Branded...

I finally went to the Minnellium Dome last night...

Yes, I know, only eight years late, but nearly everything they planned for the minnellium was late. And still doesn't work. It's a British thing.

In those eight years, I've flown over it, driven under it, sailed past it, tubed through it, but never actually been in it.

It's bloody clever actually. On a very narrow peninsula they've managed to thread the Jubilee Line under the Blackwall Tunnels - that's four tunnels under the Thames in total - and construct this very iconic building on top. (Although I suppose it's not really a building - just a big tent - and the buildings underneath it are fairly ordinary.)



And, of course, for about the last seven years of the eight, no-one in their right mind wanted to go there because it was an ill-conceived, publicly-funded white elephant full of crap. It was all cultural - Mind Zone, Body Zone, Spiritual Zone - and no-one wanted to spend their "lee-zhure" time doing all that nonsense, even if it was inside a triumph of civil engineering...

So what happened?

Well, firstly, someone decided it would be better if it were full of things people actually wanted to do - shop, eat, go to cinema, see Bryan Adams in November (OK, not the last one...)

Secondly, someone else decided it would be good if people could actually get there, so they built the aforementioned tube line...

But most important, branding happened.

Someone, probably in what Eddie Izzard calls one of those "4 o'clock in the morning, stroky-beard meetings", came up with the ludicrous suggestion of calling it after a phone company.

O₂ is one of the most successful marketing exercises of all time. The phone company used to be BT Cellnet - deeply untrendy and lagging massively behind the likes of Orange and Vodafone. No clear identity and losing money and subscribers.

But now, the strength of the brand is overwhelming. It can be identified by the subtle blue fade of the corporate colour, the little subscript ₂, the bubbles, Sean Bean being all northern and reassuring on the ads, etc.



And now, not only has it made the Dome very cool and trendy, every person who goes there (23 000 watching Kylie last night, not to mention all the people eating and drinking and watching films) gets the brand lasered right through their eyeballs into their brains at every available opportunity.

The branding is so successful that The O₂ is the only fully commercial organisation to have what is effectively a free advert on that other icon, the tube map...



Now that is bloody clever...

Papering over the crack...

It's not often you get to see an art work destroyed, but here it is....



It's Shibboleth again.

To create the crack, Doris Salcedo had to destroy the floor, so it can't be moved or installed elsewhere. Mending the floor destroys the art work. Destroy to create, create to destroy... It's, like, totally an aesthetic paradox and that....

It does, however, appear as though they are mending it with giant duct tape; which seems to be from the same school of civil engineering as the repair of the Huka Falls footbridge with a tile adhesive gun...

I think it was all a bit too clever for its own good. At least with the slides you were meant to fall down them...

* Thanks to Paul for the photo.

Not all it's Cracked up to be..

Right, I can't claim to understand all modern art, and I'm from the same school of aesthetic criticism as are many people from the Midlands, (chief amongst them my sister and Paul), where we speak as we find. ("Well, in't it just some bits o' metal and teabags?")

But I do try. After all, I have a degree, and so by law I must spend some of my down time being cultural and nodding sagely at stuff.

And so here is Shibboleth in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, an installation by Doris Salcedo.



It's a big crack in the floor. Quite deep, and running the length of the building, it starts off very thin...



...and widens...



...splits...



...goes off down dead ends, presumably to get that woman's shoes...



...and finally disappears under the wall at the other end.



It's meant to make us think about racism and colonialism. Which it really doesn't, because it's exceptionally easy to step from one side to the other, in precisely the way that I imagine it's not if you're on the receiving end of racism. It was, of course, impossible for anyone in a wheelchair to cross it at certain points, but she doesn't claim it's about that.



Maybe I missed something.

What it was making people think about (me and all the snatched conversations I heard while I was there) was exactly how she did it. Pneumatic drills? Moulds? Poured concrete? Screeds? (and how will they fill it in again afterwards?)

And of course, if it is supposed to say something about modern society, what it really says is "How stupid are people these days that an army of guides has to hand out leaflets telling them not to fall down it?"



And how to get your camera back...

Hello Auntie...

I went on an official tour of BBC Television Centre yesterday.



Well, some it.

There are bits you don't get to see. You don't get to see the Blue Peter garden. Presumably in case you vandalise it, or dig up the time capsule or tell everyone about Petra. And you don't get to go inside the news studios, in case you are a lesbian and Nicholas Witchell has to sit on you. (This was the official reason given by the tour guides, Simon and Debbie *)

We start with the very low budget Walk of the Dead Entertainers...



Dame Thora, Arthur Lowe, Ernie Wise, Marti Caine, Jon Pertwee... Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly **

And then on inside, where no-one could accuse them of cashing in on recent remakes...



Actually, the last one is Gordon the Gopher. They keep him in a glass-fronted cage now. Perhaps they could do the same with Andi Peters.

We got to see TC1, which is a really big studio where they were rehearsing for Dance X, and TC8, where they were recording the Catherine Tate Christmas Special. In July. "Whadda f***in' liberty!!"

It's all a bit pedestrian. These days no-one really needs the whole "don't wear blue if you're a weather forecaster" thing explaining to them...



...but they do it anyway. And they let you read the news...



(Lisa Kaplinsky)

...of course they show you where Roy Castle did the tap dancing...



...and you get a good look at the Holby Plastic People (don't look if you are of a nervous disposition...)



Now... dinner time!

* Simon is what happens when you're no longer convincing sitting on a bar stool in the background of the Queen Vic, and Debbie is what happens when you're too old to present CBeebies.

** Well, it can only be a matter of time for one of them, and the Strictly Tragic Accident where the other gets a good kicking and falls forever into Len Goodman's handbag is not far off.

Anti-Rant (Being Nice for Lent...)

The Church of England says I don't have to give anything up for Lent this year. (Actually, as I have had no pancakes, I wouldn't have to give up anything anyway, would I?)

What I actually have to do is "something helpful" and "good deeds." I can even get text or web reminders in case I forget to be helpful and good which, let's face it, is likely.

Yesterday, I had to "go to a party". Today I have to "spend some time in silence..."



...like that's gonna happen!

But I am slowly buying into the whole "Changing the world a little bit each day" message - I even have a copy of this, and have done some of the things in it. (Well, one of the things - I turn the TV off standy when I go to bed now. However, as I have just bought a big new tv when there was actually nothing particularly wrong with the old one, my "change the world" account is still seriously in the red...)

Anyway, back to the point. I'm going to write a thank you letter to someone. It's one of the things on the CoE list and will make me feel better about myself.

Yesterday in London, I dropped my phone and the slidy front bit slid off completely. The front and back bits hung together precariously on a spring and getting them back together was like being on the Krypton Factor, and involved patience and tweezers. When I got it back together, it didn't work. The screen flashed pretty colours then went black.

The O2 website said I had to take it to an O2 Shop. The woman in the O2 Shop said they would have to send it away to Nokia. She said it could be 28 days. She said they didn't have a loan phone for me. She chewed gum while she spoke.

She helpfully suggested I could take it to the little mobile phone shop on Millbrook Road. They might do it in 48 hours.

Well, they were nothing short of brilliant.

They took the phone in at about 10am. They were polite; they knew what they were talking about; they didn't promise anything they couldn't do; they had a sense of humour. (Take note of all these, girl in O2 Shop...) I went to work. I picked it up at 4pm - all fixed under warranty.

So, I'm going to write to Next Communications in Southampton and thank them for the excellent service. And for the (albeit very small) audience here... Thanks Sam and Chris. I would have been very grumpy without my phone. And I wouldn't want the Church of England texting me about that.*

*Not that they would have been able to...

Grey Skies, More Towers...

...and no Pancakes* :-(

The weather wasn't great in London today and the Thames looked steely and very threatening. At 7.2m, it was the highest tide this year so far and at times it looked in danger of coming over the edge...



I worry about these things. Time to get up high!

It's officially Tower week. Already been up the Spinnaker Tower and there are plenty in London to keep the theme going.

Firstly, the Monument. A tower in all but name, built to commemorate the Great Fire. All you need to know about its history and purpose is here...



...Bakers, Puddings, Christopher Wren etc.

The last time I climbed the 311 steps to the top was pre-1981. I know this because my Gran climbed them too, kept going by the fact that an American on the way down told her there was a café at the top**.

But the views are good, even on a grey day...



...up and down...



Next Tower is The Tower of London.



Again, not been here for a very long time, but it seems to have smartened up its act. Lots of interactive touch-screen stuff and the Queen Elizabeth II Travelators to take you past the Crown Jewels. God forbid you might actually want to stop and look.

It was not very busy, surprisingly, but such tourist groups as there were...



...just took photos of all the predictable things.



Of course, I would never do that.

And finally on to Tower Bridge.



Iconic, obviously, but going in and up is better for the views it offers of other things...



..than the views it offers of itself...



You can go in the Engine Room now too. Which is impressive...



...until you realise that these engines don't work the bridge anymore. That's all done by the new-fangled electricity now.

Finished off the day by going to see Boeing-Boeing at the Comedy Theatre. Don't normally like farces, but this one had Michelle Gomez from Green Wing and Feel the Force in it and she was effortlessly brilliant!

*Apologies to The Street family, who didn't have me there to flambé anything this year...
** There isn't...

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