Linda Smith

My book bought for reading on my train-journey-by-bus yesterday was I Think The Nurses Are Stealing My Clothes – a tome both eulogising Linda Smith and collecting some of her previously ephemeral broadcast and live work into print.

There is no doubt Linda Smith deserves all the kind and insightful words from the likes of Mark Steel and Mark Thomas. I only ever knew her from hearing her on BBC Radio 4, but the wit, warmth, accuracy and charm of her humour made a strong impression on me.

She always spoke using the language you would overhear on public transport – even when addressing complex issues surrounding the banality and vileness of political injustice. In one moment she could conjure a biting image of an inept politician you would never forget, in the next she could express a ridiculously strong passion for the small things that make life a triumphant experience – tea, cooking or a perfect frame of film.

Reading the book reminded me that I am the poorer for not being able to hear the voice of Linda Smith because it takes real talent to be able to be angry, perceptive, warm and funny all at the same time.

Bashing Out Readable Nonsense

Doing the odd day of work as a freelance editor has helped reinforce my tendency to deride any tinpot author* who has pretensions about their ‘art’. Writing about the best ways to infiltrate a terrorist organisation does not make you an artist, it just makes you a writer and a bad one at that if you do not even understand how to correctly use the word ‘disabuse’. Alan Moore could talk about his art, so could Ken MacLeod, Iain Sinclair or Will Self, but no-one writing about the techniques of phone tapping should have any puffed-up notions about the book they are producing.

Knocking out chapter intros for predictable excursions into how to commit sabotage, surveillance and sedition as part of my most recent job has also generated another effect. It has made me resolute over my decision to never again do any ghost writing for former members of the SAS or Security Service. I seem to have a worrying knack for quickly bashing out readable nonsense for possible crypto-fascists to put their names and BEMs to.

*Yes I know I am tinpot author and hack myself, but I have no pretensions that my books are great literature.

A Well-pulled Pint of Guinness, a Glass of Tempranillo and a Lovely Welsh Rarebit

Today has been a good day. I am still sick – this morning at 7am I was even having problems sitting up in bed – but the pain of the last few days receded enough for me to be able to go into the publisher’s office to make some changes to a manuscript I have been paid to read.

Usually I am not a great fan of being the freelance leper in an editorial office. It is not the casual contempt from the permanent staff that is my main gripe; it is the level of noise. I find it hard to proofread, rewrite and create new material for another writer’s book as several unfeasibly loud and snobby women are discussing fashion and cosmetics. It is tough to be accurate or creative whilst a dozen boorish former public schoolboys blare at each other as they extol the virtues of whatever sports team is fashionable this week.

However, the post-Christmas nature of today meant that there were only four other people in editorial department. The one sound that disturbed me today was the porcine grunts and wheezes of a behemoth of an editor who fell asleep at his Apple Mac after lunch. It is amazing how much more productive you can be without the incessant chatter of spoilt, self-obsessed idiots constantly in your ears.

By 5:30pm I had finished my work and was part of the lunatic throng of Oxford Street. It was at this point the day started turning from OK to good. Surreal Girl appeared and took me to The Social – a bar she had had been promising to take me to for ages.

Skulking in the shadows of Little Portland Street, unannounced by neon or signage, The Social is my type of bar. It is something of an arty dive, but manages to be almost cool without any real ponceyness. Best of all it offered a well-pulled pint of Guinness, a glass of Tempranillo and a lovely Welsh rarebit whilst still giving change from a tenner. I immediately felt at home and pleased I had found a refuge from the tacky awfulness of West End I could use in the future. I have to hand it to her, this find yet again exhibits Surreal Girl’s uncanny knack for knowing a good spot.

With my current delicate constitution I could only manage one pint of the black stuff before heading back into the night. However, given how bad I felt this morning, the fact I was able to have a drink at all felt like a glorious victory.

Love and Lantern Light

I am sorry there has been a pause in blogging. I am sick.

Anyway, Happy Christmas everyone. Love and lantern light to you all.

'An Overpriced Exrement Factory'

I am delighted that some readers have begun to email Gordon Ramsay at info@gordonramsay.com to register their concern over him ruining The Warrington by turning it into a ghastly gastropub. Below is a missive one reader sent to him on the basis that: ‘…he seems to be such a hard-ass that a softer approach may get his attention.’

‘Dear Mr. Ramsay,
I see that you've bought The Warrington and have plans to change it radically. I urge you to please reconsider. This pub is just gorgeous as is and any major updating would be a tragic mistake to not only the regulars and visitors, but future generations.

I'm sure that with your experience and creativity you can think of ways to improve the pub without losing any of its uniqueness.

I urge you to reconsider. Thank you.’

Another reader tried a somewhat more aggressive approach, writing:

‘To the well-known prick called Gordon Ramsay,

Your plans to ruin The Warrington by turning it into an overpriced excrement factory will not go unopposed. You might revel in being a hate figure now, but the karmic price for gutting the soul of this fine place is one you will regret more than wasting £5.2 million on a self-induced curse.’

Whilst I urge all readers to send a protest email, I think the first approach might be a more productive template than a series of veiled magical threats. If Gordon Ramsay or anyone working for him actually has any idea what including the word 'Bizango' in an email actually relates to, the future of The Warrington is even more screwed than I have already imagined.

‘PISS OFF RAMSAY’

I have never had a problem with Gordon Ramsay before. In fact, one of my guilty trash TV pleasures over the last couple of years has been watching Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Beyond the banality of all celebrity culture and the barrage of f-words that are part of his well-crafted media personality, it is clear Ramsay is a great and passionate chef, savvy businessman and the type of man you would be happy to have in your corner. Anyone who can transform themselves from a Rangers’ hopeful to the driving force behind his current £70 million empire is a man to be reckoned with.

However, now I have a problem with Ramsay. He has moved onto my patch and bought The Warrington. For those of you who do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of London watering holes, I need to tell you a little about the place.

It is a beautiful pub. Physically beautiful. Easily up there with the likes of The Crown Liquor Saloon in Belfast. It deserves more than its grade two listed status. Originally a hotel and possibly a brothel, (despite being nominally owned by the Church of England) it was built during the mid-Victorian period, but given a fabulous fin de siècle refurbishment.

What this means today is that the main entrance, guarded by two fantastic oversized lamps, is a glorious shout of tile-faced columns and a mosaic floor that seems to come from a visionary dream where William Morris caught a glimpse of an Art Nouveau future. Inside is a riot of decadent marble used on everything from the curved bar counter to the fireplace and interior columns. What is not marble tends to be mahogany and everything is finished off with flourishes of Art Nouveau glass and plasterwork.

The reason for this extravagance was that the owners at the time of the refurbishment thought only through a convincing display of opulence could they persuade the licensing magistrates of the establishment’s respectability. This makes the fabulous state of The Warrington the only good thing to happen as a consequence of the turn of the 19th Century temperance movement and the anti-pub backlash it inspired.

Architecture alone never makes a place a community nexus. Most people do not choose to drink in a bar on the basis of it being the winner of a beauty contest. You tend to judge a pub primarily on the ABC – the Atmosphere, the Beer they serve and the Crowd who drink there. The Warrington gets good marks on all three counts.

The Warrington is filled with a gentle buzz, you can get a good pint of Caledonian Deuchars IPA and as for the people who drift through its doors… When you drink there, you knock shoulders with punters ranging from David Soul to Polish builders who think the height of fashion is a lime green Adidas tracksuit. You get on nodding terms with the bodyguards to Russian oligarchs who live in the surrounding area’s mansions whilst vying for a table with Maida Vale’s obligatory contingent of American Embassy workers and highly punchable public schoolboy tossers. Hang out there long enough and The Warrington's proximity to the BBC radio studio in the area guarantees that one night you will see Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney* drinking at the bar.

One additional benefit of the pub is that if you go up the generous staircase, you can get a decent meal at Ben’s Thai Restaurant – one of the few reliable, non-poncey and reasonably priced places to eat in Maida Vale. Over the last few months, I have spent several wonderful hours within the walls of The Warrington. From its tiles to its tipples, punters to Pad Thai, it is a great spot to head out to on a quiet night or end of day spent walking in the woods.

Now this place with such a fantastic past is about to be ruined by Ramsay. He has bought the establishment for £5.2 million and is going to turn it into a gastropub as the first link in a new chain he is hoping to create. There is even informed speculation he will probably even make a TV show about the conversion of a brilliant pub into a poncey, high gravity restaurant that will only serve the oligarchs of Maida Vale – not the bodyguards, builders and impoverished cult authors of the locale. As if Maida Vale needs another bloody expensive place to eat…

On my patch I want a place where I can enjoy a couple of great pints and some affordable, good food and that is never going to happen with the prices a Ramsay gastropub is going to charge. The man’s cooking is rightly celebrated, but I do not want to lose such a special place to the vapid public school pricks and the obscenely oil rich of the area.

Given my background in lobbying and the dark arts of spin doctoring I am half-tempted might to run some sort of campaign against the takeover. At one level it is pointless – I know nothing I do is going to stop Ramsay turning the magnificent Warrington into a bloated, soulless gastropub, but sometimes campaigns are about more than achieving what you want. It can be good to raise your voice against the odds. If there are 100 protestors outside The Warrington on the night of its gala reopening to an invited assortment of food critics, celebrities and journos it will not alter anything. However, it will let Ramsay know that he faces opposition, it will piss on the parade and it will make the papers. It also lets others elsewhere know that they are not alone in opposing the poncification and loss of their special pub – that alone almost tempts me to do something.

Quite what the something will be if I decide to act, I am not sure yet. I wonder if seasoned campaigners like Mark Thomas ever get people suggesting hoodoo curses as an opening gambit. I am fairly certain the only reason one other suggestion that has been made to me – spray painting ‘PISS OFF RAMSAY’ on the pavement outside The Warrington – has not already been done is the amount of CCTV in the area.

However, if Ramsay damages one element of the fin de siècle grandeur of The Warrington, nothing is going to save him from more than graffiti abuse from me. If he hurts the building on top of ruining a bloody good pub, everything I ever learnt from successfully slapping down Jo Moore and Greenpeace will be brought to bear and I will go into battle mode.

* I know Paul McCartney drinking there should count against any establishment, but as he does not pop into The Warrington every week I am inclined to overlook it in this instance.

The Curse of Placebo

The fever means the curse of Placebo has struck again. For years, every time I have bought tickets to see Placebo in concert in London, some personal disaster has struck and prevented me attending. Still, losing the opportunity to see the band tonight through illness beats hands down not being able to enjoy them due to some of the past obstacles.

For a Few Hours I was Daredevil

I have a fever. It came upon me last night with all the speed and brutality of a Hackney mugging. It quickly possessed my body and hijacked my mind, driving it into the strange territory of hallucination where it dumped it like a joyrider abandons a burning car a patch of fetid waste ground.

As I lay in bed, the fever mutated my senses to a new extreme of sensitivity. My skin could read the weave of the cotton sheets, I could hear every individual vehicle powering along the Westway during the sodium orange hours. For a few hours I was Daredevil (though without the ninja prowess, Catholic angst and string of dead girlfriends).

The worst of it came when I actually thought I had escaped into sleep. A dream of improbable domestic bliss in Shepherds Bush began to turn nasty. I was being interviewed by a Northern Irish journalist I had stupidly allowed into my home. After a series of questions about the Anderstown Road, they asked me if I had gone to Alexander Litvinenko’s funeral before suddenly pulling out a Heckler & Koch USP, screaming at me that they had known Litvinenko as well and shooting me before I had finished making them a cup of tea. Trust me, as nightmares go, this was one of the most realistic and troubling I have had for several weeks.

Fondled by Men and Women Wearing Latex Gloves

Despite all my medical misadventures, there are still some procedures I have not had the pleasure of enjoying yet. However, today’s visit to St. Mary’s Hospital allowed me to cross a new one off of the list. If I had a sexual inclination revolving around having my genitals fondled by men and women wearing latex gloves, I would have been in high heaven.

Luckily the whole experience was made bearable by two people. One was a Charge Nurse called Theodore who had the best blood-taking action I have ever encountered. The other was Surreal Girl, who lingered outside in the rain and cold for nearly two hours providing moral support.

Any day that starts with hospital tests can only improve once you are free from breathing air thick with antiseptic and the tang of cold dread that accumulates in waiting rooms. I started to feel much better as soon as I was back in the real world bustle of Little Lebanon on the Edgware Road. Dealing with the petty frustration of trying to find arborio rice in the blighted supermarkets of Bayswater also helped me integrate into something approaching a normal routine. By 6pm I was able to focus on the important things of the day – the quality of the smiling company, a pint of strawberry beer in my local and the joy of cooking a fabulous risotto.

Mr. Grumpy

Today I am Mr. Grumpy. Part of this is down to the fact I am experiencing some pain. The rest is due to the asinine BBC journalist who rang me at 5:30am.

I thought the days of the BBC ringing me at a time on Sunday when everyone should still be in bed to pester me to be interviewed on a radio news show had finished when I left spin-doctoring. However, the continuing viral like spread of Litvinenko across the news agenda has rudely disavowed of the idea that the BBC would never again be an unwanted caller.

Once the fog of sleep had cleared enough for me to answer basic questions such as my name and understand that I was talking to a member of the BBC new steam, the conversation sped into the realms of Bizarro.

BBC Journalist: “Sorry to wake you.”
Mr. Grumpy: “No you’re not. You never are.”
BBC Journalist: “Are you an Arsenal fan?”
Mr. Grumpy: “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Yes, yes. I am an Arsenal fan. Why?”
BBC Journalist: “Did you know Alexander Litvenko?”
Mr. Grumpy: “Oh shit.* Sorry. Yes, sort of.”

At this point Mr. Grumpy is now more awake than if he just mainlined several shots of espresso.

BBC Journalist: “Do you know anything about Litvenko’s death and the link to Emirates Stadium?

At this point there was a long silence. The journo probably took this as some sign of guilt when in fact it was the sound of having my jaw drop.

BBC Journalist: “When did you last meet Mr. Litvenko?”
Mr. Grumpy: “I didn’t. We only ever communicated over the phone and email. I’m sorry, where did you get this idea we met?”
BBC Journalist: “But you did know him?”
Mr. Grumpy: “Sorry, where is your information coming from?”
BBC Journalist: “A source suggested you met Mr. Litvenko and that you might know something about the radiation testing of the Emirates Stadium.
Mr. Grumpy: “Your source is wrong.”
BBC Journalist: “You knew him. You talk about him on your blog. According to Wiki you worked with MI5.”
Mr. Grumpy: “Wiki is not exactly an impeccable source.”
BBC Journalist: “What did you talk to Mr. Litvenko about?”
Mr. Grumpy: “Lots of things. Mainly the Mafiya, the Solntsevo Syndicate, corruption and dead journalists.”
BBC Journalist: “Who killed him?”
Mr. Grumpy: “Excuse me?”
BBC Journalist: “Who killed him?”
Mr. Grumpy: "Surely that is a question you should ask the police?”
BBC Journalist: “You knew him. Who do you think did it?”
Mr. Grumpy: “Not those everyone seems to be blaming.”
BBC Journalist: “Can you come in for an interview?”
Mr. Grumpy: “No.”
BBC Journalist: “We can send a car.”
Mr. Grumpy: “No.”

At this point the BBC journo went into undignified begging mode, alternating from plaintive pleading to barely veiled anger. After a minute or two of this, I told him I was going back to sleep and ended the call.

He ran back to point out that as I was already up it would be no hardship to come into Wood Lane and to ask me again to reconsider. I was tempted to explain I was keeping a low profile due to the death threat made against me. To tell him I was feeling like crap with pain. To explain I am no longer a meejah hor, that I feel unease commenting on Litvinenko’s murder and refuse to be a ghoul like some other self-declared experts who are feeding on his corpse for five minutes self-publicity. I was temped to say all these things, but because today I am Mr. Grumpy Bastard, I simply told him to: “Piss off.”

I know, not professional, but sometimes you have to talk tabloid to make yourself clear to a hack.

* Not the thing an experienced spin-doctor should ever say – even if they are still half-asleep.

Written Across the Landscape of Britain in Concrete and Barbed Wire

I have started the preliminary research for my next possible book*. If I can get it published, it will be a bridge from my previous work on parapolitics to my desire to explore different literary avenues.

The first bit of research has been easy. It involved tracking down two key books from the 1970s and 1980s – Beneath The City Streets and War Plan UK – which now only seem to exist in the twilight worlds of university libraries and specialist bibliophiles

Anyone who has read Secrets & Lies will know how much professional respect I have for Duncan Campbell. They will also have a hint about just how important to me his 1982 book War Plan UK was. Not only did it solve the childhood mystery of the tower, it scared me witless over the prospect of nuclear war and helped open my young eyes to the true nature of state power. Although by disposition I have always been a curious bastard, War Plan UK, Edge Of Darkness and the incident in the woods and all combined to help propel me towards a career in investigating the world of shadows and conspiracy.

Therefore I was looking forward immensely to re-reading War Plan UK as part of scouting the territory for the possible book I would like to write. However, I quickly discovered that War Pan UK is long out of print and the most useful edition now retails for more than £180. This placed it out of my budget for what is at this stage a speculative project. I eventually got hold of a copy via Manchester University, but only for five days.

This put me in a tricky situation. I needed longer to read it and make notes. However, the next chance for a loan they could offer was a two-week window at the end of March 2007. As an author I have issues with the photocopying of books, but I really could not face the length of the wait. Much as I hated doing it, I took War Plan UK down to a copy shop where I knew the management would turn a blind eye to my flagrant breach of copyright and photocopied more than 400 of its pages. The £30 cost was a lot more reasonable than paying the current collectors price for the book. If I ever meet Duncan Campbell in person, I will make it up to him by happily buying him drinks all night.

Thanks to the library of Durham University, I also managed to get hold of the 1970 edition of Beneath The City Streets by Peter Laurie. This is the book that inspired Campbell and opened up the whole field of researching the secret places of the state in Britain. I have foregone photocopying it despite the fact it that even 36 years after publication it still has interesting things to say. It is also still offers strong hints concerning methodology when trying to unlock the mysteries of covert citadels and underground cities. I think Laurie was right when he called his investigations ‘contemporary political archaeology’.

The world has changed so much since Campbell and Laurie first surveyed the structures of the hidden state. Yet some things remain the same. The points that both books make about the psychology of a system of government that puts so much money and effort into placing itself safe from the reach of its own people remain valid. Instead of being scared by the prospect of nuclear war detailed in the books, they now frighten me by reminding of neglected corners of history.

One marrow chilling fact covered was the issuing of a million burial forms in 1939 and the discussion of whether to dump the expected bodies into the Thames at high water or create mass graves in the gravel pits west of the present day site of Heathrow airport. The reductionist, dehumanising logic used was redolent of dozens of Civil Service reports I had to read as a lobbyist. The planning between the World Wars for citizens fleeing London from aerial bombardment to be sent to concentration camps before being returned to their homes at bayonet point only echoes plans I have personally seen detailing the aftermath of a dirty bomb attack on London. The attitude that saw British politicians send in warships to break up the 1919 police strike in Liverpool has not disappeared.

The machinery and mindset of a government willing to turn on its own people to survive has not gone away. The paranoia of power expressed in bunkers, radio towers and subterranean complexes remains. The evidence for the armour of the state – every aspect of it designed to serve the preservation of the leadership elite from both external foes and its own people – is still written across the landscape of Britain in concrete and barbed wire.

*As with every other possible book I am currently thinking about, it will be a co-authored work. Writing can be too lonely sometimes.