Postcard from Big Smoke

I was in London for a couple of days this week and rather splendid it was too. Not going to go the whole Judith Chalmers hog, paint myself orange and give you some sordid blow by blow account of all sights seen but I will share just a few of my own little, erm, idiosyncratic observations...

1. Went to the Game On festival at the Science Museum, a celebration of computer gaming all the way through from the very old school Spacewar to the likes of the very nu-skool Gears of War with plenty of detours in between across the whole space time continuum. A beautiful concept, to my jaded eyes, not to be missed. Anyhoo, the big man is very much an old school chappy and was a tad more excited about seeing a PDP-1(!) in the flesh than in any of this hi-def polygon shifting bilge they are shoving down the collective throats of the gaming public at the minute, so... I spent my time playing Missile Command, Galaxians, Galaga and Moon Cresta! And bloody Xevious! Yes, all original old arcade machines with the coin mechanism re-jigged to give free infinite credits. Glorious, just what the doctor ordered (okay, they had R-Type there in PlayStation form with that blasted, unnatural three-button compromise thingy for a control set - fucking philistines! - so it was a bit less than perfect but still...).

The also had a listening post with a jukebox of old music from the 8 and 16 bit days including plenty from the main man, Lord Tim of Follin. Almost brought a tear to the big man's eye hearing that LED Storm title theme burbling away again - BTW, the YM plug-in writer for WinAmp really deserves our eternal thanks. Anyways, before I hit the road I got a wee look at the three next gen consoles which were set-up on display with folks showing them off. Brave new world, eh ? Meh. The offerings from Sony and the beast of Redmond both showed off some very pretty hi-def gfx on the various big telly's but they certainly didn't blow my socks off in any shape or form - the games still looked to me like the same old tedious pains in the tits the way 99% of the rot from the post SNES / MegaDrive era are. Besides all that, Bill G's boys ain't getting one thin dime from me (evil fucks that they are) whilst the Sony DRM house can bite my shiny metal butt if they think I'm subsidizing any more of that nonsense. The Wii looked the best bet and I was slightly moved by it - at least the big N aren't trying secure their "platform" as some kind of "media hub" and all that marketroid bilge - it is a pure games machine. Always been a little bit of a Nintendo fanboi but ultimately even the Wii didn't really do it for me either - certainly not with the UK price being the usual rip-off Britain guff. Ho-hum. The moths living in the old wallet are safe for yet another year.

2. Caught the new-ish play Frost/Nixon at the Gielgud theatre later on in the evening, with Michael Sheen and Frank Langella as the two protagonists. That man Sheen is one helluva good actor, way more than just a mimic - to my eyes he captured Frosty as a man above and beyond any hoary old "Hello, good evening and welcome" Bremnerism schtick. He maybe even upped his game beyond those (double) Blair and Kenneth Williams efforts on the goggle box. Good work, fella. Langella was also pretty damn top drawer as Nixon - real gravitas. Yes, a good show all told. Oh, and Salman Rushdie was in the audience, a few seats away from me in the Dress Circle. Really. No, really. No bodyguards or anything. Might have been a doppelganger but I am 99% sure that it wasn't. Got as much right as anyone else to be there, of course, but still a bit odd to see him out among the living. I did briefly estimate potential suicide bomb blast radius but assessed that I was safe and watched the play in a peaceful frame of mind...

3. Regent's Park really rules. Very quiet during the week and beautifully maintained. There must be something in this global warming malarkey because London was again really sunny and mild - even Uncle Mex felt obliged to give his chrome dome an airing in deference to the pleasant weather. I have always liked London, I still really do. Don't know if I'd live there, tho'.

Made with the help of - mash-up of selections from recent Plan B issues. Lovely. Especially Dosh. Super dear, super.