the last bus home

The fat lady's warming up...

...because Inspector Sands has one last post left in him, but in the meantime, have you visited 853 yet?

You haven't? Well, get over and have a look. You might like it.

Looking forward

There was a moment last week - it was at Paddington station, feeling bruised after paying one of First Great Western's ludicrous fares - when I considered the, um, collapse of global capitalism as we know it.

Maybe this might be a chance to set the world straight, I thought. To lessen the influence of greed and self-interest that has governed us for the past 20 or 30 years. To build a world of practical solutions are those that get chosen, not the one that involves someone making a profit. Perhaps one that's fit for the environmental challenges ahead, one where huge riches and ostentatious wealth become a bit naff and distasteful.

And then my football club decided it'd be a good idea to sell itself to Dubai.

Ah, bugger.

There's something happening here

It's been a big week for me, so I hope you'll excuse me taking a bit of time to prat on about myself for a bit. I've been given redundancy from my job, something I've been hoping to get for a long while, so in the spring, me and the sprocket company will part company for the final time.

Walking out in the midst of a recession? Am I mad? Well, I've been angling to make a change for a while now, and I'll get a pay-off which means I should be secure for a while. It also means I'll be free to travel, do up the flat, or just a few lie-ins and generally change the way I live my life. (Hush, I'm going to whisper the word "downshifting"...) I've been flirting with all kinds of stress-based conditions for a few years now, with occasionally bad consequences for my health and relationships and things aroud me, and it'll be a relief to finally put a halt to it and reclaim time for myself. It's not really anyone's fault, it's more that I got stuck in a rut and I've now got an opportunity to completely change things.

It's also going to mean a few changes around here - at some point in the next six months or so (probably sooner rather than later) the last bus home will be replaced by a brand new blog and Inspector Sands will finally be retired, free to watch as much football as he likes (which at the moment isn't a lot). After five years of being restricted through work to having to bash away under a daft psuedonym, it suddenly feels liberating.

I thought of the new blog's name in the shower yesterday (where all good names are thought up) and it'll finally give me a chance to show off my Flickr account as well as use the blog to hopefully get a few things done that can't really be done when you're named after a recorded announcement.

So in summary - change - it's scary, it's daunting, it's necessary. And it's coming here soon...

Oooops...

Are you local? Not local enough...

It seemed like a brilliant idea. I'd - completely by accident - discovered that there's a local residents' association around my part of London's achingly-hip Charlton. Having battled with the council over the terrible state of my street, it looked like the idea opportunity to be part of an organisation that could help get something done. I could join them, use my communications expertise to assist in kicking some butt - look at Brockley Central, this is how it's done! - and finally start to put my actions where my mouth is.

Now, there's a few changes in my life - postponed from earlier this year - due in a few months that may help me do a few things. No names, no pack drill, but me and the sprocket factory are looking set to part in '09 with a few readies in my back pocket, and the chance to remodel my life so I can do a few practical things with it. So I've been looking for opportunities, a few things I believe in that would be useful.

So, with fingers crossed for a different kind of future, I popped along to their annual meeting, getting there a few minutes into the event. Ah, we'll need to have a chat, the nice woman taking names on the door said. Sounds interesting, I thought. I took my seat and watched the proceedings.

And slowly, it dawned on me what nice lady on the door was going to tell me. They won't let me in as a member. You see, their membership is restricted to a certain block of streets  - for anyone interested, it's bounded by Victoria Way, Elliscombe Road, Nadine Street, Charlton Church Lane and the railway line, but excluding Victoria Way and Charlton Church Lane. So if you live in those two streets, they don't want to know. Have a guess where I live.

That's daft, I said. I live just around the corner from those streets. I walk through there every day. My problems are the same as your problems. And another chap from my street appeared as well. He was also annoyed by tripping over rubbish and abandoned wheelie bins and whatever... and was also not allowed to join.

"What you can do," Nice Lady said, "is write to me and I'll put it to the committee and we'll see if we can co-opt you as a member."

My neighbour and I looked at each other, not quite able to comprehend what we'd heard. It wasn't Nice Lady's fault - she said she'd argued for our streets to be included in their membership, but she was turned down. So, rules was rules, and we were left out in the cold, looking in while our other neighbours helped themselves to wine and nibbles. (Actually, they said we were welcome to stay around, but it was too good a metaphor to miss out in.) My neighbour had heard enough and buggered off - that may well be someone valuable they've missed out on. I stayed around, because the night's real entertainment was due to come.

The night's special guests included local Labour MP Nick Raynsford - who's so affable you can almost forgive him voting for the Iraq war - and one of my three local (Labour) councillors, Gary Parker. With the local police commander, they were there to face questions about local issues. And guess what the number one issue was?

To be fair on Gary Parker - he took his punishment like a man, admitted there were serious problems with rubbish collections and street cleaning, and that much of it was down to the management of the services. Nothing we didn't know already, but all credit to him for being so frank. It's just a shame I had to sneak into a local residents' meeting that I wasn't really meant to be at to hear him be so honest - because you'd never see that kind of honesty anywhere else.

He also then went on to admit the council's roads service isn't up to scratch (roads are being resurfaced just before they're getting dug up by Thames Water). He had the air of a man who'd pulled the short straw, and had just decided not to bother defending the indefensible. I couldn't help wondering if he was wondering why he bothered being part of a council that so often is the problem and not the solution.

So, for that, it was worth it. It's just a shame you have to be on the inside of an organisation like that to hear anything from the council - they get to hear when the local roads are getting dug up, that kind of thing. I only find out when find I can't get a bus when I'm in a hurry. I didn't know what the German bakers' van was doing parked up on the corner of my road on Saturdays. Turns out he's open for business each morning selling bread, but you'll only find that out if you're a member.

But hey, I'm a big boy, I can cope with rejection*.

Anyhow, since their profile's pretty low and their website's seems Google-proof, here's a bit of help from me - just make sure you live in the right street... Charlton Central Residents Association.

(* anyone who's known me over the past six weeks or so will know this is cobblers ;-))

March of the black bins

It's taken me a week to mention this (because it's so exciting) but we've had some more wheelie bins delievered. After eight months of being slagged off left, right and centre for asking people to leave out black plastic bags for their non-recyclable rubbish, the council's now given us two bins with black lids in exchange for one of the green food/garden waste bins. So now we have a grand total of seven wheelie bins for three flats (containing four people). That's a lot of bins.

And they've done what they should have done when they introduced their recycling scheme - nailed some signs on the bins saying what should/shouldn't go in there. How did it take eight months for the penny to drop on that one? We don't know, of course, Greenwich Council can only talk at people, not to people. But at least it's a step in the right direction. Now all they need to do is stop leaving the damn things in the pavement once they've emptied them.

As this website is now the number one Google destination for news of the hapless Jim Wintour - the man who let my street get filthy this summer - I should also report that there's now occasional sightings of a street cleaner in my road. Is this down to me e-mailing them constantly? I've no idea - as I said, Greenwich Council's communications skills aren't very good. But the wheel that squeaks gets the grease, and at least something's starting to be done.

Mind you, things aren't yet as good as they should be - anyone heading to The Valley for Saturday's match along Floyd Road would have been confronted by the sight of a flattened dead rat in the middle of the road... no, I wouldn't want to clean it up either, but you'd think they'd make the effort to ensure the place doesn't look like a total tip, eh?

Sing me to sleep

A rainy day in Wolverhampton, the rain bucketing it down outside a crematorium. If you'd told me seven years ago that the football chatsite I'd just started to arse around on would lead me here, to shed tears for someone I'd squabbled and rowed with, but also laughed with, talked with, and swapped tales of musical gems and rubbish football matches, I'd have looked at you like you were crazy.

Mat was taken from us criminally soon. A fit and healthy man, who was finally enjoying the contentment he deserved after a difficult life, he'd occasionally complained of a sore leg, and it'd caused him problems in his regular Wednesday football matches. He'd seen the doctor, been to A&E, but they saw nothing wrong. Two Saturdays ago, in the early hours, he called an ambulance out because he had trouble breathing. By the time the medics came, he wasn't able to let them in. The inquest found what should have been diagnosed earlier - Mat died from thrombosis. He was 35.

He was at the centre of our site - a small community of football fans that went their own way when the Guardian revamped its site a decade ago (when people grumbling about New Facebook were still playing with calculators). A passionate Wolves fan, he was also passionate about his film and his music - his "great art", often to an incredibly stubborn degree. Hell to him was Robbie Williams and West Brom - heaven was Scott Walker and the Wanderers' old gold. Nearly all of us had fallen out with him at some point - but we'd all forgiven him, and him us.

And of course, I was dimissing MySpace as a hangout for weirdos and paedophiles (c'mon, remember when it seemed solely full of 15-year-olds with odd haircuts?) when he was getting right into it, and developing his own musical talents through there. He used it to get me into a Swedish band called The Sounds. Later, he was posting the music he made with his girlfriend there. He'd moved to Hackney and found the love and contentment we all yearn for, and surrounded by a new family of talented, happy people.

The night before he died, he was talking - on a thread called "Facebook is fucking evil" - about his days DJing in a Wolverhampton indie club, and his mixed feelings about those days after finding a group about them. "It was only a matter of time i suppose before the 100 or so people my age who haven't moved on from 1989-1993 indie discoing found a photo of me - i suddenly hate the internet."  At least you made people happy, I said. "I'm not sure what my problem is really. being frozen as some old stereotype or something," he replied. That was the last I heard from him, but as the thread went on he warmed to some of the pictures he'd uncovered. There's a group dedicated to his memory on there now - I'm not sure what he'd make of that.

A couple of weeks ago, a few of us met in a Hackney pub to talk and toast his memory - and yesterday was the big one, the funeral. The chapel was packed, we were spilling out, straining to see - and sometimes hear - what was going on. His family were in the pews, and then there his friends, and us - another family he'd picked up on the way - packing out the edges of the chapel.

Tributes were read out from the websites he frequented, and there was music - a friend performed The Smiths' There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, while his girlfriend sang Asleep, her voice cracking with emotion, our eyes filling with tears - "Sing me to sleep/ Sing me to sleep/ And then leave me alone/ Don't try to wake me in the morning/ 'Cause I will be gone." There were smiles, too - a chapel full of people trying to sing Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want (mostly without the benefit of a lyric sheet) like kids in a school assembly felt like his final prank on us. I'm told the looks on his older relatives' faces were something to behold too...

The curtain closed around the coffin to one of his own contributions and we trotted off to a wake in a sleepy village a few miles away. There were more tears when his girlfriend showed us a beautiful film she'd put together, but there were also laughs too. I finally met the friend of his that, to Mat's horror and disbelief, stood as a Conservative candidate for the local council (his local government ambitions thwarted after he, er, was thrown in a Dutch prison for passport irregularities.)

But most of all, it was a reminder that this community of people I'd spent years grumbling at, arguing with and laughing with in odd moments were real friends, shouting far louder than the ambient background noise I'd previously treated them as.

I'm no novice when it comes to this kind of thing, having notched up 11 years online (and having been playing about with blogs for five of those) and made lots of friends - but it was a reminder that this technology we now take for granted had given me so many special things. One of those was the chance to talk with Mat, and I'm sorry I didn't take the effort to get to know him better.

But without it, I wouldn't have memories of his ridiculously silly sense of humour - a note to the coroner to accompany some saved posts where he talked about his leg pain pointed out that he'd taken to posting as "Fatty McButterpants". And, funnily enough, the online community he left behind seems stronger and closer, as if the same realisation has dawned on everyone.

I was hoping he was going to make it along to Charlton v Wolves on Saturday - it still seems outrageously unfair that we won't be able to rib each other or grumble about the miseries who follow our respective teams. But I'll be thinking of him - and I'll be grateful I was able to share his company.

Gold medal miseries

Can you imagine these two as your neighbours?

An elderly couple from north London are being taken to court for refusing to pay the levy on their council tax bill which will fund the 2012 Olympics.

For two years Thomas and Rita Glenister of Barnet have withheld £33.35 of their annual bill, the amount they said would be their contribution to the Games. The couple said all British citizens should contribute, not just Londoners. (more)

Actually, they didn't say all British citizens, the wife seems to be letting the Scottish and Welsh off...

Mrs Glenister, 74, said: "It isn't the money - we can pay - but I finally thought that it is time to stick my short little legs down and say 'up with this I will not put'.

"If everyone in England pays it then I will, but the fact that it is just Londoners paying it seems very unfair. I'm not going to run round the track, I'm not going to benefit from this 'legacy'.

"I'm not a killjoy - I think the Games are great - but I don't see why we should pay for it."

Funny, I don't benefit from this selfish old misery's Freedom Pass but I'm not withholding the portion of my council tax which pays for it. It would be cruel to jail them, though, so how about we remember their brave struggle against paying for something which will hopefully benefit their city by naming the Olympic stadium after them?

The Thomas and Rita Glenister Stadium - with "The Games are great - but I don't see why we should pay for it" written above the entrance. It'd be brilliant, and the staff of the Evening Standard and London Lite could see it and remember what brave contributions their publications made to our city in the late 2000s. Oh, it'd be a brilliant memorial to cynicism. It's a great idea, isn't it?

Lewisham's not-so-Jolly Farmers

Back after a bit of a pause - I hope you'll join me in a raising a glass to the end of August 2008, which has been, for me at least, a rotten month for all kinds of personal reasons. Anyway, onwards and upwards...

And where else to raise a toast to the end of a bad spell of life than the pub, eh? I found myself in Lewisham last night, at a place called The Jolly Farmers. Years ago, it was one of the original Hogshead pubs, before that became a chain of industrial drinking barns for tossers. It was actually a damn nice boozer. More recently it was the Jordan, then it adopted its current moniker a few years back. I remembered it from a Lewisham Bloggers meet-up from last year, when it was cosy and lively, even if the bar staff were a bit slack. Hunting for a compromise location between Charlton and and my drinking companion's home town of Bromley, it seemed like a winner.

Oh, no. Saturday at 8pm was like a morgue in there. I didn't even want to walk all the way out to the beer garden where my pal was before buying a beer because the creaks of the floorboards were deafening, and I could feel eyeballs in my neck. Worse, a big sign at the bar declared that the pub would be closing on 10 September ("out of our hands" - the lease was up). It was clear that they'd already given up. I bought a slightly-too-warm bitter and wandered out to the garden.

And my word - this really is what happens when a pub dies. Out in the beer garden, we had a chat about the kerfuffle over the Olympics in Greenwich Park and some Andrew Gilligan guff in the Evening Stunted which didn't shed much light on the issue (Boris's mate is particularly exercised by the idea that the South Circular Road would have to be closed if they hold the shooting at Woolwich)  interrupted by some tedious bore ranting on at us about 'elf and safety, as if we gave a shit. He then started moaning about the smoking ban, while his B&H started to get up nose. After 3 pints of strong lager, served in warm glasses, he jangled his car keys and left.

The girl behind the bar, who'd been working her arse off while the landlady stuffed her face, came out to switch the fairy lights on under each table. The batteries had all been left to go flat.

Inside, escaping the middle-aged dullards it wasn't much better. The landlady ranted on about how she'd just come off a police caution for something or other, still leaving her colleague to do all the work.

(I spoke to a pal of mine today about this place, who told me a friend of hers had heard someone behind the bar brag about voting for the BNP - leading them to dub it the Jolly Nazi and drink elsewhere.)

The customers peeled off slowly, the pub became emptier and emptier, and by the time the 10.50 bell rang, there couldn't have been more than seven or eight people in there. We tried the pub quiz machine, but all the questions seemed four or five years out of date - perhaps that was the last time someone really cared for this pub. Yup, this is what happens when a pub dies.

I'd seen the Fox and Firkin was now open until 2am, so we went to try our luck for some lates. We were turned away because it was four minutes after eleven o'clock.

So, that was that, then - my night drinking in London's cosmopolitan Lewisham. I doubt I'll be back, unless someone knows anywhere better... unless anyone wants to club together to buy the Jolly Farmers to save it from closure - and itself.

A break in transmission

Apologies for the lack of posting - I'd been planning to post at the weekend, after the usual slack spell, but heard news on Saturday of the sudden death of a pal of mine. He was a regular sparring partner on a website where we talked about football, laughed, squabbled, shared musical tips and talked about biscuits. Not a particularly close friend - hey, we had some huge fallings-out - but a near-constant prescence in my life for about seven years, and one whose company I enjoyed on the too-few times we got to meet. It's been a terrible shock for me, and I can't even imagine what it must be like for those who were close to him.

Normal service will resume shortly, but in the meantime - goodnight, tree.