It's been a while. I'd like to offer up an excuse, but the basic reason behind such epic tardiness is that I'm lazy, indolent and have a phone that can record around one month's worth of trivia in a handy, new-fangled, "draft text message" form. Anyway, let's crack on. We've got a lot of catching up to do, and what better way to do it then with a dispassionate alphabetical list of 26 unrelated pieces of information. That's right... it's come to this. It's A-Z time!
A is for autoroute, the name for major roads in France. As I can personally relate from a perplexing on-road experience, roads are given more than one number in France if two main roads converge to form them.
B is for brown - the colour of the salt put down in the event of unprecedented Arctic blizzards/one day of moderate snow. Or, in the case of my road, not put down.
C is for Camberwell, the fashionably edgy/dog-rough area in South London famous for its eponymous carrot. Camberwell has long been mooted as the site for a possible extension to the Bakerloo line, and may finally get its wish, as Boris Johnson has suggested extended the brown line on the map as far as Lewisham because, well, it was the first place that came into his head. Camberwell has come so close to getting on the network previously that for several years, the map at Warwick Avenue station showed Camberwell as a destination, never bothering to remove the station when it wasn't built. It's tardiness like that that I aspire to.
D is for Dungeons. The London Dungeons are part of a chain that also offers subterranean fun in Edinburgh, York and Hamburg, to name but most of them. Whether the other branches come equipped with the kind of phenomenal queue not usually reserved for fair-to-moderate attractions, I cannot say.
E is for Everest. At the top of the world's highest mountain you can boil water at only 68C. Handy information to have.
F is for French Roads Again. Parking in Paris can only be paid for via a pre-paid card (like a mobile top-up card) which in turn you can only get in tobacco shops (which are admittedly a lot more prevalent than over here). Try to imagine for just a moment the chaos that this system created for two pasty, doe-eyed British travellers who just wanted to park their car.
G is for Galling, which is the only way to describe the fact that fat-chinned megalomaniac Robbie 'cool for 6 weeks in 1995' Williams has won more Brit Awards than anyone else - 15 in total. The fact that he is miserable beyond his most wretched nightmares is barely a consolation.
H is for Hitler - as anyone with digital TV will tell you, it's hard to avoid learning about Hitler; as a result, I have two mildly diverting facts about the most evil man who ever lived. Firstly, he had terrible table manners, often shouting, belching and annihilating entire races at the table. Secondly, he spared Blackpool in the Second World War despite quite a lot of weapons being built there as apparently, he wanted to keep it as a private holiday resort. Quite frankly, it doesn't seem likely, although the claim is backed up by the fact that Coventry, which made a similar quantity of munitions, received an almighty shoeing at the hands of the Luftwaffe.
I is for India, and Iran. Two misunderstood nations, set to take centre-stage as the world's power base moves east. I don't know anything about them, but what I do know is that the French word for turkey, 'dinde', means Indian, suggesting some uncertainty over their origin. Secondly, Iran's ancient capital was called Persepolis. Neither enlightening nor relevant, but at least a bit interesting.
J is for JML, the company formerly seen on weird mini TV screens in Woolworths, advertising their own handy products, including the childishly named Dryer Balls, and a sponge that cleans your whole house if you leave it in water (maybe). JML stands for John Mills Ltd., a fact I found out from a JML product that I own. It's a vibrating back massager (no giggling at the back). I tried it and it gave me muscle spasms (I said no giggling).
J is also (who'd have thought it? Two Js! this crazy world) for Jongleurs, the nationwide comedy club whose Battersea branch is the one that started it all. Stay tuned for more J-based trivia, except there isn't any.
K is for Kick, the Tesco-made energy drink I have been drinking since the advent of the credit crunch. Prior to crunch time, I drank Red Bull, which started out as a medicinal syrup in a tiny wee bottle.
L is for the Love Bug, a film which was the first to star Herbie the self-driving car. Not to be confused with the Love Boat, the disappointingly pedestrian aquatic soap opera which has a weird knack for appearing in some form whenever I mention it.
M is for Matt Stevens, the England rugby player who has been banned for 2 years for taking a 'recreational substance'. Stevens is orginally South African, though now it doesn't really matter where he comes from, as he can't play for anyone.
N is for Niall. I have discovered from a fairly reputable source (i.e. someone Irish) that nobody pronounces my name 'Neil' in Ireland - only 'Nile' as in Niall Quinn. This revelation immediately followed my being asked to join the St. Patrick's Day committee, and I'm not sure whether this denouncement of my Irishness counts as a withdrawal of the original indication. It had seemed like an easy ride - organising a St. Patrick's Day event? Guinness, outsized green top hats, shamrock and the backroom at O'Neills, surely? Alas, I may never know.
O is for Ouroboros, the symbol of cyclicality and reinvention which features a snake eating it's tail. The word 'ouroborus' is Greek and means, perhaps unsurprisingly, tail-devouring snake.
P is for Park Lane, the desirable street in Central London famous for being the second most valuable square on a Monopoly board, and more recently for being blighted by a gang of dirty squatters who had the temerity to move into a massive house that some rich old bastard wasn't even living in. Park Lane is so called because it overlooks Hyde Park. Those squatters must be enjoying some great views tonight.
Q is for (le) Quatriéme Dimension, the French name for the Twilight Zone. I learnt this from going on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride several times at Disney. It was a hoot of Paultons Park proportions. Quatriéme Dimension, incidentally, translates as Fourth Dimension, for those of you who can't read.
R is for Reese. The company forever searching for new ways to combine chocolate with peanut butter are owned by Hershey. Will I ever run out of new things to discover about American chocolate?
S is for Skid Row. The address which symbolises humanity's lowest ebb is real, and can be found in downtown Los Angeles. You know you've fucked up when your address is actually Skid Row. What next? A Boulevard of Broken Dreams somewhere in Chicago? Perhaps a suburb served by Shattered Dreams Parkway station...
T is for TSA, which stands for Tenants' Service Authority, and is the new name for the Housing Corporation. May not mean a lot to those of you working outside of housing.
U is for Ultras, those divisive supporters of many European teams who give to the cause by being passionate, vocal and loyal supporters, but who also damage the team's image slightly by being violent, racist and violently racist. Italian club Sampdoria, based in Genoa, had the first fans to call themselves Ultras.
V is for Victoria, the busiest line on the Tube network, and the only line to run entirely underground. The Waterloo & City Line doesn't count. Why? You know why.
W is for wilderness. Nowhere sums up this word quite like the Cotohuazi canyon in Peru. The ancient Incan city of Marpa, situated at the centre of its length, is so remote and inaccessible that more people have been to the top of Everest (possibly to boil water more efficiently) than have laid eyes on the ruined city.
X is for Xplosives (just let me have it... please). The phrase 'damp squib' refers to the fuse on explosives getting wet, meaning that the fuse won't light. Except the phrase to make several appearances when the Champions League returns at the end of the month.
Y is for You're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat, the line from Jaws voted the best cinematic quote of all time by ShortList magazine. This revelation comes at the end of a Top 20 list which summarises nearly a century of film-making into a pointless list of overused lines of dialogue. It did teach me, however, that the line "I feel the need, the need for speed" is from Top Gun. I've never seen Top Gun. People seem to be amazed by this. Why would I want to watch Top Gun? Give me one good reason.
Z is for Zulus, the tribe that continually direct spears towards Michael Caine, despite his repeated, angry pleas for them to cease. In another of Michael Caine's top 'performances', he closes the Italian Job by exclaiming "hold on lads, I've got an idea" as he and his cohorts stand in a lorry teetering on the edge of a cliff (you guessed it, that line featured in the list too). This is because the booty is in the other side of the lorry, so they need to retrieve it. I've actually watched this film and didn't pick up on this. Unbelievable. Apparently some bright spark has suggested that the best way to retrieve the gold without plummeting to certain doom would be to slowly release fuel from the front of the tank. God, I'd rather be idle than spend my time working that out.
