Bookpacking’s Blog

As someone who often meets people at London’s Heathrow, Bookpacking can testify that it’s often a long wait. From plane to door, an hour is a typical time. 90 mins is not unusual. Often, if your guests are in the non-EU queue at the UK border, it’s passport control where a lot of time is lost.

But luggage can be slow too. As the BBC News reported this lunchtime, a new tunnel being built at Heathrow aims to cut intra-terminal delivery time. Hopefully it’ll be ready – along with a whole lot of creaking London infrastructure – for 2012.
And, again hopefully, it won’t open with the same debacle as T5 when the national carrier was left with egg on its flag.

What this actually means for customers is hard to say, because the practical implications weren’t actually spelled out. Given that you collect your bags in the same terminal you arrive in, surely it only affects those who are transferring flights? Presumably, if bags can take an hour at the moment to cross between terminals, then some of the millions of bags which are “lost”every year must be not lost but late – missing their connection and failing to follow their owners.

The end result is the same, but this is vague reporting inspired by a press release; it fails to anticipate an obvious viewer question. It follows on from yesterday’s report on the same programme that London buses are failing mothers with pushchairs. There was no mention of the size increases which see some buggies resemble quad bikes, or of the fact that in the capital nobody has any space on London’s packed-out transport. As a regular bus user, Bookpacking boggles at where this extra pram capacity might come from? Less seats for the elderly & disabled maybe?

Of course, baggage is a thankless task. And, like the mail, the general public has no interest in vast logistics operations or the small daily successes that go unreported. So the PR at LHR should be careful not to promise too much. Because when the new tunnel opens, an impatient world will be watching.

What does it mean to be English? Is it the polyester football shirts, lager and kebabs of the busy high street? Is it John Major’s gentle thwack of leather on willow and warm ale on quiet village greens? Or is it Brick Lane’s curry houses and urban cool?

Is it the stoical clipped tones of the senior civil servant on the 07.17 to Euston, or the extravagant effing and blinding of the bare-chested brickie barreling through Brum in a banger?

Whatever it is – and there is a lot of debate over the success of the ‘multicultural experiment’ – let’s celebrate it today. Without straying into jingoism or nationalism, let’s salute the flag and be proud of where we’re from.

And while we’re at it, let’s tip our metaphorical hat to the world’s most famous playwright who died on the same day. And he is famous the world over. Bookpacking recently asked some South Americans if they had heard of William Shakespeare. We though we were being careful not to be Euro-centric and make cultural assumptions. But they looked at Bookpacking with an expression of hurt, saying something along the lines of “Of course! Do you think we’re from Mars or something?”

We won’t make that mistake again.

In ultra-runner Haruki Murakami’s book What I Think About When I’m Running, the author makes a clear connection with running and writing. Running can be a meditation, and while we might switch off on the surface, the subconscious is often whirring away underneath.

Like a diligent PA, while we take 40 winks on our office sofa, it’s busily sorting things and putting together internal presentations to impress us when we wake up. Running can be something to write about itself but it can also be a way to facilitate creativity and to establish the routine that can make the difference between just coming up with an idea, and actually executing it.

As running becomes more and more popular, so we can expect more books on the subject. Tonight at (London) Victoria’s Run and Become, writer Chris McDougall gave us a little insight into a book which is another variation on the ‘quest’ theme. In Born to Run, this injury-prone author was trying to find a way to stay out of the doctor’s surgery. His search brought him into contact with an obscure tribe of Indians in Mexico who run miles and miles every day, never giving it a second thought, yet are party-hard beer monsters.

And did he find what he was looking for? Bookpacking was sorely tempted during the Q&A to ask him to read out the last page. But wisely, he left us wanting more. Hitting the park the next evening for a run, Bookpacking’s own subconscious put a busy week’s input in the mix. Some 40 minutes later, the results spewed forth. And – taking our inspiration from one of those Indian runners we’d heard so much about – we concluded that when we got back home, we too would chug a beer in record time.

This is not the fate that awaits London’s banking fraternity should the economy worsen (is it?) but a super spot on the Thames to watch the river flow and remember that we are but a blip in the grand scheme of things. Historic boozer the Prospect of Whitby takes its name from a ship that used to moor nearby, and had a famous – or rather infamous – clientele. The Hanging Judge George Jeffreys was a regular; it’s sometimes said that cops and villains have more in common than either would like to admit.

The guest ales reflected the fast approaching St George’s Day, and supping a pint of England’s Glory, our thoughts turned to a North Yorkshire lad who would have known the river well. One of Britain’s premier navigators came from a humble background on the colliers that shuttled up and down the east coast bringing coal from the North East to London: the legendary Captain James Cook (BTW, anyone ever made the connection with Star Trek? For “USS Enterprise” read “HMS Endeavour”; for James Kirk read James Cook).

Author Herman Hesse uses a river as a metaphor of timelessness in the cult work Siddhartha. And there’s something very soothing about being near water. Looking at the Thames and remembering that some 2,000 years ago people were going about their business in more or less the same spot, it’s a great way to eat a little humble pie and get back a little perspective in this hectic city of inflated salaries and egos.

The warehouses along here may now be tiny overpriced flats – supply and demand will get you every time in London town – but it’s not hard to imagine trading ships from all over the world tied up; many of them coming from lands where the sun never set, that pink third of the mapped world that denoted the British Empire.

One can picture Conrad watching a mysterious vessel bob gently, and a little light bulb going off as he tried to figure out which obscure and exotic location it had come from. Or Dickens, on one of his many perambulations, surveying the comings and goings like some sort of self-appointed overseer.

And the river is still busy today. Catamaran clippers to and fro at a heady rate of knots, passing the slower sightseeing boats, as commuters escape to Greenwich. But even these sleek new machines are humbled as tourists bounce past them in a RIB (rigid inflatable boat), slewing across their bows: hard a-port in a G-force inducing semi-circle. We come and go; but like Hesse said, the river flows on.

Yesterday evening found Bookpacking playing with a new toy in the woodland of Wimbledon Common. Sometimes the simplest of things can bring hours of enjoyment, and for £4 or so, we bought a sturdy looking compass from the local Aladaddin’s Cave that is Lidl, and headed off into the bush. The little boy inside takes very little prompting to appear, and with our new low-tech gadget, childhood memories came rushing back of family camping holidays with mysterious forests that had to be explored and hills that had to be conquered.

As people look for cheaper leisure activities – eg not buying a few rounds in a pub and waving goodbye to £50 in a couple of happily hazy hours – Bookpacking is predicting an upswing in activities like hiking and camping. Already surfing a festival wave, more and more people are discovering the joys of life under canvas. There’s nothing like that first cup of tea (remember the slogan: “Tea; best drink of the day”?). Especially when you’ve faffed on for a half-hour to make it – this the very definition of deferred gratification.

And the great outdoors is, well, great. Last night, surrounded by birdsong and devoid of people, it was hard to believe this was Zone 3, well inside the M25. If travel is often about escape, maybe we don’t always need to spend a  huge amount on airfares to find such solicitous solitude if we look harder at home.

And best of all, some sharp compass work brought us right to the final waypoint of the evening, the Fox & Grapes. A cute pint (served only a few degrees below room temperature), we aren’t being obtuse when we say this angle is our favourite segment of the hiking experience; the very apex of this little Boys Own adventure.*

Hi-Tec walking boots from £40; Karrimor boots similar at Field & Trek sale; compass £4 Lidl; OS map typically £7; Berghaus waterproof from £50 online, or c. £150 for Gore-Tex lined; walking trousers c. £30 from Blacks.

* apologies, but what’s the point in having your own blog if you can’t insert the occasional awful pun?

Every cloud has a silver lining, and for the ever-frugal Bookpacking that means that there are some cracking deals to be found as the overextended find themselves making new holes in those ever-tightening belts, and even the well-placed cut their outgoings as they monitor the uncertain economy.

Sipping a delicious 80p cup of “Flat Broke” (8 oz. of filter topped with hot milk, doncha know) in Brick Lane Coffee, we might use that caffeine to suppress our appetite for a few hours. But even then, Marks and Spencer are at hand to offer the £2 meal deal (sandwich, drink, crisps).

And falling upon a couple of hidden-gem hostelries amongst the mews of Marylebone, we were reminded that Samuel Smith’s pubs are more common than you might think in central London. They are uniformly cheap; £1.88 for a delicious pint of bitter? Now that’s t’ good Yorkshire thrift lad.

Strolling through cosy Clerkenwell with its publishing operations and media village vibe, Bookpacking found ourselves in The City where there was an air of excitement as the suited and booted around the Barbican sensed spring in the air. Jackets were slung over shoulders, and outside tables filled up as the light at the end of the winter tunnel finally became visible.

But there was only one place to be tonight, and that was Brick Lane. Over at Rough Trade*, the legendary (and bilingual Francophile) Marianne Faithful played a free instore gig to mark her new album launch. Further down the lane at Eastside Books a group of budding authors gathered to critique each others’ work, and a few doors up the Brick Lane Gallery was hosting an opening for the Art in Mind show, including contributions from the amusingly-monickered Art Tart.

Title of the night went to an artist called Loz, for his funkily minimalist piece “Man Ray Stops Bullets”. Sometimes artists are loathe to deconstruct their work; because it takes away from the subjective element where we create our own meanings. Or because they just can’t be bothered. Or, for the extremely cynical, because it’d reveal how superficial the ‘concept’ was.

Not Loz though, who happily explained the fairly elementary symbolism, and seemed pleased that someone had shown an interest. Art, like it or not, is a business and a highly competitive one at that; there’s absolutely no getting around it. And in business, marketing is key. So a title that sticks in the mind is a shrewd move on the part of the artist. Like writing, talent is nothing without application. No marketing means no sales and in 2009 the notion of noble poverty ain’t what it used to be.

* if you don’t know the derivation of this name, a quick bit o’ Googling may amuse…

But you can judge a potential lover by their choice of reading, according to tonight’s whimsical lurv article in the London Paper. Using years of research by leading sociologists – or maybe just having a bit of fun drafting a press release – Penguin’s dating site has come up with a few general book genres and some ideas about the sort of people you’d find reading them.

Wait, did we just say Penguin’s dating site? Brand extension has a lot to answer for, Mr Branson. Or does it; because for flirting booklovers the most exciting flashes of electricity can come when we find an interesting other who loves the same literature as us.

If an art gallery is supposedly a great place to meet potential partners (choose your exhibition very carefully we say), then why shouldn’t a mutual appreciation of the same piece of print be the spark that spurs an epic love story?

Savvy vagabonds have been using the Nationwide Building Society’s transaction charge-free services for years now. But even this trusty institution is tightening its belt in these lean times. However, as this article points out, it’s only a half-notch; it still remains a good bet if you want to withdraw your wedge abroad. Check it out to see if you’re paying through the nose and being hit with a hefty hike for what is essentially a couple of computers talking to each other.

On this day in 1978 the secret life ex-Baader-Meinhof member Astrid Proll was leading, in London’s leafy West Hampstead, came to an end. On a typical suburban street, Special Branch came to take away an atypical woman: an urban guerilla who had lived a dramatic life outside the margins and now taught teenagers how to fix cars.

Bearing in mind this was the Britain of the 1970s, one can only imagine the metaphorical balls it took to work in an environment like that. From stealing and driving getaway cars, to the sensory deprivation in an isolation cell that would drive Ulrike Meinhof to suicide; to working with disadvantaged youngsters in a country where people were still fixated on WW2 – it was a life less ordinary.

Interestingly, for someone who had fought the state at home, she found herself teaching as part of a government training scheme in Britain. Bookpacking was lucky enough to speak to someone who had befriended Proll and was there when the police arrived. Vilified at home, this lady had nothing but kind words for her here. It’s a story full of contradictions and shades of grey.

The forthcoming film The Baader-Meinhof Complex will dig all this up again, and there is talk of the place in the national psyche that the German Autumn holds in the national psyche. But when Bookpacking read contemporary reports in the London newspapers it really did seem like a different world. Perhaps history is more ‘done and dusted’ in some countries, especially ones that feel they can laud their recent past. While others struggle to come to turns with what is another tear in a barely closed wound.