They have brought shame on our proud city.
These are mindless hopeless young thugs, but they have spread their miserable despair to the rest of us.
Now, today, it's turning to racial tension, as if it wasn't bad enough.
God help us.
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
Kona Grill, Stamford, USA
I was sitting in this bar yesterday with my new iPad2, but couldn't type anything. I felt like the boy in the public toilet. You know.
'Here I sit, broken hearted. Paid a penny and only ...ted'
Oh well.
Speedos are not the thing to wear in America. They seem to cause much amusement. Our waiter at the Kona Grill completely cracked up when i said the reason I'd got an iPad was that the Apple shop has given it to me cut price, cos i went in there with my speedos on. He was so amused he went and told the others waiters, and they all came to look at me.
So no speedos in America.
'Here I sit, broken hearted. Paid a penny and only ...ted'
Oh well.
Speedos are not the thing to wear in America. They seem to cause much amusement. Our waiter at the Kona Grill completely cracked up when i said the reason I'd got an iPad was that the Apple shop has given it to me cut price, cos i went in there with my speedos on. He was so amused he went and told the others waiters, and they all came to look at me.
So no speedos in America.
Tuesday, 26 July 2011
Breakfast at Tiffany's
If you want breakfast in New York, don't go to Tiffany's. It a jeweller's shop, not a cafe. That's what we discovered yesterday morning on my first full day in Manhattan NY.
We had checked in to the Marriott Marquis hotel on Time Square. Yep, over looking Times Square itself. Even from the window of the 15th floor room the giant signs glared down, some staring impassively, some flashing insistently.
New York is certainly amazing. I had been a bit crest fallen the day before. I was expecting an article about me to be published in the Sunday Times supplement, but there was no edition this week. A bit embarrassing after letting everyone I know that this was going to happen. I am assured that it will be published sometime soon.
On that day, yesterday, Emily and Sean had treated us to a boat trip in the bay and around the Statue of Liberty. There was a buffet, with as much as you could eat and karaoke and a disco as well. Sean's mum Beth joined us and we spent a merry afternoon seeing the sights by river boat.
So the next day we wanted to do some sight seeing, starting with breakfast at Tiffany's. Instead we ended up virtually opposite at the 'Great American Health Bar, 5th Avenue' instead. A less healthy cafe I'd struggle to find, and we think the justification for the name came from the couple of leaves of lettuce that were served up with the fried food. This place is not recommended.
Then after we wandered around, we went to the Rockefeller Building and saw where the Christmas tree and ice rink are, called in to the Apple Shop, then on to Central Park. The park is huge, so with Emily being pregnant I thought we'd have a look at it in the traditional way, a horse and trap. We saw all the sights including the 'friends fountain'. The day I arrived New York was recording record temperatures, but today was lovely, in fact it rained later and nobody minded.
In the evening we met Sean's friend 'Al', the one who has been kicked out to accommodate the new arrangements. We were joined by Lydia, Emily's cousin for dinner at Tony's restaurant somewhere in Manhattan, where they serve 'family' portions. In other words plates that will feed two or three people.
After a couple of bottles of wine and too much food, the jet lag caught up. It had been a great day for family and Friends. I fell asleep instantly.
We had checked in to the Marriott Marquis hotel on Time Square. Yep, over looking Times Square itself. Even from the window of the 15th floor room the giant signs glared down, some staring impassively, some flashing insistently.
New York is certainly amazing. I had been a bit crest fallen the day before. I was expecting an article about me to be published in the Sunday Times supplement, but there was no edition this week. A bit embarrassing after letting everyone I know that this was going to happen. I am assured that it will be published sometime soon.
On that day, yesterday, Emily and Sean had treated us to a boat trip in the bay and around the Statue of Liberty. There was a buffet, with as much as you could eat and karaoke and a disco as well. Sean's mum Beth joined us and we spent a merry afternoon seeing the sights by river boat.
So the next day we wanted to do some sight seeing, starting with breakfast at Tiffany's. Instead we ended up virtually opposite at the 'Great American Health Bar, 5th Avenue' instead. A less healthy cafe I'd struggle to find, and we think the justification for the name came from the couple of leaves of lettuce that were served up with the fried food. This place is not recommended.
Then after we wandered around, we went to the Rockefeller Building and saw where the Christmas tree and ice rink are, called in to the Apple Shop, then on to Central Park. The park is huge, so with Emily being pregnant I thought we'd have a look at it in the traditional way, a horse and trap. We saw all the sights including the 'friends fountain'. The day I arrived New York was recording record temperatures, but today was lovely, in fact it rained later and nobody minded.
In the evening we met Sean's friend 'Al', the one who has been kicked out to accommodate the new arrangements. We were joined by Lydia, Emily's cousin for dinner at Tony's restaurant somewhere in Manhattan, where they serve 'family' portions. In other words plates that will feed two or three people.
After a couple of bottles of wine and too much food, the jet lag caught up. It had been a great day for family and Friends. I fell asleep instantly.
Sunday, 24 July 2011
The business, it's a funny old one
I know why they call it business class now, because that's what it is. Leg room, reclining, headphones with soothing music, champagne till it comes out of your ears, first on the plane and first off and through customs. Was it worth it? Yep, I'll do it again on the way back with Emily.
She is now 33 weeks pregnant, baby growing well. We had a listen in to the heart sounds using a toilet paper tube. Brilliant.
After the slight hiccup going through customs, Sean came to pick me up. Although it's only 39 miles from the airport, it took an hour and a half to get back. The traffic was heavy and the temperature reaching record levels. The radio DJ was getting increasingly excited every time his thermometer reaches a new high.
I know you want to know what the hiccup was. It'll be an anticlimax if I do tell.
Back at Emily and Sean's flat I got to see what they had acquired at the 'baby shower'. This American tradition, seems to be where the mother-to-be gets all her friends to buy her stuff for the baby. Emily now has three buggy's and loads of cloths for the first six weeks of life. I now see why women these days want to know the gender of the baby. The poor boy is also going to have to be a Metz fan, having soon to be born into a Metz family. The Metz I'm told, are equivalent to Manchester City, in Manchester's City-United rivalry. The United version of the New York baseball teams is, of course, the Yankees.
OK, the hiccup. I told you this is going to be an anticlimax. US customs and immigration are notoriously strict and lacking in humour, right?
Well I can vouch for that.
Emily had given me strict, careful, and probably not really very complicated instructions on what to say when they ask who I'm visiting. It was something like say you are visiting 'my daughter and her husband'. It would have been better if she hadn't given any advice, but apparently it is really important NOT to did mention the pregnancy.
So I got in the queue. A short queue, as I said before because of getting off the plane first. I was pretty pleased with myself for having remembered to write down her address to fill out the entry form.
My customs officer looked young, and seemed to be being particularly efficient, well conscientious anyway, as he was taking much longer than any of the others. That's good, I thought, we don't want criminals and murders being let in. He wasn't doing much smiling though.
In fact, as it got closer to my turn he was looking pretty grim. I bet he's a great poker play. All around, the explanatory TVs screens were saying welcome, cheerily, in lots of different languages. It felt a bit like a scene from George Orwell's 1984, where 'double speak' is used to say exactly the opposite of what is meant. A bit like 'choice' in the modern NHS, to mean 'competition'.
So I'm beginning to feel like I've entered a police state, and was allowing my imagination to run, a bit. Suddenly the queues of people, were the proletariat lining up for food vouchers and the guards in uniforms and big guns were waiting for one of them to grab a handful and make a run for it. Or perhaps the border to the land of the free, and they were stopping people escaping to it. All the time the proles are handing over these bits of paper with the address that they are staying at, and declarations that they are not bringing in explosives, or huge amounts of money, food and drugs.
What, I wondered, happens to those bots of paper. I imaged and Orwellian style warehouse somewhere, with hundreds of working women, sitting at noisy type-writers, turning the hand written documents into type written documents. Every now and then a 'runner' would come and collect the accumulated pile, and take them to another room, where another lot of workers would enter them onto a manual database, so that the records could be retrieved if one of the applicants disappeared during their stay.
Then it was my turn.
'Place your right hand, palm down, on the screen' he said without expression or looking as he took my passport and papers off me. 'Look into the camera', so I did.
'What is the purpose of you visit' he asked staring at my passport.
Inexplicably I said 'visiting a friend' pause,'well my daughter actually'. I smiled at his forehead.
' Which is it, your friend or your daughter?' expressionless
'My daughter.' Straight face.
'Er, and her husband, they live here'.
He didn't reply, but kept looking at my passport, and then at a screen.
'Can you tell me your name sir?'
This is easy 'Ivan Benett'.
And as soon as I said I knew I was in trouble.
For the first time he looked up, exaggeratedly looking at the young short haired clean-shaven person in the photograph.
'You have JOHN Benett's passport, sir'
My heart sank. I do have John Benett's passport. John Ivan Benett's.
'Please wait one moment' and off he went. I could see him talking to someone else, and they kept looking up at me.
'Would you step this way sir?' He beckoned me behind a screen.
Behind the screen there were two other men. I nearly said different, but they weren't, they were exactly the same. Impassive, stern, humourless.
One spoke while Two put on some blue surgical gloves. 'I'm too young to die' I thought, and too old for an 'intimate' examination.
'Can you explain why you are using the passport of John Benett, when your ticket is for Ivan Benett, sir?' One asked. Well I could, but it involved an unnecessarily complicated and barely plausible story about being born in Mauritius and that's how it was done there.
I blamed my parents, of course.
Two, the one with the blue gloves, then asked if he could look through my hand luggage. 'Yes' I replied in a high squeak of relief 'help your self' I added unnecessarily, as he was already tipping the contents out on the stainless steel surface.
Now I wouldn't have thought there was anything suspicious in my bag, but ear pieces and dongles and a sudoku book can arouse the greatest of interest, if you are trying to foil a plot to take over the world, and so each item needed an explanation.
After this interogation and quite abruptly I was handed back my passport and told 'you may continue on your journey sir, have a nice day'. And that was it.
Just as I left the room Two said 'I hope Emily's pregnancy goes well'. I turned, but they had gone.
She is now 33 weeks pregnant, baby growing well. We had a listen in to the heart sounds using a toilet paper tube. Brilliant.
After the slight hiccup going through customs, Sean came to pick me up. Although it's only 39 miles from the airport, it took an hour and a half to get back. The traffic was heavy and the temperature reaching record levels. The radio DJ was getting increasingly excited every time his thermometer reaches a new high.
I know you want to know what the hiccup was. It'll be an anticlimax if I do tell.
Back at Emily and Sean's flat I got to see what they had acquired at the 'baby shower'. This American tradition, seems to be where the mother-to-be gets all her friends to buy her stuff for the baby. Emily now has three buggy's and loads of cloths for the first six weeks of life. I now see why women these days want to know the gender of the baby. The poor boy is also going to have to be a Metz fan, having soon to be born into a Metz family. The Metz I'm told, are equivalent to Manchester City, in Manchester's City-United rivalry. The United version of the New York baseball teams is, of course, the Yankees.
OK, the hiccup. I told you this is going to be an anticlimax. US customs and immigration are notoriously strict and lacking in humour, right?
Well I can vouch for that.
Emily had given me strict, careful, and probably not really very complicated instructions on what to say when they ask who I'm visiting. It was something like say you are visiting 'my daughter and her husband'. It would have been better if she hadn't given any advice, but apparently it is really important NOT to did mention the pregnancy.
So I got in the queue. A short queue, as I said before because of getting off the plane first. I was pretty pleased with myself for having remembered to write down her address to fill out the entry form.
My customs officer looked young, and seemed to be being particularly efficient, well conscientious anyway, as he was taking much longer than any of the others. That's good, I thought, we don't want criminals and murders being let in. He wasn't doing much smiling though.
In fact, as it got closer to my turn he was looking pretty grim. I bet he's a great poker play. All around, the explanatory TVs screens were saying welcome, cheerily, in lots of different languages. It felt a bit like a scene from George Orwell's 1984, where 'double speak' is used to say exactly the opposite of what is meant. A bit like 'choice' in the modern NHS, to mean 'competition'.
So I'm beginning to feel like I've entered a police state, and was allowing my imagination to run, a bit. Suddenly the queues of people, were the proletariat lining up for food vouchers and the guards in uniforms and big guns were waiting for one of them to grab a handful and make a run for it. Or perhaps the border to the land of the free, and they were stopping people escaping to it. All the time the proles are handing over these bits of paper with the address that they are staying at, and declarations that they are not bringing in explosives, or huge amounts of money, food and drugs.
What, I wondered, happens to those bots of paper. I imaged and Orwellian style warehouse somewhere, with hundreds of working women, sitting at noisy type-writers, turning the hand written documents into type written documents. Every now and then a 'runner' would come and collect the accumulated pile, and take them to another room, where another lot of workers would enter them onto a manual database, so that the records could be retrieved if one of the applicants disappeared during their stay.
Then it was my turn.
'Place your right hand, palm down, on the screen' he said without expression or looking as he took my passport and papers off me. 'Look into the camera', so I did.
'What is the purpose of you visit' he asked staring at my passport.
Inexplicably I said 'visiting a friend' pause,'well my daughter actually'. I smiled at his forehead.
' Which is it, your friend or your daughter?' expressionless
'My daughter.' Straight face.
'Er, and her husband, they live here'.
He didn't reply, but kept looking at my passport, and then at a screen.
'Can you tell me your name sir?'
This is easy 'Ivan Benett'.
And as soon as I said I knew I was in trouble.
For the first time he looked up, exaggeratedly looking at the young short haired clean-shaven person in the photograph.
'You have JOHN Benett's passport, sir'
My heart sank. I do have John Benett's passport. John Ivan Benett's.
'Please wait one moment' and off he went. I could see him talking to someone else, and they kept looking up at me.
'Would you step this way sir?' He beckoned me behind a screen.
Behind the screen there were two other men. I nearly said different, but they weren't, they were exactly the same. Impassive, stern, humourless.
One spoke while Two put on some blue surgical gloves. 'I'm too young to die' I thought, and too old for an 'intimate' examination.
'Can you explain why you are using the passport of John Benett, when your ticket is for Ivan Benett, sir?' One asked. Well I could, but it involved an unnecessarily complicated and barely plausible story about being born in Mauritius and that's how it was done there.
I blamed my parents, of course.
Two, the one with the blue gloves, then asked if he could look through my hand luggage. 'Yes' I replied in a high squeak of relief 'help your self' I added unnecessarily, as he was already tipping the contents out on the stainless steel surface.
Now I wouldn't have thought there was anything suspicious in my bag, but ear pieces and dongles and a sudoku book can arouse the greatest of interest, if you are trying to foil a plot to take over the world, and so each item needed an explanation.
After this interogation and quite abruptly I was handed back my passport and told 'you may continue on your journey sir, have a nice day'. And that was it.
Just as I left the room Two said 'I hope Emily's pregnancy goes well'. I turned, but they had gone.
Friday, 22 July 2011
The BA lounge
It 7.50 and I'm sitting in the BA lounge of terminal 3, Manchester airport. It's along trip to JFK and American Airlines offered me an upgrade for £360 on way. Well you can't take it with you. So here I am indulging in a bit of luxury, while I wait for my third row, window seat. Can't wait to see my little girl, and doing a bit of sun bathing on the Long Island beach. She's not so little any more, I hear.
The journalist from the Sunday Times sent me a draft of her article. It seems OK, if rather brief, but who cares. I'm not doing it for myself, of course. It's to promote stroke prevention for people with atrial fibrillation. I'll just have to cope with the fame as best I can.
Shall I have another coffee? No I don't think I'll bother. Champagne? Bit early.
There's no Guardian to read, can you believe it? I've looked through the Times, it's all about the Norwegian killer. Not a whisper about the Murdoch's.
See you over the water.
The journalist from the Sunday Times sent me a draft of her article. It seems OK, if rather brief, but who cares. I'm not doing it for myself, of course. It's to promote stroke prevention for people with atrial fibrillation. I'll just have to cope with the fame as best I can.
Shall I have another coffee? No I don't think I'll bother. Champagne? Bit early.
There's no Guardian to read, can you believe it? I've looked through the Times, it's all about the Norwegian killer. Not a whisper about the Murdoch's.
See you over the water.
Thursday, 21 July 2011
Events at the Sunday Times
It's not been a good week for the Murdoch Empire, and in an attempt to boost ratings and reach a new audience, the Sunday Times interviewed my yesterday for the supplement. Then, just now, I've had my photo taken, I'll post them on here when they come through.
Now I'm about to go and assess some medical student projects. My own students presented yesterday and did fabulously well.
I did assess the medical student projects. They each presented for five minutes then were questionned by each of the panel. Three on the panel, two professors and me. The poor things were terrified.
They were all brilliant, and way better than I could have managed at their stage. Well done Manchester medical school.
Now I'm about to go and assess some medical student projects. My own students presented yesterday and did fabulously well.
I did assess the medical student projects. They each presented for five minutes then were questionned by each of the panel. Three on the panel, two professors and me. The poor things were terrified.
They were all brilliant, and way better than I could have managed at their stage. Well done Manchester medical school.
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