It's all in the name, innit mate?

Can I take your name, please?

             

                        

- Of course you can. You can. You take it, and then you mincemeat it into something barely legible, barely understandable, barely my name on plastic cup. YOU are the Starbucks person serving me, and I really start hating you - all of YOU!

- My name is Alice and I have a serious problem: I like Iced Coffee. I don't need the sun to drink my iced coffee, no. When it comes to iced coffee, I loose all self-esteem and all self-control. Anytime of the day, anytime of the year. I even go so far as to abandon my self-imposed ban on multi-national chains and drop into Starbucks (pah!) to get my fix. It's this serious (Sorry Brick Lane Coffee, Get Coffee, Monmouth and Climpson & Sons).

So imagine how I feel if I, in the midst of betraying myself and all other coffee-lovers, am being treated like a non-person - a nameless individual without identity!!??? I hate the fake smiles and the 'How are you today' that is being trained into the people at Starbucks, and I hate the uniforms that are supposed to democratise the lot, but in fact only widen the gap, and I hate the name badges that make everybody sooooo approachable. All about Starbucks is fake, but what really gets me going is the bloody name-taking.

Dear non-existent reader, my name is Alice. It's a British institution if you like; 9 times out of 10 when I meet new people and introduce myself, they say something like 'ahh, in WONDERLAND' or 'uhum, so your parents were into Lewis Carroll?' or even 'aha, school's out for ever'. It's almost impossible not to make the reference, and if they don't, I'll take over and do it myself 'like the one in Wonderland', to preempt all future tasteless jokes and references to cake and drink, and caterpillars, and cats, and oysters, and two fat blokes with almost identical names, and and and......

Also, dear reader, I have a very standard diction - not Laurence Olivier - but not bad either. I used to work for radio and telly, so I think I should get the talking part alright. I speak more or less the Queen's English, with a hint of an accent, but in a conversation that lasts less than a minute, nobody would notice. Even after an hour, some people are surprised to learn that I am one of the Queen's finest immigrants.

So - but here comes Starbucks. As you can see from the collection of pictures, not a single of the 'barristas' has managed to get my name (remember, it's A-L-I-C-E) right. The bloke who wrote 'ALES' gets an extra prize for asking me to spell my name. So HOW, HOW on earth is this possible?????? It's bloody, effing five letters long; it's taken from one of the most popular Edwardian children's books and there is MORE than just one of us around!!! (At the moment I'm listening to Limahl 'Neverending Story' and frankly, there you have a name to get wrong! #ChildOfThe80s)

I've been thinking about this problem for some time now, and the only logical explanation (if there is one), is that I just don't look like an Alice. I'm not a small blonde girl in a blue dress (that could also make me a Dorothy), I'm not a leather-wearing, ageing rock star - I look very much like myself, and a tiny bit like my gran (who was an Alice, too). It seems though as if Starbucks' staff doesn't recognise me as an Alice, and finds nice alternatives to re-christen me. Very often, those alternatives end up being men's names (?). Even if they ask me to spell my name (Ay - Ell - Ai - See - Ee) they get it wrong.

They must be completely oblivious to my name, if they get others right (a guy in the queue was called Timothy, and there was a Rishi, as well as a Gwendolyn) - to the extend that I fear entering one of their shops, dreading the fake smile and the 'Can I take your name?'. They can take my name; they do; and then they destroy it.

Time to clock out. Best of luck, Alysse xxx

The hipster holiday: how to spot a German blindfolded

My legs. Not hipster. Jeans intact. Brogues.

The hipster, resident of Shoreditch and Hackney is in a holiday mood. How do I know? Well, recent weather changes have initiated the common hipster to change caramel-coloured suede moccasins and royal blue trousers for a more convenient, air-cooled look of shabby plimsoles or loafers and cut-off 80s denims. Ideally to be paired with white socks or bare feet. Summer is here.

Summer must have seen the bikini-clad Southeners and the topless chavs on Oxford Street and decided that, after all, rain suits England sooo much better. I write this in my winter socks, sipping tea, with a bowl of broth next to me. It's June 5th, Happy Jubilee.

Other signs to recognise summer are of course the usual: people are accessorising themselves with Starbucks' Frappuccinos, it's always everywhere Pimm's o'clock and if you can't see the Shard, it's not the mist, it's the smoke of London's barbecues. In fact, there is something profoundly Victorian about bbqs, in that every single household in my neighbourhood is smoking the hell out of their backyards, to make the best use of rats, mice and Tesco meatballs. Now, while at Pimm's o'clock last Thursday, I must have been three times  over the legal limit, I do not really feel summer yet. Yes, I have gone through a whole bottle of Nivea's finest 50+, but that is about it. Smells are positively autumnal, the clothes very wintery and every intention to make scones and jam turns into chocolate chip cookies. Also, I have been watching Nigella's Christmas Feasts (very vintage on Youtube), The Hairy Bikers on meat, more meat and puddings, as well as Jamie Oliver's Christmas stuff. And I did not skip Mariah Carey 'All I Want for Christmas' yesterday on my iPod - I turned up the volume. And with Her Majesty Gary Barlow staging a massive charity gig, it feels very much like Christmas. Come to think of it, on December 24th, I wore a hoodie (nothing else), whereas today, I was sporting more layers than an onion. Am I complaining? You bet I am!

In Central London (I thought today would be a good day to go, because everybody was celebrating some stuff or another), there was the inevitable crowd of tourists, where my learned eye immediately separated the Germans from the rest. (Italians are quite easy to spot too) But how is it possible that spotting a German is not just easy, but evident. Living with the least German of all Germans is not what has schooled my eye in the recognition of an ethnicity that will never learn how to stealth itself abroad. Living very close to the German boarder or speaking the language is not it, either. I venture to say that what makes me alert to their Germanness is their Germanness. Could it be the moustaches? Maybe. The jeans and Esprit shirt combination? Maybe. Is it the generic haircut, sported by very nearly every German woman and girl? Maybe. Could it be demeanour? I guess there is not any one answer to this, but I suppose that it is the combination of all these factors that makes them so easy to spot. And to avoid. Am I being racist? Yes - I am after all a Middle European, and while I am not patriotic per se, I cultivate a inborn national dislike for all our neighbours. We are the best, let's face it. Which is what every other nation thinks too.

Why lasting cannot last in a week of everyday lasts

I am in the final round of my education. Tomorrow, or today (1.39 am) I commence what will be the last week of proper school days in my life. And I couldn't be less interested.

So over to more exciting things: I have finished THE present and it sits here next to me, wrapped in brown paper, in its full glory, waiting to be shipped and delivered come the end of the week. I feel the pain a mother feels to see her child leave the nest. I put my whole heart into that parcel, and I hope the charming notifications on the outside will encourage the postman to handle it with extra special über-care. I have an intuition that he or she won't, but by then, I no longer hold any control over it. 

Also, I finish work, which is a bit more sad than finishing school, because I really like work. I think I have written about it before. I even had to capitalise it. I will attempt to drown my sorrow in carrot cake: I find that a good measure of sugar always helps overcoming the lasting feeling of interrupted routines. I think I might have written about that, too. 

Camilla I Regina

A lot more exciting is the run-up to Thursday's school event/do, which involves even more sugar, and possibly, a lot of high percentage beverages. It is of course a fancy dress evening (my insistence), and the theme is rather royal. I hope to impress with this charming hat (picture), a blonde flick-wig, and a navy blue dress. I am Camilla I, Queen of England (what else?). I even learned how to smile like her. The rather angelic touch of the picture is due to recently uncovered/discovered photoshopping skills on my behalf, so that now every single image that leaves the Fruit is digitally altered. Bliss.

I won't lie here, you, dear non-existent reader, have probably seen better. You will, of course. But remember the blood, sweat and tears that have contributed to this charming image, and you will award me an Oscar. Or the equivalent for photoshoppers. I really like my costume, the hat is very Edwardian, quite heavy, and will leave me with an irreparable neck damage for the rest of my life, but it's soooo worth it. 

Shallow, you say, non-existent reader? Bah, humbug, that's an Ascot-neck for you. Speaking of Edwardian, I just saw Julian Fellowes' latest effort, Titanic, in an ITV mini-budget, mini-series version. Mini-pleasure. 2 minutes into the program and I KNEW that I wouldn't like it, let alone follow it with the same attention to detail (that is obsession to me and you) that I follow Sherlock with. No, 2 minutes in, and I have not only a massive déjà-vu, I have a bad déjà-vu. While I won't even go into the accuracy debate - I am no authority, but those clothes seem a little too starchy on the stoker - the plot is borrowed from Titanic, the movie, and Downton Abbey, the not-yet-movie. But, haha, it's not just borrowed, it's a bad copy: the story of Jack and Rose, A and B, is retold with a different set of A and B in a slightly different version of the story. In fact, I suspect that one of Fellowes' mates saw the original movie and then, via Chinese whispers, got the message to Fellowes, who re-told the story is an awkwardly upper-class way. Today is the last I have seen of this monstrosity. 

Portraying the servants, yet keeping that distant gaze is what one does, isn't it? It's nice to see that they are there, but that's it. Those filthy creatures are not to venture into the dining room. Let alone the drawing room. Prime example: that French mistress we all know not to be married to that bloke she's with. No, she's married to Mark Ronson, everybody knows that. Uuuuhuuuhh, they are together but not married. Does such a thing exist? Not in Fellowes' world - I very much doubt it. In the land of country houses and posh toffs in morning gowns, people are either married or dead. There is no in-between, Unless you are a man in possession of a good fortune much in need of a wife. Then you may spend a glorious 95 minutes on screen, chasing Keira Knightley (or somebody equally costume drama-ish), without being married to her. You may consider proposing once or twice, in the rain, in a shed, under a table; but never, never for the love of god let that plonker Collins get her. We all know why.

The creation of need: a birthday present

Hooray, I get to buy a birthday present! I love buying and making presents (more of that later), but sometimes, my super hot, topless male muse is a bit slow on his feet and does not inspire me at all. Still, he's topless. However, I need to find a birthday present for a bored Capitalist in the land of the banks. A very bored Capitalist who is also looking for a job. I have this project that I am working on at the moment,  '25 Days to 25', a mammoth project if ever I've seen one, where I dedicate some time every day to the creation of, what is essentially a glorified diary for creative people. A mood book, if you like, dear non-existing reader. 

Here is a detail of the cover picture: I call it
 'Daniel Craig through the mincer'
(and I've cut him in pieces, too)

It's coming along nicely, I have written, pasted and rambled into it every single day since the beginning of March - and I do not see a reason why I should loose interest or creative drive. But for a quarter-centenarian, a simple book is not enough, is it? I was really inspired at first, but then realised, I have no cash to spend on original art, or anything else for that matter. And I lack talent for most other things. I even thought about making a blog for the bored Capitalist, but it's much more fun pasting stuff into a book. Then there are several rules I must obey in the search of the gift: a. it has to be postable (this rules out the Pug) b. it has to be a no-food (my own rule, don't encourage eating) c. it has to be really fun (common knowledge) d. it can't be a voucher (see c.) e. it can't be a graffiti-ed mannequin, a customised dress, a petticoat, a hat, candles, cosmetics, homewares or a two-tiered cake. Which leaves me with......what? 

In eleven years, I have outsourced cool birthday gifts, including fake vouchers for intimate piercings. So what now? Should I make a fresh start? Buy a pyjama? A scarf? Should I try and breed funky birthday gifts, like they do when Tuna has been outsourced? I can see a birthday gift farm with lots of free range birthday gifts, reared and fed to perfection, ready to be presented to somebody. Seeing that I can't even keep a blog alive, I doubt that I'd be much of a birthday gift breeder, but you never know.

I have managed to isolate my problem: it has to do with narrative. No narrative, no gift, that seems to have been my policy for the last eleven years, and unconsciously, I want to continue this line. ('A newspaper subscription!' cries my inner self, but no, I have done that as well) I have googled birthday gifts and frankly, the websites are appalling: you would only buy something on a designated birthday gift website if you're desperate and can't really stand the person, or don't really know them.  This smells like a business opportunity (just saying). 

So narrative: I had an idea whilst serving beer to people who don't buy art. I will make a gigantic box filled with empty promises. HA! Doesn't that sound cool? Also, I want to include one of these pug-cards I saw in Spitalfields Market, the ones that have little legs attached and are filled with helium. Joy of joys, I love completely pointless gifts. 

Culture: contested!

An unusually fast follow-up; naturally, it’s exam time and anything to procrastinate. Not even a cancelled internet connection keeps me from spending my time in any other way than reading inconclusive and irrelevant articles about the theatre of Genet by some random French sociologist.

Screencap is courtesy of guardian.co.uk. I couldn't write something like that.

 Anything to keep me from taking notes about the nature of culture and the cultivated nature, webs of significance, passive consumers, active authors and dead cocks, in the literal sense. I do not see the point in learning something that by definition, cannot be defined, or has at least, so far, not been defined by anybody in a satisfying way. Essentially, I team up with Sisyphus and help him push his stone up the mountain, with the added bonus of having my liver eaten out every now and again – or was that Prometheus. My Greek mythology like my theory of culture is a site of convergence, like culture itself, according to Stuart Hall. Everything merges and flows and escapes (most of it escapes my memory, actually) to leave me with the prevailing sentiment of despair. I am not alone: Facebook tells me that my fellow students suffer equally as hard as I do, albeit in a more public way than I, excluding this rant, which I expect no one to read. Communal suffering than links perfectly with one of the many theories of culture: rumor has it that cultural texts are not created by the one, but by the many. Social practices are interrelated and together form what we understand as culture. Perhaps. The main reason for my despair lies in the ‘perhaps’ that precedes and follows every single theory I encounter – theories of culture come with a reservation, like Euromillion numbers, the reservation that there might be a mistake in the theory and that the lot could be deconstructed within the blink of an eye. Haha, very funny. I look at the pile of paper that is ten weeks worth of cultural bullshitting, and counting, and wonder whether this exam is not a way of justifying ourselves. Like lawyers and doctors, we are forced to write exams because it makes culture and theories of culture quantifiable. We finally can translate culture into marks and grades, mistakes and definitions and thereby legitimize it within the numerous fields of academic practice. We are told that the exam is not about expression, quotations or perfect knowledge; nor is it about grammar; it is about our understanding of culture.

Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Message

My understanding is that we’re given a couple of vague questions and have to formulate equally blurry answers to those, while remaining close to the canonical texts – and despite of what they say, they want clear formulations of what we’ve read. Generally I like incoherent, messy, and pointless tasks, but this exam seems a first class example in pointlessness. What they want us to reproduce is what Stuart Hall has called theoretical noise, a sort of Bee Gees-techno mash-up of Beethoven’s Ninth with vocals provided by Andrea Boccelli and a guitar solo by Eric Clapton. Not that I wouldn’t want to hear it, but the task seems futile and the assembly of the different components rather difficult. Mind you, Eric Clapton would do anything for money. The resulting noise then is nothing more than one strand of the culture theories, a speck in the landscape of philosophizing sociologists, literary ethnographers, empirical critics, and clueless students. The irony is that in a different context, namely my academic career, this exam is more than just a speck – it is the make or break of 5 years of academia. Everything I’ll do in the future, whether I graduate or not, depends on this exam. In a way, I’m being very barbarous about it, to say it with Bourdieu. I concentrate on the small details of my life and want to see every single one of my actions justified, so that I can feel better about my lower middle-class existence. So, where does this leave me? I have to write this exam if I want to gain my degree – I have a choice to not write it, but it is a false choice, to say it with Benjamin, I could not write this exam, but that would mean that I’d isolate myself and I’d loose all the privileges tied to my status as a student, and possibly a lot of people would just forget me without questioning that I ever existed. I’d have to find my way for myself, without the help of fellow students. Great, so it’s either exclusion or two hours of my life trying to figure out what on earth they want me to write.