The London Village Show: January 2008

It's all about the love here on the London Village Show. Things big and small. Londoner's london, podcasting from depths of Elephant and Castle, We find out what going down with the kids, and we're up with all the culture voltures too. Global friends come find out what london living all about..

23 Things (I)

0 comments Published Sunday, January 20, 2008 by Daniel.

My life being one mainly of procrastination I have decided that 2008 is to be a year of new things. 2008 also being the year of my 23rd birthday it seemes only natural to make use of this number. Therefore, I resolve to try 23 new things this calendar year. So far I've got to the 20th of January and have only added one new thing to the list; ice-skating.

Yesterday evening I rolled up at Somerset house to get into my skates and take my first tentative steps on to the ice. The rink itself was just as visually pleasant as I hoped, with no shortage of LED's in blues and violets to light up my experience like so many early 2000s public buildings at night, and flaming torches with that camping-gaz smell. These, with an eclectic mix of music (not out of place on my minidisk in 2002) served to excite all of the senses. Now ice-skating was an interesting first 'thing' for me to attempt. Being overly concerned with my own pretentions and keeping hold of some sort of dignity and British aloofness at all costs I have always avoided those things I think I'll be bad at. The fear of looking stupid has always been with me and I can only hope this is the first step on to the road of losing it.

The whole affair was good fun; in actual fact it occured to me towards the end of my hour-long session that I had barely spent more than a second without an enormous grin on my face. My face began to ache. This enjoyment was largely thanks to the wonderful Elena, who held my hand the entire time, happily she found this romantic, as did I. The hand-holding was also, importantly, my only safety net; in every sense of the phrase.

So there it is; a first step on the road of being less of a procrastinator, being someone who actually steps out of his flat in Elephant and Castle to get out and see the best (and worst) bits of the world. Need to come up with more things to do in a hurry, just two a month required ...

In the style of George: All About Me

0 comments Published Friday, January 18, 2008 by Daniel.

George's life reworded for myself.

No one cares - but here we are.

-I have too many fucking emails.
-I'm free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can't.
-I am a procrastinator
-I have too much of an inner dialogue, which is unfortunate because not all my thoughts make sense and sometimes I don't share things I ought to .
- I encourage dissent, unless it affects me in some way
- When I get drunk I either fall asleep or do twatish things
- I dare to care.
- I have been in love lots, and occasionally choose the wrong person.
- I will try anything three times, just to make sure and then to enjoy it.
- I sing quite a lot, but know few lyrics
- I have been called a neurotic, immature, uncool, and weird. I can only remember a very few compliments. It's my nature
- I love women who KNOW, but hate it when they are right and I am wrong.
- I cook, drink and chat at the same time. I deeply respect those who can manage any one of those three with conviction.
- I am not gay, though sometimes the idea used to be attractive. But it was less about the love of men and more about the hatred of women.
- I respect anyone with an opinion they can argue about for longer than 10 minutes.
- I distrust anyone who uses French, the Latin (or ancient Greek for that matter) in casual conversation
- I really don't want to grow up.
- Once I start a project, paper, problem, relationship, I find it very hard to put it down and stop, even if it a lost cause. That's not to say I'll do it very well though.
- I think the world is a rational place, and people are rational actors, but rational is relative to the actor.
- I can't spell very well.
- I find it hard to let people down or say no, which often results in me doing things that I don't want to do.
- I have an unnatural attraction for Withnail and I.
- I hate being alone, I don't mind other people; I wish I listened to radio 4 more.
- Mainly the world is a shitty place, but that is okay because I choose to ignore it most of the time.
- I would rather be happy than right.
- It has to be raw to be real, I hate people trying to elevate the human condition in art, theatre and literature and then denying its not basically about sex, love, lust, or jealously.
- I get worried when people use long words that I don't understand in conversations with me.
- I hate getting out of bed, but I'm not that big a fan of getting in either.
- I like to snuggle and I will spoon anything; until it's time for bed then I need lots of space.
- I want to be a real man, but they don't feel emotions. That's ok.
-I miss my friends whenever I'm apart from them, that doesn't make me any better at keeping in touch with them.
- I deeply resent people who claim to be happy.
- I deeply resent people who claim to know what they are doing with their lives.
- I forgive people too easily.
- I hate people who work in recruitment, slavery or the city. (Hate is too strong a word)
- London is the centre of the universe.

on the improbality of a Taoist liberal existing

0 comments Published Thursday, January 17, 2008 by George.

Love changes a man, ideas change the world. I take issue with that. There is no such thing as love, just evidence of it. There is no such thing as an idea, just evidence of change. Astract conceptions distract us from the concrete present that confronts us everyday. Rather sage for a Friday afternoon, but the the Economist Debate Series is up and running at http://www.economist.com/debate/ and it angers me.

Oxford rules apply, old boy, and this week the house is debating "Social Networking: does it bring positive change to education?" The proposition put forward by Ewan McIntosh, is a tour de force of liberal aspirations and Utopian thinking, it is the kind of argument that lifts my heart and makes me sing like a cuckoo bird. Change needs to be imagined, and liberals, myself included, imagine it very well, but that always tends to be where it remains, in the future, progress to be made. Constantly hoping, aspiring, and yearning for Utopia makes for a discontent present. There is nothing but now, and how you perceive things in this instant. Ewan McIntosh is waiting for something the future, and in doing so is missing out on it.

Anyway, another plug for the Economist. Do you know of any Zen/Taoist/Buddhist liberals?

The return of the LVS blog.

0 comments Published by Daniel.

Today I had an exam, and (relatively) fresh from that fiasco I thought it best to follow George's lead and have a bit of a blog. So here I am, it's 2008; a year for getting things done, for not procrastinating as much as in 2007 (a prime number year, noted for lacking productivity). Why then am I here on blogger thinking of hot steaming truth nuggets for the avid LVS-reader instead of revising (another exam tomorrow see)?

My life since my last post in a few short sentences. I got through the mess of exams with the aid of good beer and better friends, I graduated with a 2.1 in Pharmacology in July 2007; more beer. I got offers from medical schools, decided on which school to go to, spent a month temping for the NHS (bringing it down from the inside ... payroll-wise) and the better part of a month in France (Oui!) I arrived back in the UK in August and returned to London in September only to be confronted with a very early start of term; I started learning the business of doctoring, loved it then gradually learned to hate it. Since my last post I have bought three new pairs of jeans, five shirts, one suit, one diary, a packet of plasters and a clock from Ikea that doesn't work. I have dressed as a ghostbuster once and have almost dressed as a rubix cube once. I have learned to etch-a-sketch and have given up the voluntary work that used to fill so many hours of my time ... I have failed to buy my very own British tea power mug.

I am the only London Village Show team member (of George and I) left in London Village. I hope to be considered the Pepys of my generation, though I sign off this first entry with suitably low expectations. D

A Pointless School Lunch Story

0 comments Published Wednesday, January 16, 2008 by George.

Consumerism and concrete have taken the edge of the weirdness in Japan. A concrete hulk of a shopping complex is a hulk of a shopping complex anywhere you find it the world. The price tags and descriptions may be in different languages and currencies but the concept is universal, you want stuff, you buy stuff. I wonder what it would behave been like to have visited Japan before the American cultural invasion, before concrete and Miss Kitty.

How can we go there, how can we go where we've once been? The past is not a foreign country, it is lunch time in Japan, of this I am sure. Thursdays I take luncheon with a disparate group physically and educationally challenged students and teachers (I am not being facetious, I work at a special needs school). Something always challenges me, from Japanese language failure, the whole fish on a stick I am expected to eat, to the slurping sounds and table manners of 13 year olds. Today I was half way through lunch with no incident, then I absent mindedly pulled out my little pot of Vaseline for my sore lips. It blew minds. 'Wasiline' as they called it passed round and inspected. I was asked what it taste like. I invited them to try it. Dollops of Vaseline were eaten, heads shaken and then as quickly as it began, it ended. The little blue and white tin pot was passed back to me and the meal continued, chopsticks began bulldozing rice into mouths soup slurped and seconds fetched. That was that. The lunch of Vasaline ended. It was a little like going back in time, the science of Vaseilne was too much for my students, what a silly colonial I am.