Nicking Milk

In March we started getting milk delivered to our door the old-fashioned way, in glass bottles. Just trying to do our (micro) bit in the war against plastic. Now some little bastards are nicking it right off our door step.

Milk & More deliver in the early hours and as the More would suggest they go beyond just moo juice. On Friday we ordered their Breakfast Bundle which includes eggs, bacon, juice and two pints. At first, we thought the delivery hadn’t been made but no, it was looted.

Today we ordered one pint of full-fat and one semi-skimmed. Both bottles, drained of milk, were left on the wall in front of our house as a big fuck you to our family.

I’ve cancelled all orders until we find some sort of secure delivery box. So, thanks to those hard bastards who nick milk (#massivelegends) we don’t get our milk, Milk & More lose orders and we go back to buying plastic.

Update 1: Milk & More have refunded the cost of our Breakfast Bundle. #goodguys

Update 2: An old friend reminded me of the 1970s milk ad: ‘Watch out there’s a Humphrey about’. It was a bit of nonsense from Unigate about someone trying to snaffle your pinta. They even got Muhammad Ali on board.

Stoned in Stockwell

With the sun out, the people shirtless and picnics in full swing, the sweet smell of marijuana, along with the stench of skunk, is wafting across the parks of London.

Recently the dog ran through a tsunami of smoke caused by one of those vaping dudes and ended up on her back giggling. (Yes, my dog can giggle) So I’m pretty sure those guys are up to something too. Summer’s here and Londoners are high in Highgate and stoned in Stockwell.

Weed remains illegal in the UK and being caught with it comes with a maximum five years in prison and an unlimited fine. Police can issue an on-the-spot fine if you’re caught with a small amount and will take your stash.

But frankly unless you blow smoke in a copper’s face you’re unlikely to feel plod’s hand on your shoulder. The War on Drugs, or at least the War on Weed seems to have sputtered out.

Ask any lawyer and they’ll tell you that if a law is on the books and it’s not enforced, it should either be struck off or at least changed. But of course, that is unlikely to happen. Politicians in the UK know there are few votes to be won in suggesting weed be legalised and any unfortunate MP who takes up the cause will likely be mugged by the Daily Mail.

You have to wonder how many of our elected members have never smoked a joint. I’m sure the delightful Mr Rees-Mogg is in the clear along with our Prime Minister, but Boris Johnson? A few years ago, Ann Widdecombe (remember her?) caused a storm at the Tory party conference when she called for zero tolerance on all cannabis use and anyone caught with the drug would receive an automatic £100 fine. Even Tories couldn’t stomach that, and it was ditched.

It’s all so tricky for both politicians and the police. Just recently in Argentina a huge cache of marijuana being held by police went missing. A former police commissioner and fellow officers gave an entirely believable account as to what had happened when they told a judge the drugs were “eaten by mice”.

A few years ago, smoking a joint in public came with a police warning: ‘You’re be nicked sunshine’. Not anymore. MPs are too frightened to touch it, the police have more important stuff on their hands and so we do what we always do when faced with an intractable problem, we whistle up a van load of fudge to make it all go away.

And fudge, so I’m told, goes very nicely after you’ve smoked a joint.

Vexed in Vauxhall

With apologies to Noel Coward and his poem ‘There are bad times just around the corner’.

They’re miffed at the Nine Elms intersection

They’re vexed in Vauxhall, outraged at Oval

And Fentiman Road, so I’m told, is on the verge of insurrection.

The President of the United States has been at it again and people round our way are not happy. First, when commenting on the new US embassy, he called our neighbourhood ‘off location’ – bloody cheek. Now at a rally in Michigan over the weekend he ramped up the war of words calling our locality ‘lousy’ and ‘horrible’ ahead of his planned visit to the UK in July.

Time to fight back south London and extol the benefits and merits of life (just) south of the river. So, with my Tourist Authority of Lambeth (unofficial) hat screwed firmly on my head here is why you, along with the most powerful man in the world, should take a stroll round our manor. Dodge the deadly bullets of Madame Tussauds, the London Dungeon and M&M World and take a trip to Lambeth.

First up there’s Battersea Park, perhaps the best park in London, which now boasts an excellent restaurant, the Pear Tree Cafe. You can go boating on the lake or dangle from a zipwire, play football and marvel at the remnants of the Festival of Britain.
There’s a thriving gay scene headquartered at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern just south of Vauxhall Station.
There are so many bonkers buildings along Nine Elms Lane, including the new US Embassy, perhaps we should be marketing ourselves as the New Dubai.
We have art galleries: Tate Britain and Damian Hurst’s Newport Street Gallery that was designed by the same Swiss architects that brought us Tate Modern.
Then there’s Little Portugal spread out along South Lambeth Road which includes the Estrella Restaurant where you can sit outside and enjoy the sun, while sipping hot chocolate and nibbling on a nata. A little further along is the local favourite, the Canton Arms, a gastro pub of note. I’ve not tried it yet, but we have a new place on Clapham Road: 24 The Oval which looks promising.
People are raving about Wright Brothers Seafood Restaurant at Battersea Power Station. They specialise in oysters, in case a basket of bi-valves is your thing. While there, you’ll also be able to take a look at the Battersea Power Station restoration; one of the biggest housing developments in Europe.
There is the huge Nine Elms Sunday Market, which can be a little on the scummy side, but if you want to indulge your inner Martin Amis you might want to give it a go. Close by is the newly located New Covent Garden flower market, but for this you are going to have to get up early. It opens at 4am. Come Christmas, it’s fun to pick up your Christmas tree there for a fraction of the normal London price.
Underneath the railway arches and strictly for the more adventurous we have Urban Axe Throwing and you can get to grips with the VauxWall climbing centre.

We should encourage Donald Trump to come to our neck of the woods and see what he’s missing. I’m sure we can assure him of a rousing reception.

(Now it’s over to you, local inhabitants, what have I missed?)

Plastered at the Tate

In 1897 when the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) was nearing completion they got the plasterers in. And plasterers being plasterers, did what plasterers always do, they left a hidden note to be found by future generations. They got their wish.

This was placed here on the fourth of June 1897, Jubilee year, by the plasterers working on the job, hoping when this is found the Plasterers Association may be still flourishing. Please let us know in the Other World when you get this, so we can drink your health.

Signed: N. Gallop, F. Wilkins, H. Sainsbury, J. Chester, A. Pickernell (secretary)

The writer, perhaps the secretary, is hesitant to say whether plasterers fetch up in heaven or hell and opt for the ‘other world’ but given the lovely, humorous nature of the note I reckon it must be the former.

How much of their work remains, I have no idea, but I like to think that some of the UK’s greatest paintings hang in front of their smooth plaster work. This evening I plan to raise a glass and drink to the health of Messrs Gallop, Wilkins, Sainsbury, Chester and Pickernell.

Seventy years later

Just over seventy years after this note was written a callow youth visited the Tate for the first time. I was 16 years old and a pupil at a dreary boarding school in the Midlands. A school trip was arranged to visit the Tate Gallery in London. I didn’t have much interest in art and knew nothing about the artist whose exhibition we were going to see. All that mattered was escaping school and getting to London.

I’m not sure I’d ever seen pop art before, but I knew right away I loved it, particularly when we learnt that the artist, Eduardo Paolozzi, had made robots for the exhibition and at the last moment had carved them up and dumped them in a skip. When you’re a teenager at school in Rutland you feel like carving your life up and putting it in a skip. Here was something I could work with.

I think there were also some Warhol’s on display; possibly the Marylyn screen prints. It was all so new and so fresh, I couldn’t get enough of it. I now live around the corner from Tate Britain, but I’ll never forget my first visit.