The Name Game

On Wednesday we took a trip out from Knowledge Towers and went to the new Ripley's Believe It Or Not! exhibition, which I assumed would give me facts by the handful. Regrettably, though it was very entertaining, and built nicely from rooms full of tat to a magic walkway at the end, I learnt only one thing - that Yankee, a term meaning American, basically, actually meant English originally. It was a mispronounciation of 'English', courtesy of Native Americans. They got Yankee from English - no wonder they never broke through the language barrier. That and all the killing. Anyway, an interesting place, but the biggest shock of the evening was at the till - £20 each. Sticking with our original theme of names, and our additional one of rip-offs, we move on to cornershops. Martin's and McColl's, famous overpriced newsagents, always appeared to be owned by the same company, with their alluring blue and white signs, but little did I know that they're in fact owned by the same man - who else but Martin McColl.

Moving on to an ever so slightly more famous name, I decided to look into the meaning behind the very name of our capital city, London. While most places in the city have a clear history of where their name comes from, the amazing thing is that nobody knows where London got its name from. Various people who know about this sort of thing have suggested that the word has its roots in a dizzying range of languages, including Welsh, Belgian, Indo-European and Italian. It appears the most likely options are that it means 'fort on the river' or 'wide river' - both of which are fairly accurate, if slightly underwhelming depictions of the capital.

Of course, London is a word which conjures a variety of images - not all of them favourable, but it's not often associated with boredom. Belgium, on the other hand, is practically a byword for long, yawning spells of tedium, as it is seen by the wider world as not that interesting, to put it mildly. Try telling that to the residents of Brussels, who are burgled more frequently (and by that, I mean their houses are broken into it, not their bodies) than any other capital city in Europe - just pipping London to the post.

To conclude this name-based riff, we revert to the common denominator of nominal facts - the real names of celebrities. Everyone knows that Harry Webb and Reg Dwight are known by slightly more glamorous names nowadays, but a repeat of Who Do You Think You Are? (my new favourite show, having stumbled upon Ainsley Harriott having his soul torn in half by the revelation that his great-grandpa was a slave trader) let me know that cockney sparrah Babs Windsor was born Barbara Ann Deeks. It also informed her, and the audience, that her great-grandparents hailed from Ireland (which she was excited about) and Suffolk (which was met with a look bordering on disgust). As empty-handed backpackers in Belgium will tell you, never judge a place on preconceptions...

Johnsons

<< Guy Fawkes: "Hello officer... oh, this? It's strictly for personal use"

A friend of Knowledge Towers informed us on Sunday that you can lose about a pound in weight when you go for a wee. Anyone who's spent several hours in a pub will tell you that this is quite plausible, given that a pound weighs about the same as a pint of liquid, and that the ratio whilst drinking lager is 1 pint in, 5 pints out. By the way, our friend satisfies and indeed develops her fascination with bodily fluids by working as a nurse.

While we're on the subject of johnsons, here's the world's worst ever false name - when Guy Fawkes was caught with a stick of dynamite and a Che Guevara T-shirt in the cellars of Parliament in 1605, he pretended that his name was John Johnson, which surely could only have been worse if he had gone for Bonfire McFireworks. I'd like to think that he put a large 'uhh' between his assumed first and surnames, accompanied with a scratch of the chin, in the vein of Alan Partridge when posing as Bill Car.

I'd like to finish this loosely cohesive, wholly juvenile article with a fact about Littlehampton, but instead we're heading 30 miles east on the A27, over the South Downs and along the interminable Brighton by-pass, all the way back to bloody Lewes. I learnt from ever-flowing fountain of knowledge Sky Sports News that Lewes is not pronounced Lewis, but is instead pronounced Loos - which brings us back to where we started...

Mad Skills

<< Napoleon Dynamite: Possesses a range of skills

Everyone has a skill, whether it's cryptic crossword solving, large hadron colliding, or getting keys off keyrings really quickly (I thank you). For example, if you're really struggling, there's a 50% chance you can at least roll your tongue - for half the population can do it, and half cannot. As a matter of fact, I can't (to witness me trying is to gaze upon hilarity) so that means your odds are slightly better than evens. Give it a whirl.

If you hone your skills, and put in the 90% perspiration to back it up over several years, you could reach the apex of your craft - being wheeled out as an expert assistant on a reality TV show. You know who I mean - Nick & Margaret (the middle-aged Jordan and Peter) on the Apprentice, loveable leprachaun Louis Walsh on the X-Factor, and on Raymond Blanc's The Res'ron, sour-faced snoot Sarah Willingham. She likes to do a drawn-out, heavily critical number to camera about the potential res'ronteurs' cooking skills - heavily laced with unsavoury double entendres such as "I've got to swallow this now". She's entitled to, of course, 'cos she's an expert. That's why they get her clopping through the res'rons, and regularly film her getting out of a mid-range sports car. Except she's not an expert on cookery - she's an expert on retail. This is fine for the show - as Raymond will tell you, running a res'ron is as much about business as cooking, but maybe Willingham should be going through the books instead of scoffing over a lukewarm plate of coq au vin next week.

Of course, there once was a simpler time when being skilled didn't involve ability in a grown-up, probably hard subject like business or haute cuisine - back in the schoolyard, if you could do a Rubik's Cube in under ten minutes, you were the king of the county. Regrettably, I could only complete the cube with the use of a screwdriver, but The Netherlands' Erik Akkersdijk must be signing autographs in his playground - he's the Rubik's Cube world record holder, completing the cube in 7.08 seconds this year. I'll bet he can curl his tongue and whip up a mean lobster bisque as well.

Sadly, some of us are blessed with no skill whatsoever. What becomes of those with no abilities to share with the rest of humanity (I'd like to remind everyone that I can get keys off keyrings really fast - faster than 7.08 seconds on a good day)? Well, they could nab a hosting job on an unwatchable daytime quiz show, then start pretending they don't pay a TV Licence. If that doesn't work, there's always charitable organisations offering work placements for the talentless. That said, when I popped in there earlier tonight, the beef slinger (sorry, sales assistant) did demonstrate one skill. First offering to 'mix my McFlurry', before I could hit her with an umbrella in a fit of disgust, she proceeded to do just that, demonstrating that a McFlurry is so called because it is whisked up by a machine. Sarah Willingham would be rendered speechless.

All Nightmare Long

<< The Winstanley Estate: Average length of time between muggings - 21 seconds

I learnt on Saturday, courtesy of some frantic last minute searching, that women are on average more prone to nightmares than men. The worst nightmare I ever had was that I got suspended for doing something I'd been told to do, forced to take a month off work, given a harsh punishment, and then spent a whole week several months later waiting to see if my new employers are going to find out and call off the whole deal. Oh no, wait a minute, that's my actual life - worse than a nightmare.

Another individual seen living a real-life nightmare this week was Brian Kuh, a guy who pretty much organised a Donkey Kong world-record attempt, only to see a guy who wasn't even that into computer games obliterate his score. That's right, this was The King of Kong, which saw Steve Wiebe, a regular John with a solid practice ethic, pitched against Billy Mitchell, the previous record holder, hot sauce merchant and pretty much the strangest man alive. I won't spoil it for you - suffice to say it's like Federer v Nadal with bent umpires and nobody else watching. Incidentally, the name Donkey Kong was intended to translate as 'stubborn ape' by its Japanese creator. Damn you, Babelfish...

Another group of people having a week from hell were the hotshot bankers at Lehman Brothers, America's fourth-largest bank until it collapsed in frankly unfathomable circumstances. It was a tragic sight watching honest, hard-working investors schlepping out of the head office with their worldly possessions esconced in boxes, when just months previously, they had been having fights with piles of ordinary people's money, before building forts from said money and lighting cigars inside with $1000 bills, cackling deliriously throughout the whole experience. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.

This nightmare theme is getting a bit thin now, but I can't conclude this theme until I've expounded on my (possible) future workplace - I went and had a look the other day, and found that it sits snugly on the edge of Battersea's Winstanley Estate - an area that did indeed resemble the waking nightmare of a drug-addled 1960s town planner. Feeling slightly uneasy about my new environs, I decided to look it up on Google. Here's a tip - never look anything up on Google; it paints the area as a sort of Thunderdome for South London - drug dealers literally selling lorryloads of crack in front of police stations, then building forts out of said crack and cackling deliriously etc. I'm sure it has a reputation, but I have a feeling that these articles were written by people who consider any town without a Waitrose to be ghettoised beyond repair. The most troubling news about Winstanley is that So Solid Crew used to live there - believe me, I've been waking up sweating every night since I heard.

Three Handy Facts For a Night Out in Lewes

1. Lewes (pictured left), a small town in Sussex, has introduced its own currency - the Lewes pound. It's the same as a normal pound.

2. Syphilis can infest your brain.

3. The word 'boredom' was invented by Charles Dickens.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

I don't know if this was quite what Billie Joe was getting at when he first sung this line through his nose, but autumnal misery hangs heavily in the air. Another non-existent summer has been and gone, and the rain is falling so relentlessly our first-floor flat is in danger of becoming a canal barge (it's about the right dimensions to start with). To me, a year without a proper summer is like getting a job without having an interview - I may not like summer, in fact it's normally quite an ordeal, but to not have one at all just feels weird, and I feel like I'm rolling into the drizzly comfort of Autumn a little too easily. I also find myself feeling depressed when the seasons start changing, which is pretty much 50% of the year, and I'm looking forward to the onset of bitter winter more than I'm enjoying the present climate.

British weather fascinates me - it's perhaps the world's most inconsistent, yet the highs and lows are remarkably similar. The best we can hope for is warm and slightly muggy, with the occasional shower. The worst we ever get is a couple of hours of solid rain, followed by a bit of sun, and yes, it's slightly muggy all year round. Is Britain in a bio-dome or something? It's crazy. We have virtually no weather of interest, yet also never have any guarantees on what tomorrow will bring, as anyone who has ever sat in a field huddled round a hamper while freezing rain lashes at you from every direction will testify. There is of course also the British obsession with weather, particularly the apparently universal belief that sun is good news. If, like me, you can acquire a sunburn by sitting by a closed window on a cloudy July day, you'll know that the mention of a week-long heatwave is enough to bring on another bout of hives. But you wouldn't care about that, as long as you get a good tan, eh Kettley? Selfish bastard.

Anyway, it's dark and cold, but not cold enough to put the heating on, nor cold enough to wear a jacket to work, oh no, that would be too easy, so here's a list of stuff I've learnt recently, that along with the rest of the month thus far, I would rather forget:

The phrase 'hoods', as in a deprived area of housing, comes from the word 'neighbourhoods'. I swear down.

Chillies are farmed in the UK. No reason why they shouldn't be, but surprising given that most British people are sent running for the cold tap by a prawn korma.

A CRB check will take your family's history into account, so if you've always wondered whether Uncle Terry has previous, now may be the time to find out.

You can get a stroke from having sex. If you are unfortunate enough to suffer this problem, at least when the doctor asked what triggered it, you can stick your chest out and say "I was up all night shagging". Whether you'd be capable of such braggadocio at this stage is up for debate.

Lima beans are the American term given to butter beans. A butter bean in America is, of course, a fat kid (preferably ginger).

I'm now departing the world of fact and moving into an arena of unparallelled subjectivity - that's right, the Mercury Music Prize is back, and after the whole Klaxons farce last year (it had three good songs on it! At best!) let's hope for a better outcome (and for the winner to be subsequently cursed with stifled creativity, over-exposure - and the odd Number 1 smash hit single) this time round - go Burial! His album, with it's eerie noises and disjointed wailing is the perfect soundtrack to the phrase 'look at that - it's getting dark already... University Challenge hasn't even finished'...

Cultural Misconceptions of an Ignorant Buffoon

<< Mark Rothko and France: Both admirable, yet hard to relate to

I went to the Tate Modern recently, and along with spotting some very good stuff, and some stuff that made me want to read the Daily Express, I noticed that a Mark Rothko exhibition is coming to the gallery this Autumn. Despite Rothko perhaps representing the nadir of modern painting with his series of red, formless works, I quite like him, perhaps due to a desire to look cool that's so subconscious I'm not actually aware of it. Anyway, I saw some Rothko paintings at a gallery in, I dunno, somewhere or other, and consider him to be one of my preferred rubbish modern artists. In fact, I'm such a Rothko aficionado that I didn't know that he's dead. That desire to look cool is looking like a bit of a long shot.

Is there's one thing I know less about than art, it's other cultures. However, regarding Tuesday's fact, I feel I am not alone. The word 'hijab' does not refer to a head covering, as worn by Muslim women - it is in fact a word which originally meant something close to modesty. The ideology is the same, but the word has come to mean a specific item, where it once was a broader adjective. Very interesting, even if I've done my best to make it seem otherwise.

Of course, we all know it's fine and dandy to be hopelessly ignorant of life in other countries, as long as said country isn't America. The upcoming presidential elections have received so much UK press attention, you'd be forgiven for thinking the winner will collect the souls of every British citizen as his bounty. Despite this, there's not much substance to the coverage, and we still know little about the candidates, except that Obama must, and should, win, but is primed to be levelled by a late October media shitstorm and overtaken, particularly now John McCain is pretending that he's not the actual Republican candidate. Here's something you may not have known - this is the first presidential election where neither candidate was born on the U.S. mainland. Obama was born in Hawaii, while McCain came into this world down in Panama. Surely this technicality is clearing the way for Arnie to make a bid in 2012? Don't talk crazy.

Back on British soil, and if there's one thing I am certain about, it's that I work way too many hours. Recent research has backed my bitter rants up at long last, showing us that the U.K. works 41.4 hours per week on average - outworked only by Romania and Bulgaria. As for the shortest hours - it may not surprise you to learn that France only manage to loaf their way through 37.7 hours each week before sauntering off to the boulangerie. Having worked for an Anglo-French company, I'm familiar with the French way of working - apparently starting at 11 and knocking off at 4, with a 3-hour break in the middle. Throw in 38 bank holidays and you have yourself a satisfied workforce. I'm not being critical - I applaud nations who allow their people some time off, and feel pity and shame for my overtime-working, hotdesking, two-hour-commuting colleagues who feel pangs of intense guilt for checking their personal e-mails at 4.55 on a Friday. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go - got to type up some minutes over the weekend, then book a cheap flight to Toulouse...