I can’t remember where I found the link to this site, but among its various delights is a selection of Bergman parodies. There’s a full 15 minutes from George Coe and Anthony Lover called ‘De Düva’, which is essentially Wild Strawberries plus the obligatory Death challenge. I’m not really sure where they were going with this, though it did earn them a seat at the 1968 Oscars. In fact, most of the efforts are more interesting than entertaining (French and Saunders give it a decent stab). Maybe people assume this kind of parody will just write itself.

Ooh, The Onion have published an atlas. From one of the sample pages:

Home to Earth’s entire population of 62.7 million people, every single one of the planet’s 427 cities, and all of it’s history, culture and beauty, France is the only country in the world.

it would probably be something like this:

From Classic Television Showbiz.

I spent yesterday afternoon being taken on a guided tour of Harlow, an ‘old new town’ in Essex, as part of a work jaunt with Jen and Kate. Our boss is starting to think we (and possibly especially I) do too much of this kind of thing, and he might be right, because I often come back half-convinced I need to jack in my wonk job for something less detached and more hands-on. But seeing how things work or don’t work on the ground can also be a useful corrective to the kind of work we do, and without it we’re in danger of becoming way too insulated. On the other hand, self-important Mayoral functionaries from the big smoke are just the kind of people to think they know enough about a place after a few hours to start dishing out advice to the locals on what they should be doing. And that’s pretty much what I’m going to do now.

Harlow’s a town of 80,000 people in the north-west corner of Essex, surrounded by farmland and with decent links to Cambridge, Stansted airport and London, from whence our train whisked us in a mere 30 minutes. Our guide was Ostap from the local regeneration company, Harlow Renaissance, and he took us on a quick but illustrative tour: past the industrial parks and shopping centres in the north of the town; into ‘Old Harlow’, the village that pre-dates the planned development of the 1950s; to New Hall, a very attractive new development on former farmland to the east; to Bush Fair, a poorer but busy shopping centre in the south east, then last to quiz Ostap’s boss.

Harlow Renaissance’s main aim to is to use funding available from the government to make Harlow town a more attractive place so that when they build all the new homes the government wants to see in the area over the next decade or so the town centre doesn’t just empty out to the new areas. Ostap and the others were very positive but, and I hope I’m not overstating this, we got the sense that they’re battling some fairly set perceptions of Harlow as a failed place. On the face of it, this doesn’t seem quite fair: it’s not a particularly deprived area, worklessness is high but not exceptionally so, crime is certainly lower than in London, it’s fairly clean and tidy, and the polycentric new town layout (brainchild of Frederick Gibberd) has left it with an exceptional amount of green space right in the centre of town:

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But that new town legacy may also be a big part of the problem. Some of that green space isn’t as accessible or useful as it should be, as it’s bordered or bisected by busy main roads. The supposed ‘town centre’ is quiet in the day and dead at night, which surely has something to do with the fact that it’s surrounded by fast-flowing main roads with roundabouts instead of junctions. Yes, pedestrians can get there via underpasses and the like, but it’s hardly welcoming - no wonder most people seem to head to the out-of-town big-box shops instead.

Maybe it’s is just my biases showing, but it seemed to me this very car-centric transport layout is one of Harlow’s most serious problems. Ostap pointed out that the main link from the M11 to the industrial parks runs through residential areas, already clogged with more cars than the post-war planners thought Harlovians could possibly have. Pedestrians were pretty scarce, and for a town that boasts “one of the most extensive cycle track networks in the country” it has distinctly average levels of actual cycling.

Harlow also has unusually high levels of social housing, another legacy of its past as a planned repository for industries moving, workers and all, out of London. Much of this housing was pretty poor to start with and has received little investment since. This is not necessarily due to failure on the part of the council, as central government controls the purse-strings and will only release the requisite floods of cash if council tenants vote to switch landlords to a housing association, which they’ve definitively refused to do in Harlow. So money for renewing the stock is very tight, and most of it comes from building new private apartments on estates.

I wonder whether some of the negative perceptions of Harlow, both internal and external, come not so much from objective comparisons with other towns in the east of England but from the inescapable comparison with the ideals behind its founding and development in the decades after the war. It may be going to far to call them utopians, but Harlow’s founders and designers certainly thought they could build a very good town if they put their minds to it. If Harlow isn’t a complete failure, it’s not the success they aspired to either, and maybe an abiding sense of opportunities lost saps morale in a place that otherwise has plenty going for it. Hopefully any such pyschological or cultural baggage won’t last forever: overcoming a physical legacy of too much concrete, tarmac and roundabouts won’t easy, but I’m guessing places this green with good national and international transport links are only going to become more desirable as time goes on.

I’ve only barely darkened the doors of the museums and other stuff of New York, and I’m not going to lie, the main reason is spending a lot of my time there in dive bars.

My sister recently got a new job in some trendy bar on the Lower East Side. Apparently it’s “a hipster dive bar (yes they serve PBR) and many of the customers wear trucker caps in an ironical fashion (with skinny jeans)”. Luckily, I’m not fussy. So bring it on, Bar 169.

But in my slavish devotion to seeking out, tracking down and then drinking the shit out of the perfect Zombie(s), I discovered Otto’s Shrunken Head, where, according to legend, the following ritual occurs:

On Saturday nights at 2:30 AM a drink that is so decadent that it can only be served once a week, and then only for 30 minutes, will rear its ugly head. It’s called a “Slice of Heaven” and it involves “deep fried bacon” and a shot of your choice. Only the truly adventurous need apply!

I’ll apply! With money!*

*Assuming the euro hits $8.1347 by December 31st, which I confidently predict.

That annoying ululation balladeers of the female persuasion do when trying to convey emotion? Melisma. That’s perfect - it even sounds like the name of crap r&b songstress. More information here, which also suggests an appropriate alternate name: ‘vocal runs’.

Something for Conor to seek out if he swings by Bangkok:

A blur of transport, skittering through Delhi where shanty towns encroach on wide, tree-lined boulevards, and upmarket shopping districts. It’s not nearly as overbearing as Mumbai, though the Bazaars around the Jamaa Masjid are warrens of touts, rickshaw wallahs, and insistent children. The kids beg as a matter of course, and disappointed by the cold shoulder, pick up fruit peelings and hurl them at the tourists. A stamp in their direction sees them scatter into the crowds.

The grand design of Delhi is much like Washington DC. It’s on an inhuman scale, with India gate miles from the presidential palace, though on the same street, and neatly lined up. Once you slog your way, by foot or in a rickshaw, to old Delhi, you get the classic India. Pungent is a kind word, and what you step in is unnerving until you find that it’s not human faeces, but that of the cow you catch up to around the corner.

Sites like the red fort are all very interesting, though Humayun’s tomb, and Safdarjang’s tomb serve as a neat precursor to the final salute of grand Mughal architecture.

The Taj Mahal is white, remarkable, and swarming with tourists. For every one tourist there are three rickshaw cyclists; two monkey handlers; ten children selling knick-knacks and baubles; and four old men who expect money for saying “Take photo here”. There is relief to be had inside the grounds of the Taj, and in the Red fort (even the tour guides pushing to guide you around are light relief).

Agra is ghastly city, full of human indignity, with wonderful things to see. It is by far the most aggressive tourist experience you will have. The touts are very insistent, and persistent liars, following you for a mile down the road as you walk demanding that you take their rickshaw when you have gone past a polite ”No”, silence, and verbal abuse. If you walk somewhere they’ll tell you it’s five miles when it’s one. In one case, a rickshaw driver became belligerent, demanding my custom, pointing his finger in my face and shouting. In the end, Agra is a wonderful place ruined by the overwhelming badgering. It’s like the toy of an inquisitive child.

Akhbar’s tomb is a relief from the tension of central Agra. Monkeys play with your guide book as you photo them, and the tourists are far away. It looks nothing like the Taj, but has the same sense of grand design, with a five-tiered central tomb surrounded by symmetrical gardens. Inside the tomb the hard walls echoe any sounds for ten seconds, making for an eerie effect. It is a final stop before leaving, wading through the sea of noise and dirt, and getting on the train to Gorakhpur.

Which, a typically loud city, is where you catch the bus to Sunauli and the border. The train was delayed, so arriving during the evening the last bus was found. The driver was drying his underwear on a washing line behind the wheel. We set off, did a lap of the street, and came back to a halt in the bus station for three-quarters of an hour. Finally going again, the majority of the journey to the border is spent in a seated position about six inches off the seat. The road is mostly hole, and as you buzz by little towns with one light bulb for twenty shacks, and a TV playing Bollywood movies, there is the most striking feeling of being out on your own, off the map.

Sunauli is where India ends and Nepal begins. It’s also where the bus arrives, after midnight, to a long-closed checkpoint. The conductor offered to throw you out near a hotel, though it was a pitch black street with nothing on it, and his directions in Hindi were of little use to you. I stayed on the bus, and a swift bribe of $1 got you some sleep there with a group of other people til five a.m. The conductor seemed happy at the bribe, considering it way over the odds for that standard of accomodation.

The border is remarkable for one thing: the Indian side is a town that is crushed together, filthy, and shambolic. Over the border crossing, some thirty meters, you see an instant change to Nepal’s slightly tidier brand of shambles.

I don’t think there’s a neat way to sum India up. It’s terrible and amazing at once, a rich history, and diverse cultures built on misery, deprivation, and terrible conditions. It seems wilfully awful despite itself, and lazing around other countries in Asia, you see development, cleanliness, and an easyness that India could have, but doesn’t seem to want.