London's drowning in clutter

What an anti-climax London must be to tourists. A supposedly beautiful city is covered in tat, caked in lurid colours and nobody does a thing about it.

I’ll explain what I mean. Paris is a magnificent place. This was encapsulated for me when I visited there when I was 16. I went for school trip, and being a teenage Northerner, I was drawn to a cultural hotspot. Not the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe or Sacre Coeur.  No, the place me and my cohorts visited was McDonald on the Champs Elysees. Now I don’t know if this fact was made up, or if it has been enforced anywhere else since, but I was told this particular franchise was the only McDonalds in the world to have a gold ‘M’ on it. In fact, all of the signs on the front were gold.  Spending much of my youth in Hull, I was shocked that anywhere would take pride in the appearance of their buildings to the extent they’d make a massive company change their signs.

McDonalds on the Champs Elysees

Fast forward to London in 2010 and what do we have? With a typical glance down a London street you’ll see, at least, the following clutter:

• For sale signs
• Sold signs
• To Let signs
• Let signs
• Congestion charge cameras
• Congestion charge road markings
• Traffic lights
• Bus lanes
• Speed cameras
• Speed camera signs
• Parking meters
• Double yellow lines
• Red lines

Ah... Glorious London

The list could easily go on but I won’t labour the point. Most of the above are pretty standard signs and they arguably deserve to be erected, but the first 4 should be removed as soon as possible and the others could be better positioned. There seems to be no authority to take control and make a stand. London is a damn expensive place to live and it’s made all the more intolerable by the lack of concern about this kind of matter. I’m sure I sound like a town councillor in training, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. People should care. People should have some civic pride. Not forget to remove old signs, or not give a damn about an increasing amount of clutter that gradually drags an area down.

It’s not just signs. As the list above shows, there are a multitude of colours that adorn our roads. Leaving aside the fact that most of them have gaping holes in them, they now have black tarmac, white lines, red bus lanes, yellow lines, red routes and now some roads have terrible blue cycle lanes. I’m a big fan of cycle lanes, but adding a thin line of blue to the road does not constitute a safe, durable bike line. It’s a cheap halfway house and is yet another attack on our eyes and on our city.

Let’s end this lack of interest and care. London should be a great city, at the moment it’s a cluttered mess.

Honey I shrunk the jumper

Hand wash only. 3 little words that spark 4 letter outbursts.

I don’t like shopping much. I get in and get out, dodging teenagers trying on hats and asking my myself  why the shop  hasn’t got round to either installing air con for the summer, or turning down the furnace-like heaters in winter.

So, it makes it all the more irritating when I’ve battled through the pain, have worn the new item and then decided to wash it. I toss it in the machine, add powder and press start. Simple. Then when the cycle has ended, to my instant annoyance, I realise that my brand new jumper/shirt/anything has shrunk down to a small child’s size. I kid myself for a couple of seconds... “I can stretch it out” I say, “it’ll be ok”. I hang it next to a trusted old shirt that will accompany the new garment. They’re clearly never going to fit together. Cue a four letter outburst and much irritation.

Quite clearly, the thing that has riled me the most is that this is totally 100% my mistake. The label clearly says ‘Hand wash only’ and it has happened to me many times before. There’s one thing I hate more than incompetence, and that’s my incompetence.  So I ignore it and swear heartedly at the machine for not treating the garment with more care, at the manufacturers for making an item unsuitable for the modern world and finally at the shop for selling it to a clearly incompetent man.  I tell you what though, If I ever have a 10 year old son, he will be the best dressed kid at school. 

Very annoying post

I make no apologies, this is a very, very small problem and one that probably won’t elicit any kind of empathy, but I don’t have a key to my mailbox at my flat. Phew, it feels good to get that off my chest.

 I get hardly any post, even the bank emails statements now, so in total the flat receives no more than 3 letters per week. But it’s really irritating. Because I rent and our landlord has no interest in the flat, I can’t easily open the mailbox to get my post (or break it and get a new one). It seems such a small problem and one that would have an easy solution. But it doesn’t. We can’t get the key.

I can imagine you all (3 of you) reading this post thinking “so how do you get your post?”. Well, I’m pleased you’ve asked.

Whereas some of you will have you post on the door mat when you come in and others will slip a little key into a box and open it, I have developed a new method involving a chair and 2 spatulas. Here’s how I get my post: (see diagram)

1. Peer into the top of the box through the “post in” slot and see post
2. Try to put hand through “annoyingly small gap”
3. Get irritated that my hand is too large for the annoying small gap (as it is every time)
4. Stare angrily at the “redundant lock”
5. Trudge upstairs, annoyed
6. Come back down stairs with a chair and 2 spatulas
7. Stand on chair
8. Poke spatulas into the “post in” slot and try to press them together around the post and lever it upwards. Basically, it’s like trying to use chopsticks to lift a steak up in a bean can. Don’t ask why a steak would be in bean can, I don’t have an answer for that.
9. Ignore the stares from curious onlookers and dab sweat from brow
10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 several times, sweating more and turning a worrying shade of red
11. Prize post out of mailbox, feel hugely heroic until salty sweat trickles onto eyeball, reverting me back to a state of anger

So there you have it. That’s how I get my post. Please don’t send me anything.