Audience of one

We are now over halfway through 2013, and that means I have written precisely 19 blogs for this site, not including number 20, which you are currently reading but I have yet to finish at the time of writing because I’m still writing it. Interestingly, even though a reasonable number of people read each new entry, I’ve yet to receive a single comment on this page, although in truth, I consider that to be a blessing. The last thing I really want is Disgusted of Bogside ranting about the multiple use of commas (which I pre-emptively apologised for in my very first blog back in January), or some spammer posting a link to www.randyvicargerbils.com, which I’m then unable to remove from the page, thus condemning my pristine blog to display a spunk stain of spam for evermore. If you want to slag me off, Twitter will do fine @G75Media #shamelessselfpublicist #igotretweetedbythewifeofbonjoviskeyboardplayerlastnight

Honourably excepting a couple of out-and-proud followers (hi, Stuart), I wonder who the people reading this blog might be. Ex-girlfriends? Clients? Talent-spotters (doubtful)? It’s strange to think that these words might be read in six months’ time by someone I’ve never met, in a place I’ve never been, who may form a very elliptical impression of me based on my previous posts about neds and tower blocks. When I started this blog, I saw it as a natty way to unleash pent-up creative frustration, and I didn’t really care who read it. However, because my creativity is now being expended upon my increasingly busy day-job as an award-winning freelance copywriter (at your service, sir, madam), the need to vent my spleen has subsided, and anyway, this blog has hardly gone viral, has it? Fenton in Richmond Park it is not.

In fact, there’s another way of considering the readership statistics for each new blog I post. Maybe the world is so bleak and dull, and some people are so lonely and desperate, they will actually resort to reading my linguistic excreta because it’s better than the alternative. What that alternative might be, I shudder to think, but it must involve either Jeremy Kyle or the Daily Record – two of the most odious creations on this side of the Atlantic.

Even more startling was the statistic that on Christmas Day 2008, four people logged onto the G75 Media copywriting website, and only one of those people was me. What were the other three people doing that day? Were their presents so bad that they were forced to distract themselves by visiting the nascent website of a freshly-hatched copywriter in East Kilbride? Almost as tragically, I actually know that four people visited the site, because my website analytics software identifies (among other things) where people come from, what web browser they’re using and even what screen resolution their monitors are configured to.

When it comes to The Write Intentions, I’m considerably less informed about the who/what/where/when, but I do know that the most popular blog I’ve posted to date was a diatribe I penned in March about Jehovah’s witnesses and timewasting. It’s ironic that more people read my opinions on timewasting than any other blog. Or maybe it was the religious angle that got bums on pews and eyes on the prize? Perhaps I should adopt a more reverential tone in all my future blogs?

Okay. Here goes. [Clears throat] Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah. All I said was that blog was good enough for Jehovah.

Now to test the theory. If 750 people read this entry, I’ve cracked it, and a blog column in GQ or Loaded surely awaits. Alternatively, if the disappointing audience figures persist, at least I’ve managed to give those mysterious, anonymous readers another little clue about my personality – I love watching Monty Python films. And in that respect, at least, I know I’m not in an audience of one.

Yesterday went too soon

As none of you will have noticed, I am just back from an overseas holiday. A fine holiday it was, too – tucked away on the cusp of Europe and the Middle East, in a resort so posh that I hired a butler one day to bring me pina coladas and ice creams on demand. It was all jolly hockey sticks, much sunshine was absorbed, and everyone came home happy, although in my case, I came home far too soon. Isn’t that always the way with holidays?

The rapid passage of this decidedly welcome break has raised an historic bone of contention, however – the truly awful state of the nation’s airports. I posit this thesis because Glasgow Airport is proudly emblazoned in “Scotland with Style” banners, and it provides the first impression many people will have of our fait land. Yet in the brief time I was there, I was flanked by one crowd of boisterous neds after another, the urinals were all blocked up with piss, the shops were all shut, and the staff wore expressions so hangdog that I don’t think I could have shaken off their collective torpor if I’d vomited fruit pastilles over them and then spontaneously combusted. Actually, I probably shouldn’t mention combustion in the same paragraph as airports – certain people are quite twitchy about such linguistic juxtapositions. Hi to the web traffic monitoring officials at RAF Menwith Hill, who are probably logging onto this site two paragraphs in, but rest assured, lads, you haven’t missed much.

Contrast Glasgow’s fraught ambience with Antalya airport, on the southern coast of Turkey. Admittedly, I did pull a door handle off its loose hinges, and the tannoy announcer was almost indecipherable over the mumblings of sleepy passengers, but otherwise, Antalya provides an object lesson in how to transport large numbers of people quickly and effectively, without irritating them to the point of apoplexy. Efficient and friendly security staff rapidly screened everyone at the main entrance, before an enthusiastic check-in assistant processed our bags at one of the 12 desks dedicated to our flight, and then after a brief additional security check, we were free to walk around a huge, circular departure lounge with each gate conveniently placed around the edges of the circle, rather than hidden away beyond six miles of blank corridors and travelators (I’m looking at you, Heathrow). There was good food available in the 24-hour restaurants (unlike Luton Airport, which effectively closes down after 8.30pm), the buses dropped people off right outside the terminal (no anti-terrorist barriers here to cause confusion and inconvenience), and our flight took off on time because there are three runways (count ‘em! Three!) to channel planes in and out with minimal queuing.

It was, quite honestly, embarrassing to be British in such a situation. And nor is it only Turkey that shames our air transport hubs. Consider the architectural grandeur of Schiphol in Amsterdam, the metronomic efficiency of Tokyo’s Narita and Haneda airports, or the sheer magnificence of Changi in Singapore, which has been voted the world’s best airport this year after finishing as runner-up in the 2012 World Airport Awards. It really does make you wonder what the tourists flocking to Glasgow next year for the XX Commonwealth Games will make of our country, when they first arrive. If I was them, I’d turn around and go straight back to wherever I came from. When I say there’s no place like home, I don’t necessarily mean it as a compliment, especially in terms of our tired and basic airports. And don't even get me started on "Glasgow" Prestwick...

Mental blocks

Anyone who’s ever visited Glasgow will know that this (mostly) glorious city is liberally festooned with tower blocks. Rising above the rooftops of everything around them, these concrete monoliths have become sadly iconic of the city’s 20^th century malaise. They are despised by traditionalists who still resent them for supplanting old tenements, despised by snobs and people from Edinburgh as junkie-ridden hellholes, and despised by a thousand former tenants for the crimes that occurred within their slab-like walls. These former symbols of a brave new city have become anachronistic amid Glasgow’s Victorian splendour and modern aesthetics – a grey and gloomy testament to Le Corbusier’s failed status as a visionary. And so it is that Glasgow’s eponymous housing agency is tearing down tower blocks as fast as it can, replacing them with high-calibre low-rise tenements that people are clamouring to live in.

As a keen student of architecture, I shed no tears for the mass departure of these Brutalist edifices. Ibrox and Govan used to have nine tower blocks, but by the end of 2013, only one will be left standing, and Govan in particular can only be improved as a consequence. Laurieston loses its last two towers later this summer, the iconic Red Road skyscrapers will be razed by 2017, and so will blocks in a dozen other suburbs throughout Glasgow. Their replacements will be far more suited to modern life, and much prettier to boot. Only one aspect of this renaissance troubles me – the knowledge that, in principle at least, there is nothing wrong with living in a tower block.

I know this because I lived in high-rise buildings for two years, and I loved it. The views were amazing, the rooms were spacious, the lack of a garden wasn’t an issue when you have a balcony, and you soon get used to shuttling your groceries about in a lift. However, the difference between these tower blocks and many others is that my former residences were constructed by housebuilders rather than housing associations, and every property was either owned outright or let to tenants affluent enough to afford the (fittingly high) rents. People in more expensive buildings generally take more care of their surroundings, and so it proved on both occasions. Yes, there were issues and irritations caused by communal living, but by and large, both buildings remained clean and respectable, populated by people who probably weren’t model citizens but certainly didn’t shit on their own doorsteps, literally or metaphorically. Indeed, the biggest problem associated with my first high-rise residence was ongoing vandalism caused by youths from the council tower blocks across the road. I’m sorry, but it’s true. We cared about our building, but they didn’t.

And that, in a nutshell, is where Glasgow’s state-sponsored tower blocks figuratively fell down – they were populated with too many people who just didn’t care. Didn’t care if they overfilled the rubbish chutes, which then jammed, and stank. Didn’t care if their kids played with matches in the stairwells and caused everyone to be evacuated while the fire brigade rushed over. Didn’t care if they left rusting prams in lobbies, or pissed in the lifts, or dropped needles on the grass where children wanted to play, or attacked people from the next scheme just because they were from the next scheme. And as a result of this, issues like the lack of soundproofing became more of a problem, because some people didn’t give a toss whether the elderly widow next door was forced to listen to dance music at 2am. People have the most extraordinary ability to ruin things for each other, either through deliberate actions or culpable apathy, and as a direct consequence, Glasgow regularly reverberates to dull booms as hundreds of homes and millions of memories are erased from its skyline.

It frustrates me, it really does. I’ve seen low-rise housing estates with greater social problems than some of the tower blocks that are being blown down, and I could even name a few council towers that are genuinely sought after among local residents - it’s all about the mentality of the people who live there. That’s why one council estate in my former home town had a ten-year waiting list for a house, while another scheme had plenty of empty properties because few people were willing to put up with the brazen drug dealers, feral dogs and sneering vandals. On an architectural level, the continuing demolition of Glasgow’s high-rise housing stock is a blessing, but these tower blocks don’t really deserve the criticism they receive. Buildings are rarely at fault – it’s their occupants who make or break them.

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.