A blog by Ross of Penge (formerly of Balham)

I blogged pretty extensively during 2014 and early 2015, but got out of the habit. In the time since there has been a huge amount I've sort of wanted to write about (politics, terror etc) but I haven't. I tried several times, but anger and frustration about what was happening prevented me from getting things down in a coherent form. Given I couldn't express what I felt, and it didn't seem like it would make a difference anyway, I let it lie fallow.

It's now early 2017, and I'm back, blogging about my attempt to do the first month of the year without social media. After that, who knows?

And why gateway2thesouth? Named after a famous sketch popularised by Peter Sellers:

"Broad-bosomed, bold, becalmed, benign,
Lies Balham, four-square on the Northern Line."

I lived in Balham for 23 years - longer than I have been anywhere else, and it still feels like one of the places in the world I most belong.

Saturday 5 April 2014

Saturday

Saturday, and the Saharan conditions have abated.

I spent the morning at a vocal session on the South Bank - learning a bit more about singing songs from musicals, with a range from Sondheim to Les Mis. Great fun followed by fish and chips in a decent pub in Southwark.

And having gone and helped my son pick up some furniture for his newly refurbished and very grown up room, and done the ironing, it has the feeling of a good day of balance between achievement and entertainment.

So now its time for tea, blogging and pontification.

Despite its concrete brutality, I rather like the South Bank. It doesn't feel like proper London, but still contains a friendly mix from skateboarders to serious art people. Plus it has book stalls - another of the addictions I may not have told you about, and nice cafes. And people walk for the sake of it, not just to get from A to B as they do on the other bank. Which, come to think of it I have never heard called the North Bank. I resolve to spend more time on the rive sude (is that right?).

Being in on a Saturday however brings the 'what to do' concern. I don't do the Voice, and try to avoid Casualty in case Charlie Fairhead is still in it. (He is.) That man is the BBC's Ken Barlow. Not in the boring, druidic, sexually-promiscuous, non-rapist way. Just in the "ravens in the tower" can't get rid of him way.

I could consider our new London Live TV channel. It has reruns of Smack the Pony and Spaced on, which would take me nicely up to Stewart Lee time. Or I might run a coupe of episodes of Brass Eye. Or read.

I've been listening to a new (to me) podcast which is basically a long chat between Frankie Boyle and a Canadian comic called Glenn Wool. Not for the easily offended, but very amusing. Called Freestyle,if you are interested, and shows Boyle to be a deal more educated than he comes across usually.

Tomorrow, off to see Bart's Choir at Cadogan Hall doing some Bach, and I suspect frantically trying to learn some French folk songs before Tuesday's Voxcetera rehearsal.

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