rail of a time

July 3, 2009July 1, 20093 Comments

Halfway there! 15 of 30. It feels like a journey, a train of thought, one with lots of stations and the bogs are blocked. If this series was the Northern Line, I’d be at Golders Green, about to enter the tunnel below Hampstead, on my way to the pub in Camden Town.

I like travelling by train, and alone, so I can read, or draw, and have my headphones on, and look out of the window. Except if I do need to go to the toilet I worry about leaving my stuff. And if I take it with me, I worry about someone nicking my seat, you know you get those people who seem to spend the entire train journey shuffling up and down the corridors, never actually sitting down anywhere. Then you get those people who don’t sit next to the window, but put their bags there, so nobody will ask to sit there. The ticket inspector inspects your ticket, and places that little magic piece of card above your seat, which magically compells you to sit there forever until your stop, so that if a smelly or noisy person sits nearby, you can’t move, because the inspector will think you’re a new person. Then there’s those compartments above the seat for your bags, which are always just too small for your bag, and you just know you’ll leave it up there and forget (I have done this). Then there’s the ones that cross borders several times in the night, all the stopping and starting, the inspector wakes you up to check tickets, then the passport man comes in to look at passports, then after an hour sat on the border you roll across, having finally gotten back to sleep, only for another passport controller to come in and check you are who you’re supposed to be, along with another ticket inspector an hour or so later, and then the whole thing is repeated a few hours of non-sleep later as you cross into a new country. Then the hordes of people sleeping on the floor in the aisles, plus the lads from the Hungarian hostels coming on board to wake you up and attempt to get your business. Then you have those stories of gangs of thieves who enter trains at night, and gas those little compartments where everyone is sleeping so they won’t wake up, ransacking their bags for cameras and money, and vanish into the night. Then there’s those Agatha Christie murders. I’ll tell you one thing though, if you are getting those night trains, get on board early and get the window seat so you have something to lean against. Better still, get a reservation at the station and insist on the window, that way if someone is sat there already, you can make them move, waving your reservation at them. I had to do this once. After too many night trains where I was the one sat in the middle, unable to doze off, I didn’t care.

Fifteen more entries to go!

it don’t matter if you’re black or white

June 26, 2009June 26, 2009Leave a comment

#14 of 30. I practically never play chess any more. This set was bought in Brussels, ten years ago, in a cool toyshop called Grasshopper. I remember the first games I played on it, at the historic A La Mort Subite cafe, against a bloke from Swindon, a fellow teaching assistant who was living in Liege. I won those encounters. I was still fairly sharp then. I had a few tricks, mostly ones my brother taught me, but these days the world would be wise to my tricks. I remember playing one match, at a hostel in Budapest (all these places, eh), against an American backpacker. Showing off, I told a girl sitting next to me that I would checkmate my opponent in ten moves, and asked her to count them. Exactly ten moves later, checkmate. Truth was, I could have checkmated in one move, but decided to show off, and distract my opponent by letting him take my queen and other important pieces, before moving my rook up and catching his trapped king. People were actually stunned. That was very cheeky. I doubt I would have the cockiness any more. I’m also too predictable; I only ever play as white (so I can control the opening), and almost always play with the same opening move, as seen above. But then, that is also a ruse, to make my opponent think I am predictable…

So Michael Jackson is dead! That was a shock. Quite a big shock. Right before his big tour of the Millenium Dome. I did notice the internet slowed down right after I was told the news. He was undoubtedly a massive talent, one of the all-time pop greats from a very early age, but it was a ruined legend; whatever the truth of those allegations (and he was after all acquitted), his persona was increasingly an unbelievable freakshow, Wacko Jacko, and he produced no decent music after Dangerous. I think he will be remembered as two people. No, not the ‘Black Michael’ and the ‘White Michael’, but as the brilliant prodigious pop genius of the 70s and 80s, and the sad, degenerating figure of the 90s and 2000s, with the crazy, ever-loyal army of fans. The Bashir interview proved his ultimate undoing; even long-time loyal fans of his (my oldest friend being one) couldn’t believe what a serious joke he’d become (“no Martin, I am Peter Pan!”), and couldn’t quite swallow the strange things he was saying about his professed relationships with kids, nor the allegations that were made. Who knows whether he would have won back public respect, after his comeback tour? (you know, isn’t really a tour if you’re just playing one venue over and over, that’s called a residency) It might have helped him pay off some of his debts. As it is, his music is now selling out across the world, he has become a one-man economic stimulus. Untimely death can often be the best thing that happens to pop legends, especially fallen ones. I think I still have somewhere one Sunday tabloid rag from the morning after Princess Diana died (here’s the obligatory Diana comparison). On the cover it was all about Our Princess of Hearts is Dead, etc, while just a few pages in, the editors hadn’t scrapped the already published stories of What a Disgrace Diana is, Shame on Her etc. Fickle just isn’t the word. I don’t think the Jacko media circus is over just yet. Expect the eventual biopic to sweep the board at the Oscars.

strings of fear

June 25, 2009June 25, 20093 Comments

#13 of 30. Still no name for this series. I must get on that. This is my acoustic guitar, the one I bought twelve years ago in Charing Cross Road. It’s lived in a few countries.

“many ugly strawberries”

June 24, 2009June 25, 2009Leave a comment

#12 of 30. Denmark, the summer of ’95, strawberries, adidas shorts, and those coins with the holes in them. I was only nineteen, but I felt like an old man of nineteen. I learnt a lot of things. I learnt that when traversing Copenhagen station (or any train station), have a bag that has wheels, or at least some sort of discernible shape, one that doesn’t look like you’re hauling a body bag with a live body in it on your shoulders. It took me approximately a day and a half to reach the strawberry farm in the south of the island of Funen from Victoria station in London, which seems an extraordinary amount of time now that we live in the age of budget airlines and long bridges. In 1995, the dreaded Eurolines buses were the way to go, and Denmark was a nation of many ferry rides. It took almost 24 hours to reach Copenhagen, and from there I went via a mixture of trains, ferries, locals buses and a lift from a chip-shop owner, until I pitched my tent in the dark, and proceeded to spend the rest of the summer picking strawberries, busking in the street with my fellow jordbærplukkers and writing postcards.

Sometimes the picking was not good. The farmer, Bjarne (who I was told was nicknamed the Terminator because of his voice), would inspect each punnet, and if he didn’t like what he saw he would admonish you with the slow mechanical line, “many ugly strawberries”. Usually, ugly ones would be eaten mid-pick, since they were juicier, or even used for jam, but you were paid by the kilo, so more often the jordbærplukkers would hide big fat ugly ones under nice tender pretty ones. On the other hand, a nice punnet of shiny, shapely strawbs would be rewarded with a cool “many beautiful strawberries”. Sometimes the work would be frustrating, cold, back-breaking, sometimes it would be hot, back-breaking and frustrating. Often it would be fun though; the other jordbærplukkers, plucked from around the UK and Europe, were a great laugh. Sometimes we would meet the raspberry pickers from a nearby farm, sometimes hang out with locals, such as ‘Scouse’ Claus, who spoke in a broad Liverpool accent but had never been anywhere near the Mersey (he did work on a ferry though). People are very friendly in Denmark, the friendliest country I’ve ever been to.

It really did put me off strawberries though. I had nightmares about them, giant strawbs chasing me down the street, big piles of them every time I closed my eyes. That horrible red juice would just not wash from my hands, leaving me scrubbing like Macbeth for days after the last berry was picked. What little money I had left as the strawb season closed i used to jaunt around the country for a few days, first to Århus in the north, finally to Copenhagen, where I forewent a night in a packed and sweaty hostel, preferring to spend my last few kroner locking up my unwieldy luggage at the station and crooning in a karaoke bar, where locals bought me drinks and told me stories. When the sun came up, I got on a bus to England, with only a single krone left. I put that coin on a piece of string I found, and wore it all the way home, and for some time afterwards. I wonder where it is now.

bag it up

June 22, 2009Leave a comment

I have this bag, from Eddie Bauer, which I carry everywhere. It’s the perfect size for what I use it for, which is to carry my sketchbook and pencil case and anything else that might come in handy, with lots of extra little pockets and compartments, without being so big that I’m tempted to fill it up. It’s my perfect shoulder bag (I went through a few to get there).

And today at lunchtime I had nothing I wanted to draw, so I just drew the bag. Ive drawn it before. I also wanted to use my blue/black micron 05.

we mean it, man

June 18, 2009June 25, 20093 Comments

#11 in the series. I have a box full of old cassettes, ones I’ve owned my whole life. Gonads, that was my band at school; I didn’t sing, but I played the guitar (well, I strummed it and my fingers made chord shapes every so often). The singer, Hooker, was very good. One year he sang in front of the whole school in only his y-fronts, and a beret, if memory serves. I also wrote the songs. Three, four chords. Sometimes we’d just improvise. Once we improvised an entire gospel piece, which still makes me laugh to this day. The song about Jacques Delors was very catchy, and was full of absurdist lyrics parodying the absurd Europhobic headlines of the day, all about banning crisp flavours and killing off willo-the-wisp. We had some of those teenage songs about girls, too, like the ‘Great Unnamed Love Song’, and we covered (rather, absolutely slaughtered beyond recognition) stuff from Sex Pistols to Bryan Adams to Wonderstuff. We were obsessed with ‘Enter the Dragon’. And we had a song about the people who sell the Evening Standard down in London, based pretty much on an encounter we had near Bank station with one particularly incomprehensible vendor. The things that inspire you when you’re fifteen.

Oh we sounded absolutely dreadful, but it was just great fun. Something I’m proud of. If you like I will tell you where you can hear some of it.

pete folds none

June 14, 2009June 25, 20099 Comments

#10 of 30. Folding clothes is really really difficult. Look, I’m not setting out to write the message that ‘anything is possible if you put your mind to it’, I’m sure that’s true and I can vouch for it, in some areas. Don’t tell me that practise makes perfect. But folding clothes is flipping near impossible to get right, at least for me. It’s like magic, I mean I am always constantly amazed at it, the spectacle never wears off, to the point where I don’t want to know how they do it. I don’t go to the theatre, I just go down to the Gap and watch them fold t-shirts.

I don’t really. But you know what I mean. Maybe.

i’ll meet you on a bus at dawn

June 13, 2009June 25, 2009Leave a comment

I’ve talked before about my summers as a tour-guide above the streets of London. It was a very physical job. And highly enjoyable. Like sketching, you learn to look. On each tour I’d notice something new, a face in the masonry, a pub with an interesting past, an actual Han Solo in carbonite movie prop in a video store window (it’s in Gloucester Road), and take note, and use it to illustrate my next tour. Useful if stuck in traffic (a frequent occurence) to know lots of little facts. I can probably still remember most of them. You don’t want to know them.

Still, there would occasionally be that one person who knew it all, and would interrupt with the one nugget you left out while whipping down Fleet Street, or correct you at every turn if you weren’t quoting sources like footnotes at every red light. One person in particular (a British man with a very embarrassed looking daughter) did this incessantly on one tour, pissing off several other people, some of whom even kindly offered to throw him into the Thames. I generally ignored him, but as we passed into Parliament Square, I announced (as per our training) that the English Parliament, which dates back to about 1250 (“or ten to one”, which always got a giggle), is known as the “Mother of Parliaments”. Well, it is. The interruptive guy frowned and raised an eyebrow. “The Mother of Parliaments? What about the Icelandic Althing?”

“No, that’s the Father of Parliaments,” I shot back. “But you always know who your mother is.”

This is number 9 in a series of 30.

put the book back on the shelf

June 12, 2009June 25, 20098 Comments

#8 in a series of 30. The way I’ve put it makes it sound like a fetish or something. I’m just lazy. I have good intentions, but instead of reading them I stay up and draw the edge of the table, or whatever. Still, it’s the hope of reading them that counts, and hope is the main buzzword in this brave new world, isn’t it? Perhaps I hope they’ll read themselves to me.

Still no name for this deeply personal autobiographical series.

like a train in the night

June 4, 2009June 25, 20094 Comments

No 7 of 30. Inter-railing, everyone has to do it once. In America they call it Eurailing (at least I think so; Americans can’t get Inter-Rail tickets because you need to be a European resident, but they can get Eurail tickets). You get a ticket, for less than a monthly travelcard in London, and you can go on any train in Europe as many times as possible for one month. I made the most of it. Lots of stories to tell, and I won’t be telling them here. I should do a series about that trip though, perhaps using notes I made on my travels.

I really travelled light. The bit about the socks is true. Photos prove it; I’m wearing odd colours in most of them. I also never took a guide book. Instead, I constructed one myself, in a simple spiral bound notebook. For weeks I prepared, photocopying this from one book, that from another, pasting in colour metro maps where possible, writing down addresses of possible hostels and sights I might visit, and which stations had the all-important luggage lockers. I was being methodical but allowing for every possibility – if I was in Prague but decided to go to Amsterdam, or perhaps the other direction and see Budapest, it was all worked out in my head (in fact I went to Krakow). I carried therefore the ultimate reading tool – the 1998 Thomas Cook Rail Timetable. Worth its weight in gold. At the back of my self-made guidebook though I left space for my travel notes – and there I logged obsessively every move I made. I enjoyed every single moment.