Category: Historical

Avatar Robert Koch – The Musical

I’m not very into musicals. The whole idea of spending two hours watching people burst into song every five minutes, quite frankly, gives me palpitations of a rocky and unnerving manner that no amount of marshmallows can settle. It seems as though a lot of subject matter has been turned into musicals, both in the theatre and also in cinema.

Even Spiderman has been turned into a musical. My friend Steve took a trip to New York a couple of years ago and paid a hefty price to watch ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark’ which, apparently, has music and lyrics by U2’s Bono and The Edge. Which is just unbelievably crazy. I mean it is. Without even dwelling on it, that’s bonkers.

So what next? What will people look at and think that choruses and choreography can improve, that falsettos and furnishings can dazzle? It got me thinking though which, as most people will know, that’s generally a bad thing. Why not turn the spotlight on someone who I personally believe requires a bit more attention? One of those underdogs who never quite got the recognition that they deserve? Cast your mind back to Year 10 history, pull up a chair and listen to the story of good ol’ Bob Koch.

Robert Heinrich Herman Koch. Born 11 December 1843. The guy was so smart he taught himself to read and write before he started school. His research helped to identify the specific causative agents of tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax. I may be copying these details direct from certain wiki I mean certain websites but I deal in facts and not speculation. The man did a lot for medicine and microbiology and yet other than a statue in Berlin his name is relatively unknown.

Enter me. Amateur script writer and overall champion of the unappreciated. I think I’ve got the moxie to write a full play based on his life, with a dash of songs sprinkled generously over the three hour running time. I’ve been working on one this afternoon and I think you’ll agree that it has got something going on. I give you ‘Great Postulates!’:

Great Postulates!

It’s very simple, it’s on your tongue
I’ve got the recipe for an evening of fun
Down at the lab, test tube in hand
No time to dance, put down your jams

My report is imperative you see
It sets out what is necessary
To identify cultures, disease causing organisms
Those dark little things that mess with your rhythms
I’ve put pen to paper so read it loud
Something to make my country proud

Postulates!
I’ve established criteria
Postulates!
Erect your posterior
Postulates!
Cholera, tuberculosis
Postulates!
Here’s my prognosis…

I’m clearly onto a winner. If you would like to buy some shares in the production then please put some money in a brown paper bag and leave on my doorstep. Shares will be posted to you within 30 days.

Avatar A History of Westpoint

When we moved into our new flat, we were moving into one of several blocks of privately-owned flats set in landscaped grounds, which are all inside a gated compound. At the time we thought there was nothing special about it – until the Westpoint Resident Management Association Steering Committee posted a welcome pack through our front door. The welcome pack told us what day the bins were collected and some other practical information, but by far the most useful thing was the history of the flats.

So that we can all share in this learning experience, here is the history of the building in which I now live inside there.

144 million years BC

A 60-metre layer of impermeable Gault clay is deposited on earlier Paeleozoic rocks, forming the geological basis of the ground on which Shortlands now stands. It is this clay that continues to support Westpoint today and stops it being some 60 metres closer to the centre of the earth.

AD 862

Ethelbert, the king of Kent, grants land for a new manor to be called Bromleag. The manor becomes a prosperous market town over the following centuries, known as Bromley.

1858

Shortlands railway station is opened on the new railway line to Bromley. It is not called Shortlands yet and there are no houses nearby for it to serve. Nobody knows why a railway station was built here.

1974

Local building company Arkwright Masonry Erectors Ltd. purchase three handsome Victorian villas in extensive gardens and with fetching period detailing, and demolish them in order to build three big box-shaped blocks of flats and a car park.

1996

Arkwright Masonry Erectors Ltd. go bust when the owner is sued by his own daughter for embezzling company funds to construct a large fiberglass model of the Coliseum encasing her house. The residents of Westpoint buy out the freehold on the site and begin a new era in which there are no grown ups to tell them what to do. The Westpoint Resident Management Association Steering Committee is established as a not-for-profit commercial community joint enterprise partnership.

2002

The front doors to all buildings at Westpoint are carefully sanded down and coated with a slightly darker shade of varnish than before.

2015

Benches are installed in the grounds so that residents can sit outdoors at an uncomfortable slope and in close proximity to parked cars or the bins.

2016

Chris finds himself getting on a train at Shortlands with Chris Addison, stand-up comedian and star of The Thick of It, who apparently lives nearby and sometimes gets a train from the same station as Chris at about 9am.

Avatar Mid Thirties

A week or so ago, I turned 32.

This is an important moment. I’ve left behind the first couple and I am now officially in my thirties. I am in my thirties. When I was a teenager that phrase would have been more or less on a par with old age pensioner or incontinent geriatric.

Consequently, in my twenties, I made a serious mistake. I held on to my “early twenties” for far too long. 20, 21, 22 – nobody would argue that they are your early twenties. But I carried on thinking of myself as being in my early twenties at 23 and 24 too. That was fine at the time. I clung to my youth.

Then my 25th birthday arrived and with it came a terrible realisation. 25 had to be my mid twenties, there was no denying it. But if 20-24 had all been early twenties, then I had squeezed my mid twenties down to a year, and at 26 I was unwillingly hurled forwards into my late twenties. My late twenties. They were almost over with four years to go. Nightmare.

So with this decade of my life I am determined to get it right. Having turned 32, I am now officially declaring myself to have entered my mid thirties. By taking a hit now, and entering my mid thirties early, I can continue them much longer, and I don’t have to think of myself as reaching my late thirties until I’m 38, at which point I should be able to come to terms with the idea.

So here we are: 32, the beginning of my mid thirties, and an early sign that I might be learning from past mistakes. Sometimes.

Avatar What did you just say about beavers?

Reuben approached me last weekend because he had recently had a dream that had perplexed him and needed to know what it meant.

This is mostly his dream with details but with a smudge of embellishment on my part:

“Reuben is walking around school with his new fictional best friend, Daniel. They had decided to walk back home through the woods once the school day was over. The woods, though dark, were still light enough to be unthreatening. They had gone halfway through when they heard a strange noise and a bright blue flash, and stood at the base of a tree was a beaver.

They tried to get near but each time the beaver disappeared and reappeared in a different part of the woods. Sometimes the beaver would appear in different attire, and in particular as a Mexican. Reuben and Daniel split up and in doing so, one of them managed to grab the beaver. As the other approached, the bright blue light flashed and they had magically been transported to ancient Egypt.

It was at this point they realised it was a magical, time-travelling beaver.

The animal was tired; time-travelling is a very tiring experience. The only way to re-charge the beaver was to feed him a particular type of wood. Once this was done, Reuben and Daniel had to try to convince the beaver that they needed to go home, which was difficult because the beaver was worshipped as a God in this period of history.

After a fair amount of tussling, the beaver accidentally transports them to the post apocalyptic world of 2704. Then, through a series of mishaps, they also take in the sights of the Jurassic era, the Romans, pirates, Aztecs, Victorian era Britain, World War II and the 1980’s.

Eventually though they get home and decide to keep the beaver as a pet. It turns out he is called Harold. His full name is Harold “Carrot” Bevoid. In his time he drives a Beaver Delorean. His time is not specifically mentioned so they do not know what year he has time-travelled from.”

…

Something to do with puberty perhaps?

Avatar Current Investigations

Have you seen this man?

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The relevant authorities are currently looking for the suspect due to his possible involvement in the recent fires at the Jerry Loinsford Memorial Publishing house.

Referred to only as Kevindo Menendez to both friends and work colleagues, the suspect has on occasion, which is putting it lightly, been known to undertake various lengthy and overwhelming construction work to his current accommodation.

Even though his poodle grooming salon failed and ultimately closed several years ago, Mr Menendez, pictured here enjoying the benefits of traffic light jelly, has had recent success with his line of baked beans.

The suspect has not had any prior involvement in any incidents of arson, however several comments regarding the owner of the publishing house and his award-winning books and personality have placed him directly at the front of the authorities’ enquiries.

If you know the whereabouts of this reprobate, please contact someone wearing shoes.

Avatar Remembering is Fun

I have recently been on a bit of a tidying binge in and around the flat. I took a lot of time out in January to buff to sheen all the jobs I had been procrastinating about during December. And there were tons. It also didn’t help that other people were actively handing me MORE things to do but hey, that’s just me. If I’m me, and I usually am, then I’m always helping.

In sorting out a particularly shifty box in the corner of my room, I re-discovered this interesting artefact from a certain Mr C Marshall:

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I’m not very good with dates. I am very certain that this was when he, as in him, as in you, Chris, we’re at university learning how to push buttons for the BBC. Just think of where you would be now were it not for the booze and juice aisles.

My absolute favourite though is the ‘don’t know’ section which contained Lord only knows what kind of middling weirdness and frivolity.

Remembering is Fun.

Avatar An moment of inspiration

This week I passed a statue of a great man on Woodford Green.

Winston

I stopped to admire it, and as I did so, I recalled the stirring words of what was probably his greatest ever speech:

“Iodine sandwiches; iodine sandwiches. Iodine sandwiches – iodine sandwiches, iodine sandwiches. Iodine sandwiches.”

Who among us could hear those words and fail to look around for a fascist dictatorship to defeat? Not I. That’s why I immediately set about decking anyone shifty I could see nearby.

Who have you decked recently, and why?