Searching for Gogi

Out here in South-East London we don’t have Victoria Wine stores. There are no branches of Threshers. I’m pretty positive that I’ve never seen an Oddbins around anywhere. There’s quite a few Majestics around, Greenwich and the Holloway Road for example, but the warehouse style places are a little different. I’m thinking of places you wander to five minutes from your front door.

In comparison to other cities the only national stores I can think of in the capital are in Highbury and Tufnell Park. In, for example, Sheffield the main off-licence in the student area of Broomhill was a Victoria Wine. There was a real-ale specialist near our house on Crookesmoor Road, but I could only go in a salivate at the bottles of intriguingly named bitter and then walk out with a four pack of Ward’s or Tetley’s or Stone’s.

The dominance of the independent off-licence is a London-wide thing. The willingness to offer knocked off goods at not particularly cheap prices and to stay open far too late than is good for the customer ensures that they push out the national chains.

In particular, what seems to keep the big names out of South-East London is our very own localised chain of booze emporiums: Gogi’s.

There’s are Gogi’s Wine Stores all over SE4 and beyond. Although, what I imagined to be the flagship store, a double unit down on the Lewisham Way, at the bottom of Manor Avenue where we used to live, recently sold up in favour of a Tesco Metro, they can still be found from Brockley Rise to Honor Oak Park, from Forest Hill to Sydenham, from Crystal Palace to Peckham, from Charlton to Wandsworth.

Everywhere you turn there are the familiar text-only signs, the inconsistent branding (white on red, red on white, green on white, blue on brown), the special offers of out of date beer, cans of coke with foreign language ingredients and a specialised line in some of the foulest, nastiest wines to ever be imported.

Your typical Gogi’s doesn’t stock bitter (not even John Smiths and although most carry Caffreys I won’t lower myself to drinking that rubbish) and my little stock-all-corner-shop undercuts them on Becks and Guinness, so I’m not a frequent patron. Especially as I tend to be bothered about the quality of the wine I’m drinking. But I like the fact that they exist. If I ever see one I’ve never spotted before, down in Croydon or somewhere, I’ll often nod and smile knowingly to myself.

It’s a little nugget of home. The more far flung they are the more satisfaction I take from them.

I’ve often wondered ‘who is Gogi’?*

Is Gogi a successful business-man? Does he spend his days down at the distribution warehouse, planning how the Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon he’s got on the cheap is going to become a standard for every home’s dinner table? Does he train up gangs of earnest young men to the high levels of wine retailing and customer service he expects of his over-staffed shops? At the end of a hard day does he head home to his wife and children and a family meal complimented by a relaxing glass of a particularly fine Merlot from Peru?

Perhaps it’s just a surprisingly common name? Perhaps the name ‘Gogi’ traditionally means purveyor of intoxicating beverages?

Perhaps it’s a front? A cover for a international gang of peanut smugglers?

Asking around got me nowhere. Nobody in any of the nearby branches would tell me anything. The only words that would cross their lips, like a mantra, was “ninety-five pence”. He was like a shadow on the edge of reality. A legend. I had to just pay for my can of Carlsberg and go.

Things became interesting the other week when this appeared in the window of the store of Brockley Rise:

(There should be a photo here, but Beck’s managed to give the cable that connects the camera to the computer to somebody else for safe keeping. So instead I’ll describe it: A picture of a man, probably in his mid-thirties speaking passionately with a raised fist. Above it reads ‘Mian M. Shahid (Gogi).’)

Is this, I wondered when I first saw it, the real Gogi? Was Gogi a revolutionary hero on the run? A champion of the down-trodden masses? A human rights activist? Was the naming of so-many off-licences a homage to an idol of millions?

Late at night bathed in the light of the computer screen, a glass of Korean whisky and ice at my side, the room thick with the smoke of discount cigarettes I did a little on-line research. Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery I employed all my Marlowe skills.

The only thing I can come up with, though, is that Mian M Shahid is the managing director of Mian Shahid, a Pakistan based manufacturer of surgical and dental equipment.

No, I don’t get it either.


*: That’s not actually true; I do have some more interesting things to do with my life. Like cutting my toe-nails.

Good Times, Bad Times.

After weeks of near comatose inactivity, but for the flick of a wrist holding a pen, everything’s come together for the end of term. And it all seems to have gone rather well, although in true spirit of karma, for everything positive there must be a negative. So, here’s a summary of the week through a simple division of Good and Bad.

Thursday:

Water has been seeping through the bathroom floor and down the kitchen wall. It seems directly linked to the bath as it appears in the mornings and then dries out over the course of the day. However, Trevor The Handy-Man isn’t answering his mobile.

Looking over a piece of my writing my tutor says “you might be drifting into Nick Hornby territory here, but you’re a significantly better writer.”

He then quantifies this by adding “Hornby’s one of the worst writers I’ve ever read.”

My tutor admits to feeling bad about being unable to postpone my tutorial when extension cables and various pieces of equipment needed for the Goldfish Online Journal launch event, that I’m supposed to be helping set up, fall out of my bag.

I arrive late at the Swedenborg Centre in Bloomsbury to help get ready, only to find everything suspiciously well organised and everyone off for a tea-break.

In Sainsbury’s buying twenty-four litres of still mineral water I take a call from the course administrator wondering when we’re going to collect the big stack of programmes we’ve had printed and, clearly, forgotten to pick up from her office.

The Other David heroically collects the programmes and drops them off before the event starts, despite the fact he can’t hang around even for a glass of wine.

Investigating the projector someone stole from their workplace it seems pretty straightforward to use. Things are looking back on track. Yay!

The projector, predictably enough, refuses to talk to the laptop we’re using.

I manage to resist the urge to head butt either the laptop or the projector, remembering just in time that neither are mine.

The projector thief agrees to steal a laptop known to be compatible as well. Jocelyn has had the foresight to put a back-up slide show on a memory stick. Hurrah!

One of the readers disappears for two hours.

Beck manages to find free parking (twice) in Bloomsbury. Nothing short of miraculous. By being an hour late and avoiding the congestion charge too we ease the pressure on the remaining budget.

The launch, eventually, proves to be a huge success. We have more people in attendance than ever before (apparently). Even the Swedenborg Centre, haunted as it is by weird eighteenth century spiritualism and seemingly with only one electric socket, works well. Everyone seems to have fun and there’s a really strong buzz from everyone’s enthusiasm.

Friday:

Ordering the wine from Majestic’s even though it was slightly more expensive than Sainsbury’s and therefore we had to have less (but did include free glass hire), seems to have worked out okay as several bottles are left-over. Half a dozen or so make their way back to my home.

The 144 glasses we hired need to be cleaned and returned. Do you have any idea how boring washing and drying 144 wine glasses is? You begin to long for a different shape just to bring some excitement into your life.

Discover that the ‘liberated’ wine was also accompanied by five large bottles of mineral water. Moral high ground compromised after vocally supporting Phil Woolas, the Minister for Environment’s, statement that spending millions on bottled water from deprived countries where not everyone has running water is ‘unacceptable’.

Looking closer I discover that it’s from Scotland - they have tap water up there, right?

Realise that, despite strange elation-depression hybrid sensation in my brain after Thursday night, this isn’t quite the end of term and I still have a whole week to go and consequently ought to be getting on with writing.

I’m instantly mentally crippled and unable to write anything of worth.

Temporary financial crisis worsens as the donations from the Goldfish sponsors and the College towards the launch have yet to make their way to my bank account and one of Beck’s clients forgets to pay her.

Trevor The Handy-Man finally calls back.

My mobile instantly runs out of battery. As the on/off switch is still broken and no amount of punching it will revive it I am a) unable to speak to Trevor The Handy-Man as the only record of his number is my phone, and b) suddenly aware of how dependant I am on a portable communication device; I really shouldn’t have been using it as a substitute note-book.

Find one of Beck’s business cards and ring her from the landline. Against all the odds she has Trevor The Handy-Man’s number.

Trevor The Handy-Man is back on voicemail.

At half-past nine we realise that we completely forgot to meet up with a friend tonight.

At least we’re not spending any non-existent money.

No, I really can’t put a positive spin on this. We’re still idiots.

Saturday:

Consumption of ‘liberated’ wine is hardly helping my productivity levels.

I finally raise Trevor The Handy-Man and he agrees to come around the following morning at eight and take a look.

Only realise after hanging up that the following day is, of course, Sunday which means my anticipated lie in is delayed yet again.

The rent’s still stupidly cheap.

First weekend in ages where neither of us have a huge stack of work to wade through.

Rain, rain and no money curtail excitement and we end up working anyway as it’s free.

Radio Four journalist from You & Yours comes around to interview Beck about the Livesey’s closure. Fantastic opportunity to observe journalist-recording practice close up.

Am confined to upstairs by mean girlfriend for duration of the interview.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night really is rather good.

Discover that the freezer door no longer shuts properly due to a build-up of excessive ice. We argue over what to do with partially defrosted food.

Decide to eat the meat and put everything else back. Still alive two days later, after eating the sausages. Hacking off the excess ice with a heated knife also proves weirdly satisfying.

Sunday:

Why isn’t Easter at the same time every year?

The picture of Michael Jackson on the cover of the Observer’s Music supplement: Ugh.

All the reviews I’ve read so far suggest the new REM album might actually be rather good for once.

Isn’t that what everyone said about Reveal?

Remember that my two tutors have wildly differing opinions about my work. Trepidation for Tuesday’s tutorial kicks in early.

Beck receives confirmation of interview with Scottish arts space in a small town north of Glasgow.

Going there and back in a day is going to involve one car journey, two taxi rides, two ferry jaunts, three train journeys and two flights. Green credentials somewhat battered.

Monday:

Receive word that my friend Charlotte has given birth to a healthy daughter. Wonderful news.

Realise that the note ‘ring charlotte’ has been on my to-do list since January. Feel a complete arse.

Goodnight, sleep tight.

You’ve probably seen some of this - over the past week there’s been various surveys published about sleep patterns and bedtime habits:

Apparently we no longer go to bed and read a book, nor say our prayers (HA!). The most common things to do before getting into bed is to plug your mobile phone in to charge and whilst in bed it’s to surf social networking sites (presumably on a laptop, although I suppose you could set up a hard drive, monitor and keyboard on your bedside table) or to listen to your generic mp3 player.

This BBC survey also had the average bedtime as 10.30.

This is, of course, whilst simultaneously being a nation of either a) binge drinkers gurgling mid-week alcho pops at happy hour prices until we’re caught on CCTV either puking, fighting, or hitching our skirt up and squatting down in an alley for a piss. Or b) middle-class folks who chung back a bottle and a half of wine every single night until our livers melt. Both of which take time, unless, of course the wine’s actually ingested by an intravenous drip whilst we sleep.

Factor in that we also, allegedly, have the longest working hours in Europe and spend too much of our time in front of the television and who the hell is able to get to bed consistently at 10.30?

When I worked for my last job I would, typically, go to bed about at about 11.30 and be asleep by midnightish. More or less. If, I was just going into the office and not further afield I would get up at 6.30. Okay, 6.36 to be accurate - I had a very precise, rigid morning routing. No snooze button for me. My commute took me between fifty-five minutes and an hour and five minutes, so I’d arrive sometime between 8.20 and 8.25.

I always thought this was pretty typical - although I’ve just noticed that the front cover of the Observer’s Review section (oddly enough) says that an average London commute is one hour and twenty-four minutes. Hpmh. Thinking about this (and to prove my point) had I tried to arrive for 9.00 then it probably would have take an extra fifteen or twenty minutes because the trains get busier and busier. With a lot of London businesses not starting until 9.30 it was pretty quiet around 8ish.

I dunno.

I could stretch this. I know lots of people who do really stupid commutes. I once met a guy called Barry who lived on Merseyside and worked in Leicester. Mind you, he only went into the office on a Wednesday and presumably spent the rest of week getting there and back, sleeping and working in his car.

In a round about way I’m getting to the point.

At the same time another survey was released saying that the average person gets less that six hours sleep a night. My question is - who are all these poor sods getting up at four in the morning every day?

(My second question is who keeps commissioning these surveys and for what purpose?)

Anyway, the bedtimes habits stuff was quite interesting. I confess I’m pretty average. The last thing I do before getting into bed is put my phone onto to charge, although as the on-off switch is broken it’s essential it doesn’t run out of battery. It did die about a month ago and I had to resort to trying to prise underneath the switch, to trigger it on, with a kitchen knife. When that, unsurprisingly, didn’t work I smacked it hard down on my knee and miraculously it blooped back into life.

My knee hurt, mind.

Once in bed I do often read. Although as I spend a large part of the day reading fiction (my own, other students, extracts given to us by tutors, various other books and short stories) my bedtime reading tends to be lighter. It’s currently 1,001 Films You Must See Before You Die which does have the drawback of weighing about five kilos and being rather uncomfortable to balance on your chest.

I’m not sure what Beck does because, again, it appears that we’re pretty average.

Apparently most couples now go to bed at different times and many actually sleep in different rooms. Presumably the noise of an xbox or those badly insulated earphones on an ipod have now replaced snoring as the leading sleep disruptor.

However, there’s a slightly different reason for our different bedtimes.

Beck, frankly, struggles to get out of bed in the mornings and, anyway, always finds that she does her best work late a night. It’s almost as though it takes several hours for her brain to wind itself up. So often she’ll work to midnight and beyond and then get up at nine, or later.

Meanwhile, my brain’s been battered into submission by eight years of 9 till 5 (oh that would’ve been nice) and so, despite now only have a thirty second commute from the eating table to the writing table I’m still up at seven and often working by eight. I also work, I think, pretty late. Usually till 8 or 9, but I’ve never been able to do what Beck does and just stop dead and go straight to sleep. I need to let my mind calm down. So I have to stop and read for few hours or watch a film or something - often accompanied by an alcoholic beverage.

That’s another thing I can’t do that Beck does. She quite likes a glass of wine or beer whilst working late. Anything I try to write after a drink always seems… too relaxed?

Now this has been going on for years, one way or another, and its by no means every night. Sometimes we go out. Sometimes we even go out together. On the odd occasion we’re just ready for bed at the same time.

There’s always going to be exceptions: this week Beck’s had residency and exhibition applications to do late into the evenings and had to haul herself out of bed earlier than me to get to Essex to run school workshops. About twice a year I have a lie in. But we’re talking averages and typicals here.

We’re out of synch and it’s difficult to get back in without either one of us changing our habits.

Do we need to?

Actually, I suspect we possibly do.

I think going to be bed at the same time and living to a similar pattern’s quite important in a relationship. We’re more likely to be doing things together before going to bed, we’re more likely to get up at the same time, more likely to need to eat at around the same time each day. All these things are important parts of communicating with your partner.

And it also helps with… Well, you know what.

Vladimir and Me

Even someone with only a vague awareness of Russian politics cannot have been be surprised by Monday’s election result.

Now, there’s a sentence I didn’t expect to be writing. “A vague awareness of…” Who, you might be wondering, has anything more? Well, as discussed before, I’m something of a political junkie and I’m always intrigued by any country’s electoral process, but Russia…

Well.

Let’s just say Russia is… Different?.

Churchill once described Russian politics as a “riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma.” It’s a good description and there’s no surprise that most of the election coverage is using some kind of Russian doll image with Putin’s and Medvedev’s faces superimposed over the top. It’s nicely apt. The man within, behind and below. Medvedev won’t know which way to watch out for potential knives if he steps out of line.

I wonder if anyone, anywhere, truly believes that Putin’s not going to be running the show?

EU and UN observers have voiced concerns that the elections weren’t free and fair. You think? What with most opposition candidates in jail? Mind you, at least the Russian authorities are doing a better job at covering it up this time - the 99.6% turn out four years ago was a little unbelievable.

But then again, perhaps not.

So what if Putin controls the media. He may have had a few journalists bumped off. He might even have sanctioned the assassination of a dissident on foreign soil, but, hell, look into Litvinenko and he was deeply involved in all sorts of dodgy mafia activity and, frankly, was only interested in seeing who he screw money out of. Oh, and there’s the possibility that Putin ordered for a block of flats containing civilians to be blown up so it could be blamed on Chechnyan rebels.

But.

It’s undeniable that Russian is in a better state in recent years. The wealth of the oligarchs is diminishing, the growing middle class, education and health care are improving. The economy is on the up and we can see time and time again that all most people really care about is how much is in their pocket.

So, it’s either complete and utter apathy in Russian over rigged elections (hard to believe considering the ongoing troubles in Kenya - people care about voting) or they really are happy with the Putin’s and the United Russia Party’s leadership.

(Okay, so they might be more frightened of disappearing in the middle of the night, but it’s only a hypothesis.)

They might have voted for Medvedev because of the party he represents. Whilst it’s pretty unusual for a former leader to take a more junior role, perhaps Putin really does just want to serve his country.

Yeah, right.

But then, we all do it, don’t we? We all get involved with things, initially with good intentions and at some point we decide that we can do better and stage a coup d’etat.

Within my course the best of the student’s work is published annually on a website. There’s a launch event to which editors and agents are invited. There’s free wine. Great, but it’s up to us to organise it on a tiny budget. Now, I’ve done events - admittedly very different ones, but certain principles still apply - and I really didn’t want to get involved in another one for the time being. But I went along to the early meetings thinking I could do the minimum to help, Lick stamps or something. Somewhere along the line I seem to have picked up more and more jobs. I did a site visit last week to think about venue layout, I’ve been ordering business cards, I’ve got some sponsorship against the project, I’m sorting out the catering, I’ve been involved in marketing discussions. Everyone is involved, working hard and doing a great job, but I can’t seem to help myself.

I have to poke my nose in.

And now if anyone has a question they come to me rather than anyone else and it annoys me, but it’s all my own fault because I can’t not get involved.

I’m the one who spends Saturday afternoon taking screen shots of the website and converting them to jpegs and gets pissed off about it, but then I’m the one who volunteered to do it.

Is it ego? Am I a control freak? Am I just a bit of a moaning git?

People just want to see things done right and once we take a little bit of power we want more and more until we’re so immersed in it that it becomes a definition of who we are. You can no longer distinguish the person from the role.

Perhaps, there’s (horrible idea) a little bit of Putin inside us all?

Just ask Ken Livingstone.

A Fresh Start

So, it’s been one of those weeks.

It started off nicely enough on Tuesday when, shortly after posting last week’s edition, I flopped down onto the sofa and heard a grating twang followed by a softer crunch.

Yup. Broke one of the springs.

It had sheared sharply off, twisted downwards and ripped through the bottom of the sofa embedding itself in the wooden floor. Good job it went down, really.

This was surprisingly traumatic. Our sofa is well over thirty years old. We inherited it from Beck’s parents, who were shocked we even wanted it as they’d been planning on sending it to the tip. Then we kept it for a decade. (I had the armchair in my room in Sheffield for those who were there) I’m not a big one on new furniture. Only the bookshelves and the Argos cheapo bed were actually new when we got them. Everything else has been begged, borrowed indefinitely, built ourselves (oh, alright, built by Beck whilst I watched), out rightly stolen or found in skips.

The idea of going out to look for a not-quite-so-old sofa that’s comfortable and fits in the space allotted seems akin to taking your elderly pet out into the woods a long way from home and leaving it there.

Wednesday didn’t get much better. I enjoyed my day at college, but had to curtail the following pub session in order to watch Southwark Council vote to approve the budget cuts that closed the Livesey Museum for Children. I’ve banged on about this before, so I’ll just express my disbelief that, given that the budget is the most important decision the local council can take, six opposition councillors didn’t bother to turn up. You know, it’s deciding the fate of local services for the next twelve months, it’s the one chance to actually vote on things that matter rather than whether new speed humps are going to be built on the one remaining residential road without them, but I guess something more important must have been happening. Like someone on a street corner giving out free Haribo.

Over Thursday and Friday I managed to write myself into a corner, which meant that I had to spend all day Saturday making extensive plot, narrative and character notes, trying to see how it was all going to fit together over a hundred thousand words or so. This is what scares me about ‘the novel’ rather than my comfort zone of short stories. It’s just too damn big to just try and write through it and then cut back the bits that’re crap later.

Anyway, I decided to take Sunday off. Entirely. No words at all. We’d do something fun, something that would give my brain a rest.

Probably should have mentioned this earlier, though. I got up late (about quarter past eight) and wallowed I the bath for a while. When I went to get dressed I found Beck just waking up.

“What’re you doing today?” She asks.

“Absolutely nothing at all. Want to join me?” I bounce onto the bed and get a flashback of Tuesday night and think that I should probably be more gentle with the furniture until I loose a couple of stone.

“I need to do some work today and there’s a meeting for that show tonight.”

“Ah.”

Eventually we decided on a compromise. Breakfast and then to walk down to Greenwich via Blackheath. Get some exercise, potter around one of our favourite bits of London, grab some quick lunch off a market stall by the Thames and then head for home so Beck can get some work done.

“And then you can clean the house.”

That wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I’d been thinking more along the lines of mindlessly watching Alec Guinness in The Fall Of The Roman Empire for the umpteenth time, or maybe reading some more of Andrey Kurkov’s, frankly brilliant, The President’s Last Love.

But when I’d been submerged in the bath I’d been disgusted by the brown gunk growing in-between the tiles. So, I agreed.

Now, Beck and I have slightly different approaches to cleaning. I tend to clean frequently, but in a relatively half-arsed fashion. (I should probably qualify that by frequently I mean every four to six weeks, everything’s relative). I’ll also reach the point where I’ve had enough and I’ll either vacuum just the rug or simply spray a bit of cif around the basin and, hell, that’ll do.

Beck, by contrast, cleans annually, bi-annually if it’s a leap year. However, she will clean far more thoroughly than me.

Provided she finishes.

Back in July, the time of her last descent into domestic cleanliness, I came home from work tired and fancying my tea pretty promptly. I found the lounge curtains in the washing machine, all the furniture down the one end of the room and a bucket of cold, soapy water and a sponge in the middle of the half cleaned floor. In the kitchen she had clearly cleaned the inside of all the cupboards, although the contents were still strewn over the floor. Beck was, of course, absent having suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be attending a friend’s private view.

Still, I guess the two techniques compliment each other.

Maybe.

Cleaning our house is always complicated by the fact that neither of us is very tidy, so the first stage is always a tedious return of objects to their rightful place. Hiking boots are retrieved from the bathroom, tampons from the kitchen, stacks of open CD cases are returned to the shelves, newspapers cover every conceivable surface and orifice, some of which are weeks old. Any dead animals need to be disposed of properly.

The whole cleaning, tidying malarkey took nearly three hours, but I think I did a pretty good job for once. If you ignore the fact that I didn’t actually move anything and just dusted and vacuumed around objects and broken furniture. Apparently, though, the process includes an unyielding stream of swearing and moaning. At any moment I can be heard muttering “I hate cleaning the toilet/kitchen floor” or “I loathe vacuuming the stairs/wooden floor/bed.”

In my defensive the extremely crude explosion was probably when I was trying to fix the toilet seat and my DIY skills are about as advanced as a giraffe’s.

The only thing is, I got so bored cleaning that when I was done I wanted nothing more than to sit down and write.

So much for a day off.

Act Your Age

My Dad turned sixty last week. Well done, Happy Birthday, etc, etc. But, because people can be a mildly cruel the event was marked by a collection of cards mocking his age, suggesting an infirm body and mind. When he took the dog for a walk in the morning my Mum, apparently, warned him against falling over “at his age.” It’s almost as though, despite no indication of retiring or slowing down, he went to bed middle-aged and woke up old.

Which reminds me…

Years ago I sat in the corner at a party. It was that time a little after midnight when the booze lurches in with a kick of sentimentality and the music sounds infinitely more poignant that it will do in the morning. The guy I’m talking to takes a slurp of lager and turns to me saying: “Man, do you remember when we were fifteen? Wasn’t it great? We had no responsibilities, life was easy. I’d give anything to be fifteen again.”

Seeing as we hadn’t even turned eighteen at this point, yes I did remember. I have no idea what possible difficulties or stresses he was imaging, but I had utterly zero desire to go back. I’ve always been pretty pleased with the age I am. There’s nothing you can do about it anyway, so sitting whinging about how being twenty-one was so great does nobody any favours.

Live with life or do something about it.

I don’t mean build a time machine or invent a rejuvenation pill (although both would be cool), I mean that if you’re unhappy with your age it probably means there’s something in your life that you’re unhappy with. Your job, perhaps, where you live, how you live. It’s probably something you can sort out.

Anyway, irritated by this pillock, on the walk home that night I developed my theory on the ages of human kind. It was meant to be a joke, but when I told Beck about it shortly afterwards she was annoyed that I’d classified her sister as middle-aged already. And because it became an argument (of sorts) it stuck around in my head.

It went something like this:

You’re born, you’re a baby, a toddler and then a child. From thirteen to eighteen you’re a teenager. From nineteen to twenty-nine you’re a young adult. From thirty to fifty-five you’re middle aged. From fifty-five to seventy you’re old. Finally seventy and over and you’re elderly. These are the facts of live, deal with them.

Of course, they’re not. Instead, they’re just the arrogant shoutings of a seventeen year old. I found it funny that middle-age was a spoken with such derision, that the young feared it so. To me it was just part of life; it’s the middle-period of your three score and ten life allowance and is consequently the longest part. The decision as to what you with that period of your life, whether you settle down to slippers and the occasional glass of red wine in front of the gas fire or if you work the trans-Siberian railway as an engine driver is up to you.

Regrets for yesterday are pointless; all that matters is tomorrow.

That said, I’m seriously considering revising my definitions. Beck turns thirty later this year, I the next. Do I consider myself middle-aged? In a part of my head I’m still a teenager, I’m still directionless (Writer? Come on, stop mucking about and sort yourself out with a proper career!), still prone to irresponsible bouts of drinking, still desperate to hear youth music, still a little naively idealistic.

Mind you: Saturday night was exciting. We did some work on the Save The Livesey campaign, ate some dinner. Listened to records by Tom Waits, David Bowie and Neil Young and read our books. Beck went to bed just before eleven, I went up a little after midnight.

Bloody hell, we’ve skipped middle-age entirely and we’re old already.

Beck said to me that she hadn’t done any of the major things that she’d always planned to do before she turned thirty. Namely, have a baby, establish herself as an artist and buy a house.

But these are just the stereotypes of what we should have achieved. Property, career, breeding. We’ve done lots of other things instead.

Okay, so we nearly brought a flat twelve months ago and I’m damn pleased that we didn’t. I couldn’t have done my course, seeing as I’m using the deposit money to survive, and with mortgage repayments being significantly higher than our low rent and having no savings left to act as a cushion she wouldn’t have been able to spend nearly three months out of the country last year.

She does have a career as an artist. She’s ahead of most of her contemporaries and there are more shows coming up this year. She’s not a household name, but then she doesn’t film people buggering animals nor pee in a little pot and place it on a mantelpiece.

A baby before you’re thirty? Well, there’s just about time to sort that one out. Shall we go upstairs?

Heh. Just joking. Well, not entirely.

But why do we expect people to be in a certain position by the time they reach a certain age? I guess, in my idle daydreams, I expected to have achieved something by the time I was thirty. I’d have a couple of novel published, I’d have a nice house in the country somewhere (this is before I fell in love with London) and I’d have a couple of sprogs. But I haven’t and it’s no good worrying about it. Things happen when they’re good and ready to.

Besides, it’s always nice to have something to look forward to.

The phrase Act Your Age seems entirely redundant now as it becomes more and more acceptable to act whatever age you feel like from day to day. Responsibly settled and concerned about the environment on Tuesdays, hedonistic and looking for the nastiest party on a Thursday?

Suits me. For a little longer anyway.

Children First, Please.

In London, not too far from where I live, is the country’s only children’s museum. Hold on, let’s clarify that. The Livesey is NOT a museum about childhood through the ages; it is a museum FOR children. It has an entirely new, interactive exhibition every year covering everything from maths to alternative energy sources. The children can touch and interact with the exhibits in a way impossible anywhere else. This museum has no glass cabinets and there are no ’please do not touch’ signs.

The Livesey Museum for Children is open to the general public and during the week typically receives two school parties a day. The majority of visiting schools walk in or come by public transport. It has been recently short listed in the Guardian as one of the best child resources in the country.

More importantly it is a cornerstone of an inner-city community. George Livesey donated the building to the people of Southwark on the basis that it be used to culturally enrich the area. And it does. Sitting on the A2, The Old Kent Road, next to Kwik-Fit, opposite the KFC drive-thru and Carpet-Rite, it stands out from the steady torrent of trucks heading to Dover. London may be overflowing with cultural landmarks, but the people of Southwark tend to see these are the property of the middle-classes, of tourists, not places for them.

But they do go to the Livesey. It’s a place they can walk to, pushing a buggy with a toddler in tow. It’s a place an eight year old off one of the estates can safely walk to and spend a productive afternoon. It runs SureStart sessions and other programmes for young families. In brings in creative practitioners - everyone from puppeteers to acrobats - and in the summer hosts outdoor sessions in its courtyard, a vital piece of secure, pleasant, green space.

It has been the weekly refuge for at least one young woman trying to get away from an abusive partner and to see her son enjoy himself.

And it’s being closed down.

The Livesey is not a private venture, it is not a charitable trust. It is owned and run by Southwark Council. Southwark is the twenty-fifth poorest borough in the UK despite the northern edge being dominated by the South Bank centre, Tate Modern and luxury, riverside apartments and having areas such as Dulwich Village where a two bedroom house sells for £799,950.

In Southwark fifty-two percent of children live below the poverty line. That’s not working class or low-income families, that’s Below The Poverty Line.

Over half.

On Tuesday night Beck and I went along to picket a meeting of the council’s executive. As most of the protestors, understandably, had children we decided to help make up the numbers and sit through the actual meeting in the public gallery. I learned a lot about local government process, not least that dubiously legal threats of “severe reprimand” can be made towards any council worker joining a protest against council proposals.

There’s a lot of detail to follow, but please bear with me.

A local authority runs an April to April budget. 73% of their budget comes from a donation from central government. The remainder is generated through council tax, parking fines, etc, etc. This money has to cover local health services (meals on wheels for example), refuse collection, road maintenance, etc. Council housing has a different pot of money. National health and education comes direct from central government.

Here’s the crazy bit. The councils only receive a ball-park figure for the following year’s budget in late December. This is not confirmed until late January. In order to be implemented a budget needs to be presented to the whole council for vote in late February. This doesn’t, as you can imagine, leave much time for long-term financial planning or consultation.

Whilst 2008 sees local boroughs receive a ’three-year deal’ for the first time , I understand that inner-city boroughs in general and London boroughs in particular have done rather badly in terms of the actual amount. The central government’s donation to Southwark will increase by less than the rate of inflation. In real terms this means the council is going to be £35,000,000 short over the next three years.

Ouch.

Some of this is recouped by an increase in council tax of 4% (above the rate of inflation). Councils are only legally allowed to increase tax at a maximum of 4.9% but as a disproportionate number of Southwark’s residents are exempt, or paying lower rates, it’s not that useful.

(There’s that word poverty again.)

Southwark Council itself is a mess. It’s run across dozens of different sites across the borough, most of them falling apart. Hosting a meeting, apparently, almost inevitably involves three or four people taking a taxi. The council, however, anticipates a saving of nearly £30 million when it finally moves into its nice new offices of Tooley Street, in the fancy bit of the borough up near London Bridge, later this year.

They’re still £5,000,000 short and cuts in services clearly need to be made. The Livesey, it seems, will be one of them. I’m not stupid. I understand the maths, I appreciate that this is almost an impossible situation. I realise that no-one on the executive takes an pleasure in closing services down nor in making people redundant. They are not acting out of malice, but I do think they’re acting in ignorance.

Oh, and I’ve issues with the process too.

The Livesey costs £150,000 a year. A metaphorical drop in the £5,000,000 ocean. Clearly, though, if it is closed the building will be sold off (morally wrong given that it was donated to the people, but not illegal) and despite it being a grade II listed building it will still fetch a significant sum, although the council denies factoring this into their figures.

The report recommending the museum’s closure (obtained through the freedom of information act) justifies its suggestion on the basis of cost against visitor figures. I’ve worked in the exhibitions industry. You can massage visitor figures to say whatever you like, but even I’m surprised at the variances in different quotes. The museum is only open to the public nine months of the year, taking three months to rip out the insides of the building and build a new exhibition. It claims 18,000 visitors for that period. The report says that visitor figures vary, depending on source, between 11,000 and 15,000 a year so it bases its conclusions on 11,000 visitors over twelve months.

Hmph.

Councillor Lorraine Zuleta, the member of the executive responsible for culture, heritage and leisure, claimed at the meeting that she had “no choice” but to close the Livesey. It is not one of the services the council is obliged to provide. She has “no choice” but to recommend it for closure, and then promptly mentioned two viable alternatives.

1. Close two libraries.
2. Cut funding to a fitness initiative designed to combat obesity in Camberwell.

We’ll come back to these.

The process with which the council makes decisions are so rapid that there has been no public consultation. The report recommending the Livesey’s closure has clearly been put together after the initial budget figure arrived before Christmas. The budget, responding to the report and the confirmed figure, has been assembled in less than two weeks. Tuesday’s meeting was for the executive to agree to propose it to the wider council. The council will meet on the 20th and (in all probability) vote to accept the budget. The Livesey’s current exhibition will be its last and it will close in late April.

That’s fast.

Opponents to any proposals made by a council can present a delegation at the meetings of the executive. A representative may speak for five minutes and then may be subjected to a further five minutes of questions and answers. The hastily formed Friends of the Livesey did this. No questions were asked. From where I stood deputy leader Kim Humphreys barely seemed awake. It’s not surprising because there was no way anyone was going to reconsider their position, in public, with such a short time scale. This was a rubber stamp meeting paying lip service to the notion that the community has a voice.

No-one was listening.

A woman standing next to Beck who was there to hear about a proposed development on a piece of green space, and who was also hard of hearing, asked what was going on.

“It’s the Livesey museum,” Beck whispered.
“Our museum?”
“Yes, they’re going to close it.”
“But they can’t. It’s the only one we’ve got. They can’t.”
I couldn’t help but think ’they just did.’

There is still a chance. The ruling coalition of 26 Liberal Democrats and 6 Conservatives only have a majority of two. It could still be blocked, but there’s only a week to get all the opposition councillors on side and find at least two others prepared to go against the party line.

This isn’t just Southwark, or even just London. The cuts in government funding and the swift processing applies to all councils around the country. If you’ve got facilities or a service provided by the council that you think is pretty good, then you probably won’t by June. I’d have a nose around if I were you.

So what should be done? The money has to come from somewhere, what’s the alternative? Well, I suspect there’s £150,000 that could be saved in other council expenditure. I understand, from a councillor no less, that the annual bill for catering at the town hall is £30,0000. Alternatively, give the Livesey time to morph itself into a charitable trust. Donate the building (which allegedly isn’t factored into savings made anyway) and it’ll be £150K off all future budgets. The success of the South London Gallery in Camberwell suggests this is a viable option.

Or, and this is going to sound crazy coming from someone who’s trying to become a writer, shut the two libraries. London is awash with libraries, Southwark has fifteen libraries including major ones in Peckham and Camberwell and (I think) a new one opening in Canada Water soon. The closure of two, smaller libraries would not be a disaster. The books would be shifted to other centres and people will still be able to use the facilities because there are other libraries. There is no alternative to the Livesey.

Or, cut the fitness the initiative’s funding. Okay, so obesity is media popular at present, but Tuesday’s lunchtime news included two items on anti-social behaviour amongst youths (the murder in Warrington of Gary Newlove and the decision of Corby council to ban so-called mosquito alarms that disperse groups of children by targeting their hearing spectrum) both of which emphasised a lack of alternative activities and the BBC website today leads with a story announcing government targets to get children involved in culture more.

I would suggest that the Livesey does all of these things.

Councillor Nick Stanton, the council’s leader and a man with a young family, said that the Livesey was not designed to be a drop-off centre for kids, it was not designed to keep children off the streets. Maybe not, but that’s what it does. He claimed that “in all likelihood” Southwark’s children would go on to use other cultural facilities elsewhere, such as the Tate, the Imperial War Museum or the National Maritime Museum.

But that’s the point. The middle-class parents who use the Livesey will shout and scream and wave placards and join Facebook protest groups and if it closes they will find alternative for their kids. But the locals, the people for whom it is really intended, won’t. In London there are a surprising number of people who don’t leave their communities. They have no need to. They can’t afford to go shopping on Oxford Street or down Convent Garden or for drinks and dinner in Soho and why would they want to when all their friends and family live in Peckham which has a busy shopping centre of its own? And they certainly won’t be buying four travel cards and traipsing across the city for an hour to the Natural History Museum where, when everyone’s tired and thirsty, they have to find fifteen quid to get some drinks and a snack.

The Livesey Museum for Children serves the Southwark community because of what and where it is. Close it down and there are no alternatives. It’s this or nothing for the vast majority of people who use it.

You might want to look at the following websites:
www.liveseymuseum.org.uk
www.facebook.com/group.php?grid=8314768438 www.bridgetmckenzie.blogspot.com/2008/02/save-livesey-museum-for-children.html
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/390816.html
www.gopetition.com/online/16681
www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART53981.html