete with ICBMs - 'and like you haven't taken home office supplies?' - white cat, and an evil plan to take over the world (is that satire or real?).

The cartoons are so professional, so well-written and so brilliantly presented that they should be on tv; but that would never happen, of course. Rumsfeld is great, here a sort of Woody Allen, stand-up bloke joking about the Geneva Convention ('sounds more like a polite suggestion than rules'). Also: The Benny Hill Presidency and The World's First 'Anti-Peace' Anthem with Bush a hippie, singing 'All I am say-in... is give War a chance'. Priceless.

Too Stupid to be President:
http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/

Rense:
http://www.rense.com/

Alex Jones's Prison Planet:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/

Antiwar (mainly links to various newspaper articles on the war, from around the world, and the regular columnists such as Pat Buchanan, Charlie Reese, Joseph R Stromberg, etc.):
http://www.antiwar.com/

Pravda (a fairly anti-Western Russian website):
http://english.pravda.ru/

A North Devon Tour

2004-11-23T22:21:00.000Z

It was 4 o’clock in the morning at the Strand, Barnstaple, a promenade beside the river, all underneath the unblemished yet dark night sky. Nearby was the eighteen-arched, medieval packhorse bridge and under this flowed the Taw, in the twilight like a giant river of Guinness, topped in parts by a thick, frothy head, visibly agitated by the peremptory call of the estuary and the sea, six miles away. In this quest, it meets its neighbour, the River Torridge, just four miles away, before their great, united emancipation in Barnstaple (or Bideford) Bay.

At the far side of the Taw begins that magical land of the otter. This is, without doubt, the land of Henry Williamson and Charles Kingsley.

A police van slowed as it drove past, its single officer aroused to suspicion by the strange spectre of two middle-aged male adults standing around, now scrutinising the millennium dial on the pavement of the mini-piazza: Time Capsule Below. The town council had done a fine job in documenting and encapsulating the meaning and history of Barnstaple in a series of colourful and intricate mosaics in this, however humble, the Trafalgar Square of Barnstaple. Mostly seafaring, of course, with references to the trade with Africa, Australia and the Americas; they must have read Westward Ho!, putting aside any rivalry with the town's great neighbour, Bideford, just nine miles yonder.

Barnstaple and Bideford are like two twins - identical twins if you account for their geography - linked since 1988 in trade and tourism by the umbilical chord of the A39, now branded the Atlantic Coast Highway, in honour of the famous Atlantic Coast Express train service (ACE). My mission tonight was to cover both towns before returning to Exeter.

This great road is reached from Exeter most easily by joining the A361 - the North Devon Link road - somewhere around Tiverton, if tourism is your primary motive, since you can also take advantage of the sublime, alpine scenery of the A396 Exe Valley road. It's a fifteen mile, slow drive but you get to take in Bickleigh and some great views of the River Exe, gradually hemmed in more and more by the hills as they close-in the further up the valley you go towards Exmoor.

The A361 itself is another new, fast road - though single carriageway - and it takes you to Barnstaple in under thirty minutes. It must've cost tens of millions to build, judging by the number of streamline, high-altitude viaducts and crossings. Regretably, however - like the Ilminster by-pass - it is one of those roads that can't make up its mind whether it should be a dual-carriageway or not; in many sections, it is actually three lanes so you wonder why they didn't just go dual.

In Barnstaple, after putting in another £4 of fuel - 55 miles in this ten-year-old, Renault 19 Biarritz TDI car - I asked the sixty year old man at the petrol garage, protected by bullet-proof glass, if he knew of anywhere to buy a cup of tea at four in the morning.

'urh... narrgh', he mumbled through the intercom, all too much effort. A pathetic response. I said nothing more.

There is always somewhere to buy a cup of tea in a town this size. And so there was, later on, at a BP/Spar, modern, supermarket-garage the other side of town, on the way out. £1.15 for a self-service tea - tea bag, water, paper cup and UHT milk capsule - is a bit pricey, but just about worth it, even on my minute budget.

Westward Ho! is a curious place to visit in the early morning in late November but, even under these conditions, it is still an attractive town, like an enlarged, more successful - though less commercial - version of Dawlish Warren. Its whole existence is owed to the holiday (and convalescence?) trade, as seen in the enormous number of both caravans and holiday chalets, little huts providing, I should imagine, very cosy and quaint accommodation. Henry David Thoreau, the Walden transcendentalist, could quite enjoy himself here.

The chalets - all white and wooden - stretch in a narrow line, five-deep, along about two miles of the end of Atlantic Way and then Merley Road, a small dirt track leading right down to Rock Nose and the Mermaid's Pool, just where the rugged, rocky coast begins. There is a lighthouse at work somewhere at the end, too. It is like the Nova Scotia coast in that film, The Shipping News (2001), with Julianne Moore.

Back in the 'town centre', they are accompanied, or complimented, by a number of large holiday parks and amusement arcades - Fantasy Island, Surfbay and so forth - that reach down to Pebble Ridge, the four mile long coast of boulder sized pebbles, and the golf links. Unlike the 'big', Portland end of Chesil Beach, and its potato-sized pebbles, here they are dinosaur pebbles, large enough to break your leg or foot.

Maybe, back in about 1400, the corporations of Barnstaple and Bideford did a deal with the same bridge builder, for they look identical, the latter now supplanted by the vast, 100 ft tall 1988 bridge of the A39, just a mile down the Torridge, towards Appledore and the estuary. The two towns have a symmetry, like a mirror image of each other, both with a long, old bridge; in Barnstaple the town is on the north side, in Bideford the town is on the south side.

There is no other part of England that has so many inlets and estuaries, most harbouring a fine town near the mouth. You think of Dartmouth and Kingswear; Falmouth, Wadebridge, Padstow, Salcombe, Kingsbridge and so on. All of these great Westcountry towns were once served by the railway, too, though that is forty years gone, now.

For some stupid reason, I never used to like Bideford, probably due to its odd name (and my old manager at ABC in Exeter, Dave Griffin, came from here and spoke with a terrible accent). But that was before I had a car and before I ever went there, since the old railway line stopped at Barnstaple.

Bideford is a beautiful, fascinating town, climbing its steep hills with some fine Georgian and Edwardian buildings, none ever troubled by the fortunes of war. As Charles Kingsley noted, its Quay is lined with many, many pubs and inns and you could easily pass a fine summer afternoon here just drinking (if only you could return to Exeter without driving), admiring the spectacular quay and exploring the town itself, up the hill.

Perhaps a stroll over the bridge to East-the-Water. Then, you could look back on the 'little white town' and see it in all its glory, the wide Torridge and mile long quay quay framing the town, stretching up two hundred feet to be capped by fine woods. To your left, you have the river heading off upstream to more wooded valleys.

I never like returning on the same route out. Fortunately, Bideford to Exeter offers the A386 to Great Torrington. One day I will explore this famous old market town and give it the respect it deserves; but that is all for another day trip and not at 5 o'clock in the morning.

The valley of the River Torridge is undoubtedly magnificent, mostly wooded and lined with many white water cascades and weirs. And otters. And the old railway line, its stations still visible along most of the road.

At Torrington, the B3220 to Copplestone is a long, twenty mile stretch of pure darkness, no street lights and no traffic. This is what I have always termed 'real driving', that which involves a lot of gear changes, a lot of steering and lots of gradients.

Beaford and Winkleigh also deserve further exploration, the former, I imagine, typical of the remote Devon village favoured by John Betjeman. The great Metroland evangelist made a film once in Northlew, near Okehampton, and to visit the place is still to step back in time, even though you know the main road is only five miles away, full of juggernauts and fast cars. His film was black and white, made in about 1960, and to watch it is to see a Westcountry remote from the hustle and bustle of metropolitan and industrial civilisation.

At Winkleigh, the B3220 crosses the old second world war aerodrome, a few huts and hangers still there. There is no sign of a run-way, but this was a large, significant airfield in its day - now an industrial estate - used mainly for secret missions. I imagine it covered both the Atlantic and the English Channel and northern France. There are still some Polish people around, right here, bang in the middle of Devon; just look at the phone book. Sadly, the old airfield has no memorials of any description and no tourist information; not a single information point or anything.

If you have time, stop off at the incredible, 15th century, thatched Kings Arms pub, in the village. It is in the middle of the village square, surrounded by the deserted road - all traffic by-passes this village - yet inside you are transported back to the age of giant wooden timbers, enormous open fires. This is the sort of sizeable village that still only has about three shops - in this case, a butchers, general store and another.

Apart from a superb restaurant, it has the most amazing, unofficial yet very professional collection of military memorabilia, books and records from the last two hundred years of war. When I was here in July, with J on the return from his driving test, on the subject of the original cost of a first world war officer's cap, I guessed 40s; on the inside it was marked 32s. Not a bad guess!

Nearer Copplestone, and the end of the journey, you pass North Tawton, the home of another, late poet laureate, Ted Hughes. He loved Dartmoor and one of his favourite spots - his memorial is there - is the source of four major Devon rivers, the Torridge (Okement), Taw, Dart, Teign, two flowing north, two flowing south.

This whole hinterland - mid-Devon - must be explored more fully at some point. And Dartmoor.

The Atlantic Coast Highway website (contains some excellent tourist and historical stuff on the great highway and all of the towns along the way to Falmouth):
http://www.atlantic-highway.co.uk/

Dartmoor Walks. This site is brilliantly produced with superb photos and walks with maps. Has a section on the Ted Hughes memorial, found at SX 609865

http://www.richkni.co.uk/dartmoor/

The John Betjeman Society website:

http://www.johnbetjeman.com/

A civil engineer's report on the Bideford A39 bridge, with some superb pictures, including some of the old bridge by the quay:

http://www-civ.eng.cam.ac.uk/cjb/4d8/torridge/torrpublic.html

Directors of Football

2004-11-22T11:49:00.000Z

What is a Director of Football and what is the point?

That is the question that is right now a cause of great concern for Harry Redknapp, the manager of Portsmouth. Since he took over as manager at Fratton Park, about two and a half years ago, Harry has done a magnificent, truly brilliant job; he has transformed the club, taken them into the Premiership and made them successful. But now, for some unknown reason, the club’s Serbian chairman and owner, Milan Mandaric, has appointed a Director of Football, Velimir Zajec.

This will precipitate the relegation of Pompey, as sure as the gathering of storm clouds overhead will lead to rain. Indeed, there is simply no club in English football that has been successful with a Director of Football.

At Exeter City, there has been nothing but mediocrity and failure since Steve Perryman arrived as Director of Football, about three years ago. The club has slipped into the Conference, several managers have come and gone, yet Perryman remains in his mysterious advisory role. He is often on local, Westcountry tv – usually walking along the beach at Lympstone, the glorious Exe estuary in the background – talking about his aims and stuff. I can’t remember what he said, except that he might go back to Japan at some point, when a great job comes up (he said that four years ago). But, what do they actually do, these directors of football?

Some say their job is to oversee the buying of players and sort of present them to the current manager as the raw product, something to work with. But this is a disaster. There is simply no way that any of the top managers would work in such a situation. It is like giving Ian Botham a baseball bat for the Ashes and telling him to get on with it.

There is the argument that a director of football overseas the youth system and, in addition to transfers, also overseas the wage structure. Indeed, it is possible that an unscrupulous manager - George Graham at Arsenal, even Ferguson with his son, Jason the agent - could use agents to cream off money from the club via the football agent, that must disgusting creature of modern football. It is possible, and the wage bill at Portsmouth is now about £20 million; there is no knowing how much of the transfer fees paid out have gone to agents. In this set up, corruption is easy.

Mandaric says it is all about 'having a ready-made system in place that any individual can turn his hand to'. But this is rubbish. All of the greatest and most successful clubs are a personification of their great managers: you think of Matt Busby (Man Utd), Bill Shankly (Liverpool), Jock Stein (Celtic), Ted Drake, Tommy Docherty and Dave Sexton (Chelsea), Herbert Chapman (Huddersfield and Arsenal) and so on... Jose Mourinho??? John Neal created success at Wrexham and Middlesbrough before arriving at Chelsea in 1983; each team failed when he left.

Brian Clough created success at Derby County in the early 1970s and when he left it vanished; the same thing happened after he left Forest in 1993. There was also Bill Nicholson at Tottenham, and Don Revie at Leeds. Even Alec Stock at Yeovil.

Arsene Wenger, at Arsenal, is famous for his astute judgement in the buying and selling of players; he has been very successful, not only in producing one of the finest teams that English football has ever seen, but also in generating a handsome profit. You think of Messrs. Marc Overmars, Emanuel Petit and others, all sold for fees in the double millions. His most successful players – in particular, Patrick Vieira – have been bought for very modest fees yet are now worth tens of millions.

The fact is that a Director of Football is a sort of meta-manager – a manager of the manager – and there is no way that it can work. This was shown by Jacques Santini’s early departure from Spurs, working under Frank Arnesen and Martin Jol, a sort of double Director of Football duo who have now formed their own coach-director relationship.

Dave Bassett was Director of Football at Leicester City, and they are now failures and he’s just been sacked by their new manager, Craig Levein. 'I've never worked with a Director of Football before', says Levein. Mickey Adams tried working under Bassett for three years but there was little success and attendances sank by a few thousand. The Foxes were most successful, in more recent times, when Martin O'Neil was in sole charge of the team, with no interference.

The only alternative to the English, managerial supremo system is the Boot Room philosophy, something used to awesome effect at Liverpool, in the 1970s and 1980s (from 1959 to 1998). The Anfield 'boot room' ethos - if it ever really existed - was a sort of bottom-up culture, unlike the top-down, director of football method. At Anfield, successful players - even unsuccessful ones, such as Roy Evans - became immersed in the dressing room culture and the training methods used at the club and stayed around to render assistance to the new manager, usually appointed from within the club.

It could be argued that Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan, two of the most successful managers in the history of English football, were part of a greater team set-up, a Boot Room team and methodology. There must have been a similar approach at Wimbledon, except that they called it a 'Crazy Gang' methodology; Dave Basset's greatest mistake was leaving Wimbledon.

Alternatively, the only double act that works in English football is a management duo, one where the manager appoints his own assistant. Brian Clough and Peter Taylor were the most successful, at Nottingham Forest, and there have been others. John Sillett and George Curtis won the FA Cup in 1987, at Coventry, in a double act. In this arrangement, one person is the more senior and sort of delegates some duties to his chosen side-kick. There is no room for ambiguity and the relationship works; if it doesn’t, then the senior one simply sacks the junior one.

Of course, this is not to say that a chairman should not have a good working relationship with his manager. It is little surprise that since Ian Ridley, the journalist and chairman, left Weymouth in the summer, the team has under-performed and his close associate - confidante, even - the highly experienced player, Steve Claridge, has since been sacked. This may have something to do with the creation of the Conference South, but it might have happened anyway. It's just a shame that Claridge's sacking didn't come one month earlier since he then could have become manager of Exeter City, before Alex Inglethorpe. Martyn Rogers is a successful supremo at Tiverton, one league below them.

Alex Ferguson likes to leave the coaching to someone like Carlos Queiroz, the Portuguese; Arsene Wenger allocates that same role to Pat Rice, it is said. But with the Director of Football, the whole set-up is a lot more uncertain. Often, the two will never have met before and it simply generates misunderstanding and resentment - this is the situation at Portsmouth.

That is why Good 'ole Harry will resign within two weeks, probably going back to Bournemouth or somewhere. If he goes to Dean Court (the 'Fitness First' stadium, alas) with a couple of million or so, he can run the whole show himself, being Director of Football, manager, owner and so forth.

This is what you might term the 'holistic' philosophy, once favoured by Ron Noades, at Crystal Palace. At Selhurst Park, he was owner, chairman, manager, all at the same time; it even worked for a while. Ron used to run the club and then enter the dressing room, before kick-off, to tell them how to play; he even ran the training sessions. To Bill Shankly's Chairman Mao, Ron Noades was Pol Pot (Shankly often made references to the 'Red Army' and similar, Chinese communist references).

This alien, continental system, is a bit like trying to impose Cabinet government and collective responsibility on a natural tyrant. The traditional English manager needs to be a Stalinist, or at the very least, a strong President. He needs to make all of the decisions without any interference whatsoever. Checks and balances does not work in English football management. Maybe the modern English manager needs to be Tony Blair, the new dictator, with no reference to HM Queen (the Director of Football of Britain).

The Boot Room Net, 'a celebration of that most famous of all footballing institutions, the Liverpool FC Boot Room'. Contains a list of the Chief Scouts (including Geoff Twentyman), First Team Trainers (including Reuben Bennet and and Doug Livermore), and Youth Development officers (including Tom Saunders). A brilliant, fascinating website, complete with biographies of the big five and a graphical chart of every single boot room member:
http://www.lfcbootroom.net/

Craig Levein, new Leicester City manager:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/l/leicester_city/3978279.stm

John Sillet and George Curtis at Coventry City:
http://www.cwn.org.uk/skyblues/jim-brown/2001/011019-managers-john-sillett.htm

The Observer: Stuart Barnes article on Harry Redknapp available:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/sport