Fletchasketch's blog

Just try Britishness

I've just finished reading (and adoring) the latest volume of Michael Palin's diaries, Halfway to Hollywood, which covers 1980 - 1988. The last few entries describe him getting ready to depart for the first series of Around the World in 80 days; as part of the preparation the team went to interview Alan Whicker, leading to this gem:

"Listen to the BBC's 'Get By in Italian' tapes in the car. Whicker was quite adamant about what to do in an emergency - 'Don't try and speak the language, you probably won't be able to anyway. I just use Britishness, it never fails."

I'm unable to decide whether this is a genius piece of advice or tantamount to suicide. I suspect that using Britishness these days is more likely to get you into an emergency than out of one. Having said that, I am neither Michael Palin or Alan Whicker who might still get away with it.

3 May 2010 14:00:35

2009 Feltron annual report

More annual design goodness with the 2009 Feltron report, which this year incorporates information from people Nick Felton encountered throughout the year.

Also the added bonus of an interview with the man himself.

3 May 2010 13:46:33

'Tis the season

Yes, it's spring, and that can only mean one thing... that next time I decide to fork over some money to London Underground I will be dicing with death. Why? Because spring is the time for parties of European teenagers to visit London, get to the bottom of the tube escalators, and grind to a halt in a tangled crowd of backpacks, chewing gum and glitter. If you've never tried to back-pedal up an escalator in heels while being kneecapped by your own laptop bag then, well, my friend, you haven't lived.

Fortunately, David Hepworth has a solution - ECOST . He suggests picking a quieter city and designating it the European Capital of School Trips:

All the massive touring parties of students who are currently clogging the arteries of Florence, Edinburgh, Paris and, now I think of it, London, would be diverted instead to wherever happens to be ECOST that year. Doncaster, Dortmund, Nancy, Poznan, wherever. Here the absence of world-famous cultural or historical sights would leave our adolescent visitors ample time to do the things they really go on school trips to do - shop at Primark, spray their hair a comedy colour, get off with each other and walk arm-in-anoraked-arm in a fog of self-involvement four abreast down the main shopping street while remaining oblivious to the efforts of the local population to get by.

They will of course be allowed to come back when they are older and actually have an interest in the city. Sounds like a win/win to me.

2 May 2010 10:41:29

Words are cheap

I am in a state of some startlement, having just popped into WHSmith. They've always been fans of special offers on books, normally favouring the 'buy one get one half price' approach. Today, however they seem to have got a bit overexcited and have at least three - count 'em - three offers on at once:

Buy one get one free on their top 50 paperbacks
Buy one get one half price on the next 50 paperbacks in the chart
Two for £5 on book club books

Two books for £5!

And those were just the deals I noticed - I'm sure there were others. I'm not quite sure what their next offer will be - I suspect it may involve hurling books at passers by, who, if they can catch them, can keep them.

6 Feb 2010 09:31:53

The known universe

The sun has set here on the last day of this year, so before the year ends, how about a little gentle mind boggling?

31 Dec 2009 08:52:44

Guide to the night

This weekend the Guardian and Observer published a really lovely Guide to the night. My favourite piece without a doubt is Jeanette Winterson on why she adores the night. Just gorgeous:

Food, fire, walks, dreams, cold, sleep, love, slowness, time, quiet, books, seasons – all these things, which are not really things, but moments of life – take on a different quality at night-time, where the moon reflects the light of the sun, and we have time to reflect what life is to us, knowing that it passes, and that every bit of it, in its change and its difference, is the here and now of what we have."

1 Nov 2009 10:54:51

Sack your experts

The list of things I don't know is endless. I don't know how to fix my car. I don't know how to bake soda bread. I don't know how to fill a tooth.

If I need any of those things doing, I ask someone who knows how to do those things to help me. I ask someone who has some expertise. And then I listen to them and I take their advice.

It seems obvious to me that if you appoint a panel of experts to help you with something, it's probably useful to listen to them. It's less helpful to sack them when you say something they don't like. So I am rather baffled that Home Secretary Alan Johnson has sacked Professor David Nutt, Chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). Professor Nutt's crime was to suggest that the classification of illegal drugs should be based on the harm that they do. He also highlighted how this is very far from being the case in the UK, where alcohol and tobacco are freely available, but ecstasy and cannabis are Class A and Class B drugs, respectively.

Whatever your opinion on illegal drugs, it seems to me to set an alarming precedent when the government sacks a scientific adviser for... talking sensibly about evidence-based science.

The setting of drugs policy has long been an emotive area, but I do find it incredible that the Home Secretary seems more or less happy to come out and say that when it comes to classifying drugs, public opinion is more important than scientific evidence.

1 Nov 2009 10:29:18

Ban this evil filth (which I haven't seen)

It doesn't surprise me even a tiny bit that the Daily Mail would publish a piece calling for the banning of Lars von Trier's new film Antichrist. Why, they're not happy at Mail Towers unless they're being appalled, disgusted or worrying about the very fabric of society. It is, however, slightly more surprising to hear that the person calling for the ban is a film critic who... um... hasn't seen the film.

Christopher Hart told us:

You do not need to see Lars von Trier's Antichrist (which is released later this week) to know how revolting it is.
I haven't seen it myself, nor shall I - and I speak as a broad-minded arts critic, strongly libertarian in tendency. But merely reading about Antichrist is stomach-turning, and enough to form a judgment."

Which did rather make me think, dude - film reviewing: you're doing it wrong.

I don't read the Mail very often, as it tends to induce in me a vein-throbbing, head-bursting rage that isn't altogether pleasant. However, I have started checking out the website every now and then, as against all the odds, many of the comments seem to come from sane, rational people rather than Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. It somehow gladdens my heart that 1089 people have recommended a comment remarking how ridiculous it is to judge a film you haven't seen.

And if you fancy reading a far more eloquent take on it than mine, I'd recommend hopping over to Mailwatch, who tell it like this:

The Daily Mail resides in a terrifying alternate reality. In this dark and hopeless place, decent middle-class folk are surrounded by pernicious subliminal messages of hate designed to brainwash them into murdering, maiming, pillaging and setting fire to each other. The inhabitants of this world have no control over their actions; sinister forces fill their tiny minds with sex and violence and, inevitably, they succumb to the evils of the media induced orgy of societal destruction."

(via Bigmouth strikes again)

4 Aug 2009 13:39:03