Monday, May 04, 2009
Footnotes
Various footnotes to the last post.
First, an item 4 for the complaints book for Holiday Inn. Each room had a smart Phillips television, equipped with a socket which was both of the right dimensions for earphones and convenient in being front mounted. This meant that, after a rather disturbed first night, we were able to calm FIL down with some smart new earphones from Curries. Nice and light with good reception, the only downer being the lead being only 2.7m long. We shall investigate whether one can buy extensions in Maplin in Kingston. However, what the television could not do was freeview. Channels 1 to 5 OK, then you were onto films and adult films, both of which required reception intervention and, presumably, payment. Not a freeview channel with its regular diet of the likes of Poirot in sight.
We were reminded on return why this was a bad thing, as on our second night back we had freeview but no Poirot. Instead, we had the option of one film with lashings of sex or another with lashings of violence. Both of which left us feeling rather old and time for bed.
Then a coincidence. We had noticed, driving down Seven Sisters Road the other day, and looking for a splendidly seedy pub called the 'Hornsey Wood Tavern' (which appeared to have vanished), a modestly seedy hotel with the splendid name of 'Costello Palace Hotel'. We wondered, casually, who might stay in such a place. On return, we learn from the DT, that part of the answer was two suicides. Which was sad enough in itself. But what made it even sadder, to my mind, was that this event required a posse of policemen and women to turn out in space suits, for the hotel to be emptied as a precaution for our safety and the area to be cordoned off, causing traffic mayhem for miles around. No doubt a large vehicle from the Fire and Rescue Service for London was in attendance. Why could they not just discretely summon an undertaker to the back door? No doubt the two corpses will suffer the full indignity of full autopsies. Bring on the Swiss clinic! We were lucky in that we passed by an hour or so before discovery.
There was a more cheerful coincidence in that, while searching for Milkwood Road, we came across a James Joyce Walk, a clutch of affordable town houses off Shakespeare Road, just the other side of the tracks from where we were trying to be. I hope that JJ is suitably amused to have given his name to such a place; quite a good comparator to the seedy Dublin of his youth. The best that the 21st century can do. Then got to wondering about this downside of being a celebrity, that all and sundry get to take liberties with your name and worse. You might have got the dosh but you have sold yourself to get it.
In a similar vein, I noticed in a recent TLS that CUP are publishing a hard-core collected edition of Jane Austen from CUP, the review of which is attracting a certain amount of attention in the letters page. If I was a famous writer, I would not want some CUP funded minor academic to be scouring my land-fill sites and compost bins for every odd scrap that I had ever written. I suppose one would have to put up with the York Notes treatment, but at least they could have the decency to stop at my published work. But perhaps the point is the same as before: you have taken the silver peices so your life is no longer your own. Besides, most of us enjoy a bit of razzamatazz.
Took a little while to run the thing down in Amazon. They turn out to be rather dull looking books with light purple covers, £500 for nine volumes, including at least two volumes of snippets. Oddly, if one chose to shop from the US, one could have one volume for £250. Didn't quite get to the bottom of that one. In any event, I shall stick with my ancient Folio edition, lightly illustrated by Joan Hassall and weighing in at a mere seven volumes. One of Folio's better efforts.
First, an item 4 for the complaints book for Holiday Inn. Each room had a smart Phillips television, equipped with a socket which was both of the right dimensions for earphones and convenient in being front mounted. This meant that, after a rather disturbed first night, we were able to calm FIL down with some smart new earphones from Curries. Nice and light with good reception, the only downer being the lead being only 2.7m long. We shall investigate whether one can buy extensions in Maplin in Kingston. However, what the television could not do was freeview. Channels 1 to 5 OK, then you were onto films and adult films, both of which required reception intervention and, presumably, payment. Not a freeview channel with its regular diet of the likes of Poirot in sight.
We were reminded on return why this was a bad thing, as on our second night back we had freeview but no Poirot. Instead, we had the option of one film with lashings of sex or another with lashings of violence. Both of which left us feeling rather old and time for bed.
Then a coincidence. We had noticed, driving down Seven Sisters Road the other day, and looking for a splendidly seedy pub called the 'Hornsey Wood Tavern' (which appeared to have vanished), a modestly seedy hotel with the splendid name of 'Costello Palace Hotel'. We wondered, casually, who might stay in such a place. On return, we learn from the DT, that part of the answer was two suicides. Which was sad enough in itself. But what made it even sadder, to my mind, was that this event required a posse of policemen and women to turn out in space suits, for the hotel to be emptied as a precaution for our safety and the area to be cordoned off, causing traffic mayhem for miles around. No doubt a large vehicle from the Fire and Rescue Service for London was in attendance. Why could they not just discretely summon an undertaker to the back door? No doubt the two corpses will suffer the full indignity of full autopsies. Bring on the Swiss clinic! We were lucky in that we passed by an hour or so before discovery.
There was a more cheerful coincidence in that, while searching for Milkwood Road, we came across a James Joyce Walk, a clutch of affordable town houses off Shakespeare Road, just the other side of the tracks from where we were trying to be. I hope that JJ is suitably amused to have given his name to such a place; quite a good comparator to the seedy Dublin of his youth. The best that the 21st century can do. Then got to wondering about this downside of being a celebrity, that all and sundry get to take liberties with your name and worse. You might have got the dosh but you have sold yourself to get it.
In a similar vein, I noticed in a recent TLS that CUP are publishing a hard-core collected edition of Jane Austen from CUP, the review of which is attracting a certain amount of attention in the letters page. If I was a famous writer, I would not want some CUP funded minor academic to be scouring my land-fill sites and compost bins for every odd scrap that I had ever written. I suppose one would have to put up with the York Notes treatment, but at least they could have the decency to stop at my published work. But perhaps the point is the same as before: you have taken the silver peices so your life is no longer your own. Besides, most of us enjoy a bit of razzamatazz.
Took a little while to run the thing down in Amazon. They turn out to be rather dull looking books with light purple covers, £500 for nine volumes, including at least two volumes of snippets. Oddly, if one chose to shop from the US, one could have one volume for £250. Didn't quite get to the bottom of that one. In any event, I shall stick with my ancient Folio edition, lightly illustrated by Joan Hassall and weighing in at a mere seven volumes. One of Folio's better efforts.
# posted by Jim @ 10:40 PM 
