Being ‘Bob’
Some Sundays are designed for doing very little in. Today was one of those. After I surfaced from bed in just enough time to make the surreal walk from the land of millionaire villas* to council estates to get the last copy of The Observer from the newsagent, the biggest adventure was constructing a new false identity.
The reason I needed to fabricate a fictitious person I could pretend to be was because I wanted an Oyster card. For those of you who do not live in London I feel I should explain. Oyster is a form of electronic ticketing for tube and bus travel in London. If you do not have an Oyster card, a single Underground journey will cost you a minimum of £3; with an Oyster card it costs you £1.50. Given that Commissar Ken is shortly putting a single journey non-Oyster fare up to £4, economic pressure made using Oyster something I could not keep putting off despite my huge misgivings.
Aside from my issue with it being a disadvantageous form of shadow currency, my main problem with the Oyster system is every travel movement across London you make using it can be tracked. By Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police, security services and by cunning private individuals. Aside from the libertarian in me bridling at this form of surreptitious mass surveillance, when you have had serious death threats made against you from elements of the Russian Mafiya, you really do not want someone to be able to find out which tube station you start and finish every day at.
One I had become fictional ‘Bob’, it was planned the first Oyster card trip would be to the Museum of London. However, unforeseen factors meant I actually ended up at Spitalfields Market for the first time in about 18 years. There is only one word for the experience of this gentrified temple to consumer leisure – poncey. If I were being verdant, I would probably extend the description of the market to 'crowded and poncey'.
That is not to say I did not enjoy being there. The best in smiling company, a great pie, mash, peas and gravy eaten to wafting soundtrack of the Doctor Who theme, stalls selling blocks of type representing crop circles, some very me t-shirts and fantastic pecorino sardo all helped make it worthwhile way of spending an autumnal afternoon.
Before the last of the sun disappeared below the abrupt, baroque of Hawksmoor’s Christ Church, Surreal Girl insisted on buying me a gelato. Not just a basic gelato, a scoop of tiramisu and a scoop crème brûlée gelato. My tongue experienced an orgasm. I was in taste heaven. All consciousness focussed for an instant to the glorious things happening in my mouth. Without a doubt, it was one of the nicest things anyone has bought for me in a decade. I am not entirely sure why, but a hint of a tear almost escaped whilst sitting eating my deliriously good treat and watching a demon-possessed child cavort across every piece of nearby street furniture. It was good few minutes to experience being ‘Bob’.
*I want to make it clear I do not live in a millionaire villa. I currently could not afford even a few square feet of millionaire villa or Victorian mansion block.
The reason I needed to fabricate a fictitious person I could pretend to be was because I wanted an Oyster card. For those of you who do not live in London I feel I should explain. Oyster is a form of electronic ticketing for tube and bus travel in London. If you do not have an Oyster card, a single Underground journey will cost you a minimum of £3; with an Oyster card it costs you £1.50. Given that Commissar Ken is shortly putting a single journey non-Oyster fare up to £4, economic pressure made using Oyster something I could not keep putting off despite my huge misgivings.
Aside from my issue with it being a disadvantageous form of shadow currency, my main problem with the Oyster system is every travel movement across London you make using it can be tracked. By Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police, security services and by cunning private individuals. Aside from the libertarian in me bridling at this form of surreptitious mass surveillance, when you have had serious death threats made against you from elements of the Russian Mafiya, you really do not want someone to be able to find out which tube station you start and finish every day at.
One I had become fictional ‘Bob’, it was planned the first Oyster card trip would be to the Museum of London. However, unforeseen factors meant I actually ended up at Spitalfields Market for the first time in about 18 years. There is only one word for the experience of this gentrified temple to consumer leisure – poncey. If I were being verdant, I would probably extend the description of the market to 'crowded and poncey'.
That is not to say I did not enjoy being there. The best in smiling company, a great pie, mash, peas and gravy eaten to wafting soundtrack of the Doctor Who theme, stalls selling blocks of type representing crop circles, some very me t-shirts and fantastic pecorino sardo all helped make it worthwhile way of spending an autumnal afternoon.
Before the last of the sun disappeared below the abrupt, baroque of Hawksmoor’s Christ Church, Surreal Girl insisted on buying me a gelato. Not just a basic gelato, a scoop of tiramisu and a scoop crème brûlée gelato. My tongue experienced an orgasm. I was in taste heaven. All consciousness focussed for an instant to the glorious things happening in my mouth. Without a doubt, it was one of the nicest things anyone has bought for me in a decade. I am not entirely sure why, but a hint of a tear almost escaped whilst sitting eating my deliriously good treat and watching a demon-possessed child cavort across every piece of nearby street furniture. It was good few minutes to experience being ‘Bob’.
*I want to make it clear I do not live in a millionaire villa. I currently could not afford even a few square feet of millionaire villa or Victorian mansion block.
4 Comments:
What a lovely day! Call it paranoia, but I'm very bugged by all these things that are tracking my every move. It especially annoys me because they do it in such a sneaky manner, through "discounts" if you use their cards.
It is not paranoia Kat. There are some exceptionally sinister implications in the current use of RFID technology let alone its future applications. There are also some remarkably unpleasant forces promoting the use of RFID. Trust me, I have met them and turned down their bribes.
The OnStar system used in General Motors vehicles automatically alerts Emergency Medical Services to your exact location if your airbag deploys and you do not respond to their page via the onboard wireless system in the vehicle. OnStar is also available for phone calls and directions, etc. They also know exactly where your vehicle is and how you got there. It is a candy-coated surveillance system.
No, the issues surrounding RFID discussed above are not the result of paranoia. I guess one of the first times I began to worry about RFID and privacy issues was when my country tried to introduce an Australia card or something like a national ID card. I believe the powers that be are now trying to introduce a similar card into the school system here. Of course, it's easy to make it all sound so very reasonable and logical, but if you just stop for a few moments and take it at more than just face value and bland assurances, most thinking people would be able to construct a mental shortlist of how this could be abused. And in these situations, "could" invariably becomes "would". It all comes back to the underlying agenda: who can/will profit from such a database of information, and in what way will it morph next? Get school kids used to it, and then when they grow up, they'll accept it as the natural thing. But of course, erosion of individuality can never be natural, or healthy. Where might it end? As I say on the cover of Mallcity14 “Somewhere past tomorrow, where private thoughts are dangerous and prisons don’t have bars…”
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