United Kingdom

I just went out to get my lunch, and it is an absolutely beautiful day today. Sixteen Celsius, very mild and bright despite a layer of clouds in the sky. Gorgeous day.

Everyone should have the day off today, so we can all be out and enjoying this weather. Everyone could go to their favourite park and have a picnic. Everyone could have a “nice weather day.”

Well, not everyone, obviously, because we would need the train drivers to get us to the picnic grounds, and the tube and bus drivers to get us to the train station. Everyone else, though, should have the day off.

Oh, except for the folks who work at Tesco’s, the grocery store, because I don’t have the stuff for a picnic lunch and would have to pick it up. So the train, tube and bus drivers and Tesco’s employees would have to work, but everyone else should have the day off.

Wait, I’ll like a cold drink when I get to the park, as I imagine everyone would. So any off license, news agent or convenience store near a park will need to stay open and have someone at the cash register. Train, tube and bus drivers, Tesco’s employees and off license cashiers, all report to work. Everyone else, take the day off!

No, just a second. I’ll probably want a pint later in the day from the nearest pub, so the pub landlords will need to be open. Sure, I could get a can of lager from the off license, but I’d prefer my beer in a glass pint. Therefore, the pub will need to be open. Okay, where are we at? Pub landlords, train, tube and bus drivers, off license cashiers and Tesco employees are all at work. Everyone else has a free day.

Oh, hang on! All those people in the park will create a lot of rubbish. We are going to need someone to pick all that rubbish up and clean out the rubbish bins. Park staff will need to be in to do that. Right, train, tube and bus drivers, off license cashiers, Tesco employees, pub landlords and park cleaners - man your posts! The rest of us are going to take a free day.

Though, I don’t really like the idea of all those people in the park at the same time I am. I’d prefer a nice quiet patch of grass. Actually, I guess when it comes right down to it, I really only care if I get the day off. The rest of you I don’t care about. So that’s it – everyone report to work but me.

Hey, here comes my boss. Wonder what she’s about to say?

I need to work overtime tonight? No chance of getting out and enjoying the weather?

No picnic for me today. I suppose it is some consolation that I can see the parking lot of my office from outside my window. It sure looks nice out.

"You'll have to wear a suit every day."

I heard that numerous times when I told folks I was moving over to London. Not just from folks whose experience of London was from the movie version of Bridget Jones' Diary. (That Mark Darcy, always sharply dressed in a suit, wasn't he?). Actual English people from England (originally at least) told me that.

"Everyone wears suits. Much more formal than we are over here..."

(The "in the colonies" was implied)

I believed all the hype because my experience of London working was from the movie version of Bridget Jones' Diary. I mean, sure the Hugh Grant character didn't wear a tie, but he worked in media and was a cad...

What I figured I would be wearing

Anyway, that prophecy turned out to be mostly false. Unless you work in banking... actual banking, not just working for a bank even... you probably will be dressing much like folks in North America. "Business casual." Usually I wear a collar shirt and slacks to work. Occasionally I'll throw on a tie or jacket, but never both at once. Sometimes, when I go down to my office in Egham, I even wear jeans. It's craziness.

Turns out even the bankers don't want to wear suits any more, though a lot of the coverage of this in the media tends to concentrate on the fact that they don't want to be identified as bankers, lest a stray G20 or climate camp protester starts pelting them with ecologically and ethically grown eggs. No, bankers are eschewing the pin-stripe suit for "more versatile styles," like "a plain suit, or a linen one, which they can wear outside the office."

When I wear t-shirts and jeans, I used to feel under dressed a lot here in London, but according to fashion expert Nick Foulkes, "multi-million pound hedge fund managers have always been more likely to wear jeans. They see themselves as financial artists rather than workers, so they love to wear creative garb." Therefore, if I get any dirty looks for wearing jeans and a t-shirt, I'll just claim to be a multi-millionaire hedge fund manager, and all will be forgiven.

Anyway, gotta run. I'm off to the opera tonight, and have to start getting ready. Despite casual wear being allowed in the opera house nowadays, I think I should dress up a little. After all, it's opera, so it is a special occasion.

Besides, I am likely to make an ass of myself by falling asleep and snoring, so I figure there's no point in dressing like a slob and doubling my embarrassment and shame.

Call me my life
Call me call me any anytime
Call me for a ride
Call me call me for some overtime

This is a phone booth. Phone booths in London are very distinctive, because they are red, old fashioned looking and have pretty windows on the doors and side panels.

There primary purpose seems to be to hold these:

Ads for erotic escorts.

The phone booths do have handsets and receivers in them, but in a country where there are 118 mobile phones for every 100 people (per capita cell mobile phone ownership), I can’t imagine that the phone booths get much work. Mobile phones are ubiquitous here. Everyone has one.

I have seen people begging on the street for change while chatting away on a mobile. “...and so I says, ‘oy, mate, don’t you step on my jacket,’ and the guys says back at me... Oh, wait hang on a second will you... Hey mister, can you spare any change?”

It all makes me a little sorry for the phone booths. They used to be well used and practical, making them proud symbols of this country. Now they seem a little put out and neglected. Nothing but impotent showpieces for tourists to take snapshots with.

Even as a tourist, though, you won’t get very far without a mobile phone. A hotel around the corner from me has a sign up that says, “Hotel reception. If the door is locked, please ring 020 1111 1111.”

Kind of leaves you stranded if checking in late without a mobile phone.

I suppose if you were willing to hike a block away to the nearest booth, you could use one of the phone booths. If you have any trouble remembering the number of the hotel reception between the door and the phone booth, you could always take down one of the escort ads and jot down the number of the back.

There you go. Perhaps phone booths are more important than impotent.

Antony Gormley's Fourth Plinth art project is now running in London's Trafalgar Square. The One and Other project will see a different person standing on the plinth every hour for 24 hours a day for 100 days from 5 July to 14 October.

FYI, a plinth is the base or platform upon which a column, pedestal, statue, monument or structure rests. In Trafalgar Square there are four plinths on the corner of the square, though only three of them hold statues. The empty fourth plinth was meant to hold a statue of William IV, but due to lack of cash that statue was never built.

Nowadays it usually holds modern art. The most recent project is Antony Gormely's project, which sees regular people standing up there for an hour each. Some are doing actual arty stuff, while some are just up there for the heck of it.

I went down today and saw a woman standing on the plinth holding up a sign for the Citizen's Advise Bureau, an organisation that helps people with free advise on their rights.

People have to stand up there rain or shine, even in the middle of the night.

Last Saturday night, both my flatmates had disappeared for the evening and all my friends were busy, so I was on my own for the evening. I had been at home watching some TV, but got bored and decided to grab a quick drink round about 11 o’clock in the evening.

I wandered over to my “local” for a pint. A “local” is the term people use for the pub they usually frequent. I actually have a couple pubs that I call local. My favourite is actually further down the street past at least two other drinking holes, so technically it isn’t my “local,” but it is small and quirky and often has a very diverse crowd, which appeals to me. Unfortunately, it also closes at 11:00 PM, so last Saturday night I’d already missed the closing bell, so I went to my second favourite local, the pub right around the corner, The Thornhill Arms.

It is a proper looking pub with wobbly tables, stained stools and a few moth-eaten couches on which you can sometimes get a seat, which is all a plus. On the negative side, though is the fact that they do karaoke on Saturday nights. Last Saturday night was beautiful though, clear and warm, so I took my pint and grabbed a seat at one of the picnic tables on the pavement outside. Many other folks were also out enjoying the weather, and I happened to grab the last picnic table.

This picture is not actually The Thornhill Arms, but it has a picnic table and beer, so is illustrative of the concept. In fact, none of the pictures in this blog are of The Thornhill Arms, but they do have beer in them...

A few moments later three men wandered out of the pub, pints in hand, and asked if they could share the table with me. I nodded, and the gents sat down. We started talking, and it turns out they were from Ireland, in town for the weekend for a boozy weekend.

“Is there a strip club around here?” one of them asked me. I replied there was a dodgy looking one down by King’s Cross Station, about five minutes walk away. “Nothing closer?” he asked. I shook my head.

The weather must have put everyone in a joyous mood, because soon there was a lot of chatting with the tables on either side of us. I ended up talking to a Brazilian student who was studying here in London, while the Irishmen were getting directions to a nearby “spa” from two bemused women in their early twenties.

The bartender was a woman in her fifties. She came out of the bar and called out, “last orders, please!” I looked at my watch. It was almost midnight, closing time of The Thornhill Arms. I wandered into the pub to get another pint, surprised that the Irishmen had declined my offer to buy them a round. Apparently they had been drinking since 10 in the morning, and had finally become so saturated with alcohol they could take no more.

I returned to my picnic table, glad to escape the awful warble of a man attempting (but failing) to sing Cracklin’ Rose by Neil Diamond. The Irishmen were arguing amongst themselves whether to try and find the spa that the women at the other table had mentioned to them. Finally, one of them decided that he was off to find it regardless of what the others did, and as he was the one holding the card that had the address to their hotel, the other two were forced to follow.

I chatted a little more with the Brazilian student, but soon he and his party were off, and I was left alone. No matter, I had started the night alone and was fine with just sitting back, sipping my beer and enjoying the warmth of the night.

Finishing up, I must admit that it was so pleasant I decided another pint would hit the spot. Of course, the landlady had called last orders, which meant I missed my chance… Unless there was a chance of a lock-in!

The landlady was standing outside, saying goodnight to a couple of regulars. After they departed I wandered up.

“Any chance of one more?” I asked. The landlady shook her head. There would be no more beer for me that night.

I should have guessed that would happen. After all, the Thornhill Arms has no curtains, and curtains are absolutely required for the lock-in.

A lock-in is the term used when a pub keeps serving after closing time. Generally the publican will close and lock the doors, thus locking in the customers and giving the practice its name. The curtains are necessary because otherwise the police would be able to see that the pub is breaking its license and serving out of hours. With the curtains closed and the door locked, no one from the outside knows.

Usually a lock-in is an honour reserved for regulars, but a few times since I’ve arrived in London I’ve been included in a lock-in. I will refrain from naming the pubs (after all, it is illegal), but I will tell you about my first experience with the lock-in.

It was at a pub I was at back when I lived on the Isle of Dogs. At 11 o’clock the landlord walked over and shut the curtains and locked the door. He then walked back behind the bar, and kept on chatting to the two regulars sitting there.

I wasn’t quite sure what was happening. Was the pub closed and were we meant to leave? I continued to drink my beer and watched the behaviour of the other patrons, the two regulars at the bar and a threesome playing pool at the back of the pub. One of the pool players wandered up to the bar and ordered another round, so once I finished my beer, I figured I was safe to do the same.

The landlord served me without question, and I went back and took my seat, pleased to be included in this strange ritual. It was only much later when I discovered that this practice had a name, and the history of the lock-in. The lock-in dates back to World War I, when opening hours of pubs were changed to keep factory workers from getting too drunk to contribute to the war effort. The tradition continued after the war, and in most cases if things were kept low key, the police didn’t bother to break down the door and arrest everyone inside.

In 2003 the licensing laws in Britain were changed, and pubs and bars could continue to serve alcohol past 11 o’clock at night, depending on the conditions of the license the pub receives (thus why the Thornhill Arms was open until midnight last Saturday night). With this change, the practice of the lock-in apparently has diminished, though I can attest that it does occasionally still happen, as I experience in that pub in the Isle of Dogs.

After I had finished my beer, I decided to head home. The landlord came around from behind the bar and unlocked and opened the door to let me out. I walked out and he closed the door behind me. As I walked away I heard the lock click, the pub still with the three pool players, two regulars and the landlord downing their pints.