Soilman

Sorry for another non-gardening post, folks, but I had to mention this.

I have the in-laws staying at the moment, so I’ve been doing the traditional London tourism shit. It’s been a very long time since I did this, so I was unprepared for the experience.

From a British citizen’s and Londoner’s point of view, then, here are my reflections upon London tourism:

• Jesus Christ, but it’s SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE. The biggest rip-off I ever saw. Seriously disgraceful. A family pass to Madame Tussaud’s – a two-hour entertainment, at most – is £99. That’s after you’ve queued for THREE HOURS to get in. Everything else is as bad – Buck House, the London Eye. For a family ticket, none of them give you much change from £100, if any. Stay in London for a week and see everything and I reckon you’re looking at something like £700 per adult without bed and board.
• The queues, the queues (see above). Westminster Abbey is just about acceptable at ‘only’ 20 mins waiting. Everywhere else sucks. Madame Tussaud’s broke my heart: Expensive and shit. Why anybody wants to see the damn place so much is utterly baffling.
• The restrictions. I haven’t been to Parliament Square for a while, so I was shocked to see the permanent railings (see pic) keeping people out. I understand why – the riots etc. But that the central, eponymous historic public space at the heart of our democracy should deny access to its own citizens is appalling.
• The profanity of charging £50 for three adults and a child at St Paul’s cathedral. Six years ago, when I last went, it was free. How dare they suddenly start charging? I thought St Paul’s (unlike Westminster Abbey, which stopped being a ‘real’ church years ago) was a place of proper worship?
• The websites. As if the foregoing weren’t irritating enough, London’s various ‘attractions’ have created a new Hell in their booking systems. In this dungeon of impenetrable jargon (‘Fasticket’, ‘Freedom pass’, ‘Fastrack’), you quickly become disorientated by the conflicting price information, the combined ‘multi-attraction’ offers, the early/late savers, the ‘priority’ no-queue options and the two-for-one ‘specials’ that turn out to be pricier than certain individual tickets. It’s almost as if – perish the thought – it was all created specifically to confuse.

Anything good to mention? Well, Brits are as polite and orderly as ever – no queue jumping, and smiles all round. Plus every guide and usher is a comedian; a perennial pleasure of living in the UK.

But on the whole, the experience is depressing. I’m saddened by the overpriced and crummy commercial ‘attractions’ that our capital has to offer the world. To think that people fly thousands of miles to queue on Euston Road for three hours, then pay so much money to see something so fucking tawdry…

Well I just wish it weren’t so. That’s all I’m saying.

PS: Want ideas for things to do in London? Some of these might appeal, if you like the unusual. And many of these are must-dos: unusual, interesting and great value for money. If you’re a history nut, walking the Thames path is 100% free and the best way, bar none, to see the sights of London.

If you know any unusual, cheap and interesting things to do in London, do please add them in the comments. May help some luckless, itinerant American who is even now pacing the streets of our capital, utterly broke, and cursing these islands for their disgraceful contempt for visitors.

I know I shouldn’t, but I really do have to comment on Hugh Grant’s interventions into the phone-hacking scandal.

Hugh’s a splendid chap and I have huge respect for what he’s trying to do. The cynic in me fears he’s motivated less by selfless concern for the public good than by revenge (it was News International papers that cheerled the story of his embarrassing roadside blowjob), but I’m willing to suspend my cynicism. Hey, right thing even for wrong reason etc etc.

My worry about Hugh and his enthusiastic cheerleaders is that they risk exemplifying the dangerous adage that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

I don’t disagree for a second with his analysis that “there has been a grotesque power over our lawmakers.” Spot on. That’s how Murdoch (and, for ages, Conrad Black at the Telegraph) kept scandal at bay. Nobody in public office (or in a private position of power) wants to offend the media – obviously. It’s dangerous.

And yes, it IS grotesque. It affords the media, as I’ve said before, a disproportionate and shocking power. Which they will abuse. That’s human beings for you.

But here’s the thing: The alternative – politicians wielding grotesque power over the media – is far worse. If, like me, you deplore the vices of a free media uncontrolled by government, wait until you see the behaviour of a ‘free’ government unrestrained by media.

Speaking for myself, I’m forever amazed by what our lords and masters get up to even when they know the eyes of the press are upon them (parliamentary expenses, anyone?).

Believe me, you do NOT want to live in a country where the media lives in fear of politicians. On the contrary. We want our lawmakers and powerbrokers to fear the press. We need them to.

The downside, as ever, is that this has a price. Freedom – of the media, of the individual, of society – always does.

Example: You want to be free to own a firearm? Fine. But you’ll have to put up with an increased risk of being shot, or seeing your children shot. Americans, on the whole, understand this freedom dilemma better than Europeans, and I admire them for it. This side of the Atlantic, we’re all for minimising risk – all risk – at the expense of a wide range of freedoms.

When it comes to press freedom, it is exceptionally dangerous to tinker – no matter how noble or desirable the goal. I’m all for preventing a repeat of the phone hacking, and all the rest of it (I have an even greater interest in stopping it than a non-journalist), but every ‘solution’ proposed, so far, scares the shit out of me.

It should scare the shit out of you too. We must get this right – which means cool, unemotional deliberation and great, great care.

We do not need excitable luvvies running around talking about grotesque press power and demanding that politicians ‘control’ the media.

And so the glut begins. Thought I was going to get no cauliflowers at all during the dry patch. Now that it’s been pissing with rain for three weeks, they’re going nuts. I cut all of these this evening, and there are more on the way.

I’d normally be triumphant – boringly, nauseatingly triumphant. But I can’t bring myself to gloat tonight. The News of the World scandal is profoundly depressing me.

It’s not the evil, amoral wankers who hacked that poor, dead girl’s phone – although they sicken me. It’s not even the risible, farcical denials from NOTW upper management that they knew nothing about what was going on.

No, what really bugs me is that several hundred decent journalists (most entirely unconnected with the scandal, and hired long afterwards) are now going to lose their jobs so that everyone in upper management can keep theirs.

There truly is something wickedly immoral at the heart of this whole revolting story. The stench that hovers around the Murdoch name and the Murdoch empire is suffocating – and I speak as a journalist and a NOTW admirer (easy to forget, but they used to do – and have done – some great journalism as well as the end-of-pier kiss ‘n’ tells).

It matters for Americans, too

To my American readers, to whom this may all seem arcane and irrelevant: It matters to you guys, too. The Murdoch family, through News Corp, owns vast media interests in the USA, and is bidding for more.

Americans who care about and have any say in good corporate governance need to have a long, hard look at how News International has been behaving on this side of the pond. Do you really think these behaviours have been confined to Britain? What on earth has been going on elsewhere?

Are these people you want running anything important, significant or influential in your country?

Thought not.

It’s the time of year when everything’s a-bloomin’ and a-fruitin’. Some nice raspberries, and the early spuds are at last producing.

Sadly, so are the weeds. But that’s life.

In other news, Mrs S has determined that for our holidays this year we’re going… nowhere. Instead, we’re having a ‘staycation’ and remaining firmly at home.

I could kiss her (and will, actually). Jaded as I am by the traditional Soilman holiday, I was getting very antsy at the prospect of an aeroplane trip – any aeroplane trip.

Knowing I don’t have to do it fills me with exquisite relief. No puce-faced child. No screaming blue murder in my ear. No ill-fitting nappies (diapers) leaking their contents on to my trouser leg. No need to spend half my salary at the osteopath on return.

Instead I’ll have a fortnight on the allotment – weather permitting. And how bloody marvellous will that be?

The Planning Dept (aka Mrs Soilman) is slowly turning its attention towards the summer holidays, and I’m worried.

I used to look forward to holidays. That was before I’d taken many.

From a 42-year-old perspective, the 20-year-old’s optimism seems deranged. After climbing into your car, going on holiday is the biggest risk you ever take with your health and sanity.

I’m not even going to mention air travel (the folly of volunteering to cramp yourself into Stephen Hawking’s chair while a small, puce-faced child vomits and screams blue murder into your left ear – for 14 hours – defies rational explanation).

No, my principal beef is that places I can afford to visit (I definitely include my own nation’s offerings in this general judgement) are a bit shit.

Brief diarrhoea

Only in the lives of the super rich are the cabs plentiful and empty, the prices reasonable, the hotel rooms clean and well appointed, the dividing walls soundproofed, the satellite pornography peopled by cheerful and attractive actors, the sunblock effective, the lavatories pristine and unblocked, the maps accurate, the peace of night time uninterrupted by yelling drunks from Morecambe, the wi-fi dependable, the sewers invisible and odourless, the beaches unpolluted by dog shit and engine oil, the flash floods insufficiently violent to wash you off a mountain into the Dead Sea, the transgender prostitutes discreet and inoffensive, the pickpockets clumsy, the child beggars winsome and grateful, the waiters loquacious and amusing, the foreigners unexcitable and anglophone, the tourists indistinguishable from the natives, the local pack animals well fed and kindly treated, the swimming pools uncontaminated by Giardia, the food delicious and hygienically prepared by people who wash their fucking hands, the food poisoning confined to one lavish vomit followed by miraculous recovery, the diarrhoea brief and barely noticeable, the sandflies hypoallergenic, the mosquitoes vegetarian, the sea urchins and lethally poisonous Stonefish confined to the bay used by the other hotel, the hire cars well maintained with working brakes, the roads clearly signposted by somebody who actually wants to help you orientate, the service polite and attentive, the ‘attractions’ cheap and uncrowded, the lie-ins uninterrupted, the only-on-holiday marital sex agreeable to both parties.

In my world, at least half of the above will never be true – wherever we opt to go.

I realise, of course, that I should count myself fortunate to be able to take any kind of holiday. And – with reservations – I do.

But that doesn’t stop the gnawing tension creeping into my consciousness about this time of year.

Having Fun can be so fucking ghastly.

Talking of freedom of speech (see below), we are living in significant times.

You’re probably aware of the current superinjunction fiasco – ie folks on Twitter ‘outing’ celebrities who’ve taken out injunctions to prevent the media identifying them or writing about their marital affairs.

What you may have missed, unless you work in the media, is today’s story about Max Mosley at the European Court of Human Rights. In a nutshell: Max (who won £60k in damages from a UK tabloid for violating his privacy when it wrote about his S&M orgy with prostitutes) tried to get the ECHR to force UK newspapers to notify, in advance, anybody about whose ‘private life’ they propose to write.

Luckily, he failed – for now.

There is something rotten at the heart of both these situations. I don’t mean the UK’s Human Rights Act (the well-meaning, but flawed legislation that governs litigation in both), but something more profoundly mistaken: the principle (enshrined in judges’ recent interpretations of that Act) that a person’s sex life – no matter who and what it involves – is private. In particular, the now established legal assumption that marital affairs are a private matter.

Guess what? They’re not.

Marriage is a public, legal contract. One of its provisions is a contract of fidelity (unless both parties specifically and publicly contract out of that). If you breach that condition, you are breaching the terms of a public contract.

If you’re found out (or if your lover wants to tell the world), you can’t cover it up as ‘private’. Sure, discovery will cause damage – to your marriage (presumably), to your children, to your reputation and your wider family.

But here’s the thing: it’s public, because you breached a public declaration of commitment to another person. You have no right to privacy. Cheating spouses, once exposed, will be discussed and will be publicly disapproved. Quite right, too: the whole point of a public contract is to invite the public to hold you to its terms by the implicit threat of gossip and disapproval if you breach them.

In short, you blew it – and the damage caused is entirely your fault. Not the media’s, not your family’s, not the law’s. You have no right to shut that particular stable door once the horse has bolted.

There was ever, is now and always will be only one way to avoid alienating your spouse, hurting your children and destroying your family: Keep it in your fucking trousers.

If you can’t, and get caught, take it like a man and stop snivelling about your right to privacy. You forfeited that right when you got your knob out.

Somebody complained recently that I’d ‘censored’ him on this site.

Actually, I had – for a reason you’ll infer later. But it made me laugh, because it’s like a gatecrasher complaining to the host of a private party about being thrown out. This site is not a government or state entity. It’s not a public space. I’m not the guarantor of anyone’s free speech.

I don’t have to be. This site is private property. Who comes here, and what they say here, is entirely my choice and mine alone. Given that some folks seem unclear about that, I thought it may be worth stating for the record.  You want to complain about your rights, take it up with somebody else, somewhere else.

Having said that, it happens that I am a fierce proponent of free speech – even (especially?) speech that the majority (whoever they may be) disapprove. One of the missions of this blog is to tell it like it is – in any language and idiom I choose. You may have noticed.

So I’m not going to go around censoring anybody… although I’m perfectly entitled to do so (without explanation) if I choose. Even if you disagree with me, I’ll be honoured to have your comments. In fact, I’ll be especially pleased, because it’s great to read all shades of experience and opinion.

I particularly venerate argument based on facts, and supported by evidence. I am a humanist and a Renaissance man. Make your case well enough and you’ll change my mind.

What I won’t tolerate – ever, under any circumstances – is hate speech, commenters being unpleasant or rude to other commenters, and/or criticism of my idiom or profanity.

An important mission statement of this blog is that people be free to express themselves how they like. It’s the very opposite of censorship, if you think about it for a second. And a self-conscious reaction against all the many times and places in our lives where we can’t say what we think, in the words we think.

If you don’t like my attitude or my bad language, I’m massively outnumbered by ‘positive’ offerings in the ‘clean’ world. So, er… fuck off and enjoy them.

Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger.

This year really is turning out just like last. No rain, then spuds frosted in May. Bang go my hopes of new potatoes before June.

Oddly, though, I already feel stirrings of what the French – with genius – call j’en-foutisme (untranslatable in proper English, but rough meaning: “Don’t-give-a-fuck-ism”). So last year was shit, now this one is too.

So what? At 42 years old, perhaps it’s time I started worrying about things that actually matter?

Update, 7th May: I see from my incoming Google traffic that LOTS of you, like me, got caught out by the frost. Don’t panic if you’ve not seen this before: Potatoes DO recover from frost damage. It just sets them back a few weeks and may slightly lower yield. A pain, but not a disaster.

Got a bit obsessed by the royal wedding first thing this morning. By the time it started, of course, I was bored shitless and wandered off to see how my spuds were doing. Answer: OK. We could do with rain (when couldn’t we?).

Have thought about it since, though, and realised why I do find these formal occasions – despite all my better instincts – rather impressive.

It’s not the pomp. It’s not the pageantry. It’s not the horses, or the dresses, or the (mostly) ghastly royals. It’s certainly not the ‘atmosphere’ – the smell of horse shit at these events is overpowering.

No, what moves me about it all is that state occasions featuring the royal family are the only times when the TV screen isn’t full of tiresome fuckers, pompous shitheads, thought policemen, rabble-rousing demagogues, dotty dictators, take-offence industry spokespersons, Right Honourable liars, thick bigots, moaning inadequates, whingeing chisellers looking for handouts and/or evil cunts threatening to kill everyone they disagree with.

Crowded into the Mall and Horse Guards, today, were countless normal, moderate, fair, thoughtful, put-upon, tax-paying non-fuckwits who still – despite the BBC’s best efforts to convince us otherwise – make up the majority of UK citizens.

Particularly impressive were William’s three RAF colleagues from Search & Rescue. Decent, hard-working, dependable and honourable guys who risk life and limb daily to help others and will spend their time on this earth trying to do the Right Thing. Just because.

When I see and hear folks like that, and think of the many feckless, hate-filled, Entitled, lazy, illiterate morons whose freedoms they’re protecting… well. I run out of words.

Guess I’m just glad that breed still exists, albeit in low numbers. Today they put the wankers in the shade – for once.

Many thanks to Paul Bradshaw for posting this piece about PR firms using bloggers to push marketing campaigns on the sly. Calling fellow bloggers: Did you know that you could be required by the Office of Fair Trading to declare whether any of your content is paid-for?

As I mentioned recently, PRs regularly approach me with paid-for link and posting deals. I’m repelled by them, for the same reasons as Paul.

But I know there’s lots of it going on. There are whole sites purporting to be ‘genuine’ blogs written by amateur enthusiasts that are in reality fronts for undeclared PR campaigns, or which have been set up by marketing companies solely to boost SEO rankings for certain keywords.

Further down the ‘corruption’ scale, amateur bloggers are taking money here and there in return for undisclosed content deals. They must be: I wouldn’t be getting these constant offers if nobody ever took them up.

This is blogging’s dirty little not-so-secret… and there’s some of it in gardening.

You may or may not care about this. I don’t – at least as far as the money itself is concerned. Folks have got to live. If you need the money, take it. Good on you.

But please don’t take it without disclosing what you’ve done for it. Every secret paid-for post, link or review erodes trust in ALL bloggers, ALL writers. Every opinion, every ‘recommendation’, every ‘fact’, every SEO-optimised headline, every URL itself becomes suspect.

Hey, it’s obviously too late for such a naïve plea. I realise that. I’m also aware that this post won’t be universally popular. Nobody likes an ivory tower crusader.

But here’s the thing: The world is not a better place if everything you read, everywhere, is bollocks.  In fact, it becomes a better or worse place in direct proportion to every lie that is or isn’t told.

Think about that when PRs dangle baubles before you.

Postscript

PS Right on cue, I got an offer by email today of money in return for ‘guest posts’ and/or ‘bespoke content’ provided by ‘our highly experienced content writers’. It seems unlikely that anyone would make that offer today – of all days – if they actually read these pages.

But just to test, here’s my reply to the offer: Bidding for sole advertiser status on soilman.net hasn’t officially started, Mr P.G, but I would be happy to write you down for an opening bid of $1 million. I’ll accept payment in US dollars, sterling or major human body organs.

PPS You really DON’T want to place your clients’ ads on this site, Mr P.G. I am habitually dark, cynical, moany, curmudgeonly, negative, profane and a prize pain in the arse. This makes my site a lousy vehicle for any brand.