An investigation is under way after a Tube train entered a tunnel the wrong way, into the path of another train.
Hundreds of passengers were on each of the two Northern Line trains when the incident happened on Sunday.
The driver is believed to have slammed on the brakes when he saw the other train, which had stopped at a signal at Camden Town station.
yup – our tube service is first class. definitely worth the $8 ride 
so last evening, i idly clicked past my blog… only to suddenly have a *panic attack* as it no longer looked like my lovingly hand-crafted (lumps and all) bordello theme, but had somehow been switched over to the spare blue and white default wordpress theme. how that happened, i have no idea since *i* didn’t do it, and it’s not the sort of thing you can accidentally mess up. you have to be logged into the dashboard and click several different tabs in order to change themes.
luckily all the filage and assorted bloggery was still all in one place where it was supposed to be, and i managed to easily switch back, but i’m still baffled as to how it happened in the first place. i do make a habit of backing everything up… and it is only a blog after all. but still, it has me somewhat freaked. i can’t imagine anyone would hack in, but what else could have happened?
still, what can you do? i changed my passwords, backed up everything again, and chalked it up to miscellaneous freakery.
this kind of thing doesn’t happen to people on blogger 
igh:
i was listening to a podcast the other day talking about declaring “email bankruptcy” – the notion of wiping the email slate clean and starting fresh, with no unanswered messages, no archived folders.
i’ve had my longest email account for about 6 years now, and while most of my stuff is organised by folder, i rarely delete these days. given almost limitless storage space, there’s really no need. out of curiousity, i had a look to see how many emails i have currently saved…
… and it turns out, nearly 10,000. that’s even *after* the cathartic purge of 2003, when, after an emotionally disastrous summer, a failed relationship came to an abrupt and bizarre end (he accused me of being manipulative, selfish and deceitful in one email, then told me he loved me 24 hours later in the next) and i just slashed-and-burned everything in my inbox.
i’d find that nearly impossible to do today. in a time where the handwritten word is nearly extinct, emails are the emotional equivalent of the pen pal/loveletter/diary. as imperfect as the medium may be, the thoughtful, well-composed email is no less imbued with depth of feeling. some of the most romantic things i’ve ever written or received have been on email. i’ve carried on passionate political debate, received birth announcements, and developed friendships via email.
and i do re-read them, some more than others. like a keepsake box, my emails form part of my memories, my history. not just the ones received, but the ones i’ve sent as well.
intellectually, i know they’re nothing more than series of binary strings saved somewhere in the ether on an anonymous server – expressions of love and heartache reduced to cold mathmatics. but they’re *my* strings, and they’re the only proof i have these days of what once was, previous lives lived and otherwise lost to memory. i’m not ready to delete.
elvis costello – every day i write the book
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i came home this afternoon to find a card from my friend jo lying with the post on the floor. inside she wrote that she’s having another baby in november. which means she’s 4 months pregnant already.
i tried grasping at happiness, tried to react the way a good friend should when someone shares joyous news… but my heart just sank. the gulf that is not the atlantic between us has widened just a little further – a distance measured not in miles or years, but trajectory. as in einstein’s theory of relativity, it’s hard to know who is moving away, and who is standing still, and if it even matters when the person you love gets smaller every time you look over your shoulder.
i have spent some time mourning the friendships i left behind in the u.s., but it took me a long while to realise they were dying. i didn’t know then that by leaving them, i was letting go of them. forfeiting by default. i didn’t know. nobody told me that would happen, or nobody made me believe it anyway, and i’m not sure that if i knew, i would have gone.
i’m also not sure i wouldn’t have. i’ve often traded the known for the unknown, without knowing why. a deep-seated impulse defying examination or explanation. maybe the defiance *is* the impulse. or the explanation.
and i know, too, holding fast with both fists is not an act of preservation. the world spins on in spite of me, and perhaps i was always on a different course anyway – like a boat tacking through the eye of a wind, a pivotal turn or decision setting me in an unforseen direction, the only real question: will i be forcibly pushed or allow myself to be carried? there is a difference. even staying put, nothing stays still.
the shift has been infinitesimally incremental, and the same time seismic. tectonic plates drifting past each other towards opposite sides of the world. me in my boat of defiance, helpless to get back to where we were, when things were aligned and we were both looking in the same direction. we’re victims of the little earthquakes that change our internal landscape, and in doing so, change everything.
or maybe it’s just me.
and so i try to recalibrate, adjust. point the compass north again towards the only thing i know to be true: i could not be anyone else, anywhere else. still – i feel so lost when i see my familiars receding into pinpricks on a horizon an ocean away. i’m lost and losing and tearful of salty sadness.
awash and at sea and alone.
the weakerthans – left and leaving
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j plays guitar. he used to play all the time – pretty well, in fact – but hasn’t picked it up in quite a while, what with moving and studying and being generally busy with life. i’ve missed it. there’s something about watching him, bent over the chords so earnestly, that really gets to me, tugs at my heartstrings. it’s so sweetly endearing, something inside me just turns to mush. i can’t help it.
i’d heard a new version of “overkill” last night at chris and ton’s barbeque that i hadn’t heard before, and i liked it so much, that i spent some time today tracking it down. listened to it over and over.
and when i came home late this evening and opened the door, i heard him practicing the same song. now how am i supposed to resist that, i ask you?
lazlo bane f/ colin hay – overkill
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The amount of official material being translated by bodies such as councils should be cut to encourage immigrants to learn English, Ruth Kelly has said.
…Ms Kelly said: “I do think translation has been used too frequently and sometimes without thought added to the consequences.”
She added: “So, for example, it’s quite possible for someone to come here from Pakistan and elsewhere in the world and to find that materials are routinely translated into their mother tongue and therefore not have the incentive to learn English.”
…
Ms Kelly accepted there was a “real paradox” in the fact that many young Muslims involved in violence and terrorism were British-born English speakers who appeared to be well integrated.
what a fucking crock of shit. taking away translative services isn’t *incentive* – it’s punishment, plain and simple.
some days, i’m so sick of this place which continually penalises legitimate, hard-working im/migrants, in a misguided knee-jerk effort to control home-grown terrorism… which bears absolutely no relation to the population they’re cracking down on.
death cab for cutie – why you’d want to live here
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kensington is an area i normally avoid, because it’s the kind of place where, even though i make a perfectly decent living, just walking around makes me feel incredibly poor and scruffy. but in a fit of insanity, j and i decided to brave it and made the pilgrimage to the new whole foods store in london.
there it was, in all its glory – a big giant supermarket, the likes of which london has never seen, perfectly located in an area chock full of americans and people with money to burn. it was… well, insane. and glorious. and insane. i’ve never heard so many north american accents in one place before. they actually had to stop letting people into the building because it was getting so crowded.
it was a massive treasure trove of goodies, and i could have spent hours there if it weren’t for j’s general allergy to shopping (and grocery stores in particular.) some of the delightfulness that found its way into my basket:
tinned black beans
dr. bronner’s soap
*good* soy cheese
faux meats galore, including the elusive seitan
wasabi peanuts
and the jackpot: beerlao (yes, it’s really from laos!)
here’s some photos of us enjoying beerlao in laos. it’s actually a damn fine beer.
i managed to get out of there with a mere £30 damage to the wallet only through massive self-restraint. i love food shopping.
…
on the way in and back, i saw *far* too much evidence of the retro-80s (since when did 80s become retro?) fashion trend. ugh. day glo tights. feathered haircuts. and who ever decided that black hair, orange self-tanner and pink lipstick looked good? yuck.
jamie lidell – a little bit more
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so as i was skimming through the never ending list of porn-related search terms leading to my blog, i found this:
goldfish up my ass
so, insatiably curious as to *how on god’s green earth* that lead to my site, i checked.
turns out, google has indexed the comments on this page of mine.
it appears i am currently the number 3 result of that particular search string (out of only five, mind you, but still, good enough to qualify for a bronze medal). and now, having referenced “goldfish up my ass” again, i’m sure i’ll shoot straight to number one.
my mom would be so proud!
catatonia – goldfish and paracetamol
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zeke chirps at birds outside the window. it’s hilarious, and we wake up every morning to zeke chirping on our windowsill at the birds in the treetops.
this afternoon, 2 pigeons landed on the balcony, and he was talking to them for a good ten minutes, so i tried to video it. our camera’s video function isn’t great, and he’s not very loud, but if you listen closely (especially at the end) you can hear him. my theory is he thinks he’s going to lure the birds close enough to eat them.
asobi seksu – lions and tigers
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the newest hairbrained voter-brown-nosing scheme? earning citizenship by points.
Applicants for British passports would face a points-based system linked to their employment and community work under proposals to be outlined by ministers.
…The existing citizenship requirement that a person must have lived in Britain for five years, pass a test in English and demonstrate knowledge of life in Britain would be expanded to include points awarded for civic and voluntary work.
The ministers will propose that credits or points be awarded for the amount of money that a person brings with them, their employment record and for any voluntary or other work in the community.
i have no problem with every country determining for itself what constitutes citizenship (though the idea that how much money you have should have *anything* to do with citizenship is repugnant and classist in the extreme.) i may think it’s completely unfeasible and totally lacking in common sense (i mean, how many native-born brits do volunteer work?!), but they have the right to impose whatever arbitrary rules they want.
my ire is reserved for this:
Mr Byrne admitted that record numbers of asylum-seekers and the huge inflow of East European migrants had damaged public confidence in the immigration system.
in other words, it’s a response to backlash against the numbers of refugees and eu migrants (who don’t want or need uk citizenship anyway), neither of which they can easily control.
so those of use who’re most at the mercy of the home office have to pay the price. we’re already required to prove we can support ourselves, speak english, memorise british trivia, take a test, and pay taxes. (oh, and pay close to two thousand pounds along that celebrated road to citizenship.)
the irony is, you don’t *need* to become a citizen – once you have permanent residency, citizenship is entirely elective. disincentivising* citizenship accomplishes absolutely nothing.
oh well, it’ll generate savings for the passport office, i suppose.
*yes, i know it’s not in any dictionary, but it’s considered a real word over here.
billy bragg – waiting for the great leap forwards
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the atmosphere hanging over the city is quiet and heavy, and matches my frame of mind. the air is thick with moisture and what’s needed is a good crack of lightning to split the molecules, discharge the static. disrupt the stasis. dislodge stagnation.
we rarely get thunderstorms here – something different about the more northern environment, i suppose. i miss them. there’s nothing like a good, violent, bone-shaking thunderstorm in the cloying, smudgy heat of urban summer to clear the air and mind. it takes your breath away, then opens your lungs. a good thunderstorm makes your head swim just a little, and illuminates imagination in the stark silhouette of the lightning flash.
feels like that’s what i’m in need of. a good jolt of sizzling electricity to shock me out the status quo.
but, like the clouds layered above my head, all i can expect is a slow, steady drizzle into dissipation.
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it’s another lazy sunday afternoon, and once again i am beleaguered by sotto voce messages of guilt for squandering a full day. at times, doing nothing with my weekend makes me feel incredibly wasteful. profligate with something valuable. it’s no mistake that we “spend” this resource we call time, as if there were monetary amounts attached to each second.
and i usually do start out friday evening chock full of ideas. earnest notions of movies, picnics, shopping, assorted cultural events are invisible notations in a mental diary, bookmarking a genuine intent to take advantage of the city i am so fortunate to have outside my door. and occasionally those plans do come to fruition. some weekends i do make it to the museum or the cinema. some mondays i actually do have something of interest to report back when work colleagues dutifully ask, “how was your weekend?”
but more often i find myself frittering away the days with mundane errands: filling the fridge, emptying the clothes hamper, wrangling with dustbunnies takes more time and effort than i had anticipated or alloted. the crap of daily life that i don’t manage to get to during the week surreptitiously co-opts the day, stealing away my jeaously guarded hours of free time. it invades my carved out space, infiltrates, obliterates. at the end of the weekend, i may have stocked cupboards and a clean house, but precious little else to show for it.
or alternately, i am waylaid with inertia, a molasses-like lassitude invading my muscles – watching time drip away minute by minute from comfort of the couch, playing languidly with the cat, lounging at a friend’s house eating crisps and drinking beer. nothing you can really put your finger on occupying the day, nothing you could say you *did* with purposeful intent – only that which seemed to loosely coalesce around the weight of gravity which seems to have overtaken the body. and the only advantage of this lethargy is that it slows the clock’s inexorable march towards monday morning, stretching the hours out into long, drowsy far-away horizons which take their sweet time in arriving.
still, there is luxury in indolence, and i am only too aware that i am lucky to have free time to indulge in, no matter how foolishly or carelessly i scatter it to the winds. i find security in the knowledge that there will be another 48 hours of freedom in just five short days, so i can take it for granted. and there is comfort in routine – the virtuous saturday morning run, followed by jonno cooking breakfast and making coffee. the predictable hum of the washing machine every sunday at dinner time producing a stack of freshly laundered towels. the shared trek to the grocery store, where we dance the same dance amongst the familiar aisles every week. it’s soothing to have our small intimate patterns of couplehood, as boring as they are.
but there remains that quiet, nagging voice at the back of my head that surfaces in the evenings as i contemplate the arrival of another work week, which insistently reminds me of all the things i was going to do, all the things i was meaning to accomplish. the voice which points out the opportunities gone by, the events i never quite got to – the same voice which started friday with so much enthusiasm, now turned critical and harping.
and i do what i always do: fold my clothes into the dresser, plop down on the couch, turn on the television, crack open a beer, and tell it to shut the fuck up.
erykah badu – time’s a wastin’
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