Killing in the name

The other week, rather to my surprise, I was taken to a secure military building. I was going to use the word “invited” rather than taken, but being invited somewhere suggests a deference to my presence that was definitely lacking from the rigorous (though thankfully not internal) security procedures involved. I can’t tell you where I was, or when, or why, but I can describe the entry process, because it has rather coloured my judgement about something I’d previously been quite blasé about.

I was picked up at a designated location by two men in a suspiciously understated car. They drove me through the countryside to a manned security gate, where credentials were displayed, and we then progressed to a second manned security gate, where I was asked to complete an ID form and hand over my mobile phone. Actually, asked isn’t the right word, either. Compelled is the term I’m looking for. Anyway, back into the car we went, before a further drive to a third security gate, after which I was escorted into a building and asked to provide the same information I’d given at gate number two. At this point, I had to be shepherded in and out of every room in the building by someone with the appropriate security clearance, before checking out twice on the way back to our original meeting point.

Which rather begs the question – how the hell did Jack Bauer ever get anything done?

For anyone who has spent the last decade living under a rock, Jack Bauer is the indestructible anti-hero of landmark TV series 24. Along with around a billion other people worldwide, I was captivated by each 24-hour real-time “day” in Jack’s life, where he would start off chillaxing in his living room and end up 24 hours (and episodes) later as a broken, beat and scarred wreck on a cliff-side, having been shot, poisoned, tortured, kidnapped, sacked, re-instated, canonised, lambasted and probably dumped by some swivel-eyed head case of a girlfriend. Along the way, each roller-coaster series featured everything from Presidential assassinations to Lazarus-like resurrections, yet despite its bombastic nature and almost total lack of humour, 24 was hopelessly addictive, like crack for the eyeballs.

News reaches me that Jack is being resurrected once more for a brand new series of 24, but after my recent experience in that military installation, it’s going to be hard for my disbelief to remain suspended. Quite frankly, it would have been impossible for anyone to reach the building I visited without being shot or captured (or possibly both), so the concept of terrorists spontaneously seizing an army base/a weapons plant/the White House suddenly seems quite absurd, even though such things happened with terrifying regularity in every series of 24.

I therefore issue this warning to the writers of series nine – I’m onto you this time. Make the story line plausible, because if you imply that some unhinged maniac can break into a top-secret military institution and take it over armed only with a pair of pliers, a stapler and some boot polish, you will incur my wrath in this widely-read, internationally-acclaimed blog. And you don’t want that, do you? I might even have to send Jack Bauer round to deal with you. Oh, wait a minute…

Partying is such sweet sorrow

I was at a four year old’s birthday party last weekend. Despite a few moments to treasure along the way, it might not surprise you to learn that this wasn’t my idea of an idyllic Saturday. We had someone in a Peppa Pig costume doing the Gangnam Style dance, and an enthusiastic clown terrorising my fiancé, while the adults cowered around the venue’s periphery, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. The food was chiefly chicken nuggets and potato chips, many footballs got stuck in many ceiling nets, and the soundtrack had an intermittent whine of grizzling toddlers. However, the most intriguing aspect of the whole afternoon (or at least the hour between arriving and hastily departing) was the discovery that, even at such an embryonic stage, these proto-people have developed strong and enduring friendships with each other, with an avowed enthusiasm for declaring someone to be their best friend.

Think about that for a minute. Four year old children, already in possession of BFFs and other Roald Dahl-esque acronyms, effortlessly being themselves in social situations and partying with their mates without a care in the world. As adults, we’d never aspire to such confidence (does he really like me? Is she just using me? Am I the ugly one to her pretty one when we go out on the pull?), but the next generation appears to have no such qualms. And this youthful belief in the robustness of friendship set me off on one of the thoughtful cogitations that regularly lead to a blog post.

When I was in my formative teenage years, I too was convinced that my contemporaneous friends would retain that status for life. I assumed, rather naively, that we’d stay in the same town, grow up and get married together (not to each other, I hasten to add), and attend weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs as an implacable group. Sadly, life intervened as it so often does, and people gradually moved away to far-flung locations like Brazil and London. A particularly close friend departed to a distant northern city to pursue a dream job, and although we kept in regular contact for a few years, geographic distance and the passage of time gradually eroded a formerly rock-solid friendship. By the time my auld acquaintance finally returned to his home turf, I’d also moved away in pursuit of a better life, and we haven’t spoken for over a decade now.

Losing touch with an old friend is a horrible business, especially when the reasons for it are lost in the mists of time. Maybe we grew apart, or perhaps we fell out without my even noticing, but we certainly haven’t been to any bar mitzvahs or civil partnerships together of late. However, should he be reading this, I would cordially invite him to get back in touch, thereby avoiding the fate that befalls so many people when they forget about the friends they thought they’d have forever. Rich indeed is the man whose mates can still remember him as a specky, spotty gimp back in third year, making girls recoil with every stride.

As for the four year old whose cautionary tale started this story, her party went remarkably smoothly, considering the potential for tantrums and upturned trestle tables, and her various friendships survived for another week. I really hope they do last for a lifetime, although I fear the odds are against it. Still, she won at pass-the-parcel and nobody complained even though it was clearly rigged, so she’s off to a good start.

House of cards

As a veteran property journalist, I’ve seen some extraordinary things during the countless visits I’ve made to people’s homes. Moments of breathtaking stupidity, improbable ignorance, toe-curling embarrassment and – worst of all – the situations where the horror of what you’ve just seen is indelibly burned into your memory. I’m not talking about people’s choices of furniture or décor (give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of B&Q vouchers, and eventually one will choose a colour scheme that isn’t beige) but rather the art of viewings – showing prospective purchasers round your home. Sellers have lived in their property, decorated it, extended it, copulated in as many rooms as their partner would allow, and even learned how to walk down the hall at 3am without standing on the Squeaky Floorboard. Yet stick a “For Sale” sign in the front garden, and all that knowledge seemingly evaporates, taking common sense with it.

I could fill a book with examples of bad viewing techniques I’ve encountered over the last ten years, but a few will suffice, such as the £350,000 villa with a wasp infestation, where I was encouraged by the vendor to grind said creatures into the carpet. Few things will trump the rented million-pound townhouse where an SPL footballer was deliberately making everything as squalid as possible to deter anyone from making an offer to his landlord, although at least there was some low cunning on display among the soiled knickers. At the opposite end of the intelligence scale, I fondly recall the owner of a chic flat in Glasgow’s west end enthusiastically describing the 3am ram-raid on the shop downstairs the night before my visit, as if this impromptu street theatre was a selling point. My 22^nd birthday saw me in a filthy spider-infested barn, forced to climb a tottering staircase that splintered under my feet so I could “enjoy” the view of said barn from eight feet above ground level. And perhaps most infamously of all, I was once locked in a haunted French chateau by myself, while the 14 offspring of the senile octogenarian owner stood in a neighbouring outbuilding arguing about how high they could make the upset price. They were trying to prevent speculative visits from the local Mafia, who were determined to buy the chateau as a new headquarters. The price wasn’t the only thing that was upset that day.

Lest we forget, viewings are the bridge between the cliffs of property marketing and a completed sale. You can spend a fortune on refurbishment and decorating, advertising with the best solicitor, getting glossy brochures made up, and landscaping the front garden to give your home that much-needed kerb appeal. But if you watch your dog wipe its backside along the carpet and then inform the horrified viewers you’re leaving the flooring (I swear I’m not making this up), you’ll be talked about 25 years later in blog posts. Even if the lady in question had taken her excrement-smeared carpets with her, I don’t think my family would have gone back for a second viewing. In fact, when you think about that traumatic childhood experience, my subsequent career in property journalism seems quite perverse.

When the doorbell rings and the viewers pour forth, common sense appears to get abandoned on the doorstep. Some people simply walk around their house monosyllabically uttering nuggets like “bathroom” (yes, thanks, I’d never have guessed), a few masochistically describe the roof leaks and neighbour problems they’ve had over the years, while others simply seem terrified of the whole procedure. Maybe we need a reality TV show where an intrepid presenter teaches phobic homeowners how to conduct successful viewings. I’d certainly watch it. In fact, I could present it. Anyone got Channel Five’s number?

The more things change…

I’m sorry if I begin this blog sounding like Victor Meldrew (although I probably begin every blog sounding like Victor Meldrew), but why do companies always have to change things? Having once studied a Chartered Institute of Marketing qualification, I’ve already heard all the clichéd if-you’re-standing-still-you’re-going-backwards arguments, but seriously. If something works, and is popular, and doesn’t generate any complaints, why do companies absolutely insist on making things worse in the name of “progress”?

I regularly use a 3D satellite mapping system for viewing towns and streets. I only started using it when my previous 3D satellite mapping system inexplicably closed down a few Christmases ago. Until recently, my new provider delivered a fascinating birds-eye view of anywhere I wanted to look at, but then for absolutely no discernible reason whatsoever, the hosting site increased the size of the overlaid street names to such a ludicrous degree that roughly half the map is now covered in said street names. Entire terraces have been obscured from view by gigantic letters and white stripes that are meant to demarcate the roadway but don’t, because they aren’t in the right place, and therefore cover up the very buildings you went onto the site to look at in the first place. According to this “improved” display, St Vincent Street in Glasgow has become St Vincent Lane, and you can’t see either of them because the sodding lines and letters are so monstrous. I won’t name the company responsible for this omnishambles, but you can find them on Bing. Because they are.

For another example of what I’m on about, look no further than Twitter. As an avid tweeter (Tweeter? Twitterer? Twat?), I use the Twitter app on my lovely new smartphone all the time. Sadly, a few weeks ago it updated itself automatically, without even asking permission (which my phone is always supposed to) and instantly became far less enjoyable. My profile page now regularly fails to display, with a small grey circle endlessly rotating as it fruitlessly attempts to load a thumbnail photo and six short lines of text, and when it does load, it'll display some total nonsense - today it claims I only have 130 Twitter followers, which is some way short of the mark. On every page of the app, the fonts have transmogrified from a neat sans-serif into horrid spidery lettering that is really rather unpleasant to look at. Can I roll back to a previous version? Of course I can’t. I’m stuck with it. Because some dickhead at Twitter’s app division somehow got it into his or her stupid thick skull that this change represented an improvement.

We see this all the time with products and services. Remember New Coke? Thought not – it was considerably inferior to Old Coke, so Coke swiftly brought Old Coke back as Coke Classic, and eventually replaced the replacement, so the New New Coke was actually Old Coke, henceforth simply known as Coke. A decade ago, Citroen made a rather attractive car called the Xsara, but when the inevitable mid-life facelift came along, they replaced its understated elegance with a horrid new front end that resembled a depressed frog. Particularly in green, which mine unfortunately was. I called it Froggy, and not because it was French – it was just bloody ugly, with a face that could give small children nightmares.

Perhaps I’m out of step with the modern world, but I am a firm fan of consistency. I like knowing that tomorrow will be the same as today, I buy cornflakes because they’re dependably tasty, and I take reassurance in things like the Sports Report music on Five Live every Saturday teatime, which is the same music my grandfather used to listen to before throwing his pools coupon into the bin as fortune eluded him for yet another week. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Luddite – in fact, I love to see new products reaching the market and improving our lives. However, I really resent the constant tinkering with the things we’ve already got, especially when these “improvements” always seem to make the objects in question a little bit worse somehow.