Unlike many other cases of food adulteration, this isn’t necessarily a public health issue. In Britain, at least, the decision not to consume horsemeat is a cultural choice (although this hasn’t always been the case); however, this is more a case of whether we can assume honesty and are able to trust the products that we buy – or not. If our microwave meal claims to contain beef, for example, then beef is exactly what it should contain.

What is in our food is actually regulated by law, but that hasn’t always been the case either – and the horsemeat scandal shows how ineffective even these modern laws can be against those determined to make a fat profit out of the food we eat, whatever the consequences. However, a horsemeat lasagne is really nothing compared to some of the highly disturbing things that have been found in foodstuffs in the past.

I’ve recently been reading Bee Wilson’s eye-opening book Swindled: From Poisoned Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee – The Dark History of the Food Cheats (John Murray, 2008), which looks at the way manufacturers and retailers of the past (and present) put profit before consumer safety by adulterating the products they sold. In particular, Wilson shows how some of 18^th and 19^th century Britain’s most commonly used foodstuffs were frequently faked or adulterated with decidedly toxic additives.

What often passed for tea in the early 19^th century, for example – then as now a staple of the British diet – was pretty horrible. In fact, even when purchased from an apparently ‘trustworthy’ retailer, what you bought might not be tea at all. Instead of a nice refreshing brew, you might find yourself filling your teapot with a revolting concoction of elder leaves, ash leaves or sloe leaves, dried and coloured to resemble tea.

Even worse, these so-called ‘tea leaves’ were often dyed with toxic substances such as logwood, verdigris (copper acetate) and ‘Dutch pink’, all of which could make the regular tea drinker very ill indeed. Other staple foodstuffs also frequently contained toxic substances that could damage the health of the consumer, including bread (which would make up most of a day’s calorific intake for many of the poorest in society).

However, the adulteration of bread is a classic example not only of what a producer could get away with but also of what the public demanded over the centuries – and what they had demanded over those centuries was white bread. Even as late as the 18^th century, and compared to brown bread (which was associated by many with poverty), white bread was very expensive to make and buy, particularly since the weight and price of a loaf had long been controlled by the government (on pain of punishment for the dishonest baker).

The only way to make a real profit out of this huge mass demand for white bread was to bake it with poor-quality flour – but that produced a nasty looking, grey bread which certainly didn’t resemble the high-quality white loaf held in prestige by so many. So, for centuries, bakers had added alum to their dough in order to whiten their bread.

Alum has countless positive uses, but ingesting it can make an individual very sick (and large quantities of it can kill). Eventually, in the 1750s, the British government banned the use of alum in bread, but tests conducted as late as the 1850s showed that a large number of bakers were still using this toxic adulterant in their loaves – presumably, the demand for white bread was still strong.

Even luxury products were not immune to adulteration. Disturbingly, many 19^th century sweets were coloured with dyes based on highly toxic metals such as copper, lead or mercury. There are a number of cases of poisonings from such sweets – and even a few deaths – on record. And, rather revoltingly, chocolate was also adulterated – although the use of flour, potato starch and clarified mutton suet in making everyone’s favourite sweet treat was more unpleasant than toxic!

Wine makers and sellers of the 18^th and 19^th centuries were notorious for adulterating their products, often adding lead, chalk or arsenic based substances to bulk up and ‘improve’ otherwise undrinkable and unsellable wine. And, on the subject of alcohol, even worse were the adulterants added to gin in order to make it go further (and thus make more profit out of it) during the 18^th century ‘gin craze’ – I’m not sure I’d want a gin and tonic if the gin was cut with turpentine or sulphuric acid…

It wasn’t until 1875 and the passing of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act (which was the basis of modern British food laws until the mid twentieth century) that things began to improve. By the 1880s, the adulteration of staple foodstuffs like bread and tea had become the rare exception rather than the rule in the British food market. But why had this change taken so long to implement? After all, edible, nutritious food is a basic human right – if we don’t eat, or don’t eat the right sort of food, we die.

The answer to this lies mainly in politics, as it still does today. The laissez-faire economic policies and the prioritising of corporate interests over those of the consumer that were the hallmarks of both 19^th century and modern governments have a great deal to do with why nothing was done about the adulteration of food (or why nothing was done sooner – even now, we don’t know how long horsemeat was being passed off as beef, or what other food scandals have yet to be uncovered).

With something as crucial to our very existence as food, it seems obvious (to me, anyway) that the consumer – not the corporate market – should be central to the way what we eat is made and distributed. After all, as we have seen, the adulteration of food can make people extremely sick and even kill.

And, as usual, the people who always suffer the most are the poor – the effects of food adulteration are obviously exacerbated by the poor diet and bad general health that have long been closely associated with poverty, especially in those pre-NHS days of prohibitively expensive medical treatment.

The way that successive 18^th and 19^th century British governments basically refused to respond to a problem like food adulteration was really a prime example of a political false economy. Bad food damages people, and thus, by definition, damages the workforce. And that, by definition, will also damage the economy. The belief that the market would right itself if left alone has been shown many times over not to work, and, quite clearly, should never apply when people’s lives are at stake – although politicians, then and now, seem incapable of grasping this fact.

Despite this week’s rain and a wind so gusty that I almost thought I was going to be blown away like the queue of nannies in Mary Poppins, it seems that spring has finally arrived – much to the relief of everyone, including this lovely dog. Happily sunbathing on a lounger atop a houseboat moored on the Grand Union Canal at Ladbroke Grove, he sat up to watch me go by – and posed rather beautifully when I got my camera out!

So, every once in a while I’ll be defining a couple of these words for you – and here’s today’s…

Desire Path:

A desire path (or desire line) is the name given to a concept you would never think actually had a name. You’ve probably seen plenty of desire paths in your own neighbourhood – they’re those shortcut tracks across grassy areas made by walkers and cyclists repeatedly cutting through from one place to another (you can see plenty of examples in this fascinating post over at the excellent Spitalfields Life).

They are, I suppose, pathways where people desire them to be, providing easier access to commonly-used destinations than the routes provided by the ‘official’ layout of a place. Indeed, it appears that some planners have picked up on the concept of desire lines and now analyse pedestrian and cycle traffic routes before laying out their designs.

I’m not sure I approve of this official analysis of desire paths as a planning dilemma – in fact, I agree with the Gentle Author over at Spitalfields Life (see link above):

I do not believe that desire paths are a problem which can be solved because desire paths are not a problem, they are a heartening reminder of the irreducible nature of the human spirit that can never be contained and will always be wandering.

Mondegreen:

A mondegreen is, very simply, a misheard lyric. Famous examples include “Scuse me while I kiss this guy” for “Scuse me while I kiss the sky” from Jimi Hendrix’s classic Purple Haze (something Jimi used to play on, singing the ‘wrong’ lyric live), and “Beelzebub has a devil for a sideboard” (satanic furniture?) for “Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me” from Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.

The word itself is a mondegreen, coined by the American writer Sylvia Wright in the mid-1950s after she realised she’d long been mishearing the line “and laid him on the green” from the 17th century Scottish ballad The Bonny Earl O’Moray as “and Lady Mondegreen”. In her column for Harper’s Magazine, she quite rightly pointed out: “The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original”. And they quite often are…

We all have our own mondegreens, embarrassing though some of them might be to admit (as a child, like many others, I was convinced that Sting was singing about the BBC newsreader Sue Lawley in the chorus to The Police’s hit single So Lonely). In fact, after that admission from me, I’d love to hear your mondegreens too – leave a comment or tweet me, and maybe we could do a mondegreens post!

Cute, aren’t they? This magnificent seven live along the Grand Union Canal at Ladbroke Grove in west London, and are being beautifully looked after by mum and dad. In fact, when I passed them this evening, they were sat on the grass, all trying to wriggle under mum’s wing at once to keep warm! I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of these seven little signs that spring has finally arrived…

Luckily, this new family of Canada geese are also under the watchful eyes of the residents of the houseboats moored along this stretch of the canal. The towpath here is always busy with dog walkers, joggers and cyclists, which opens up a whole new world of possible hazards for such tiny little creatures – a point not lost on one resident, who put this sign up on the bridge:

For more of London’s waterbirds, see here, here, here, here and here.

Posting this discovery on Twitter led to a flood of quite brilliantly silly new names (and a few old favourites) from many of my followers – leaving me clinging to my desk, breathless with laughter, for the whole of one evening last month. God knows what the neighbours must have thought! As a result of all this social media fun and games, a number of people asked me to put together a complete list in one place (it ended up being two places: Part Two to follow!) – so here it is…

Goodies and baddies:

“Eden Hazard is a cracking name,” correctly observes a Twitter correspondent, “Would make an excellent high-school superhero”. I concur (despite Hazard’s recent run-in with a ballboy), and would also suggest that the Chelsea and Belgium winger teams up in a superhero partnership with the ex-Swindon Town, Kilmarnock and St Johnstone player Danny Invincibile.

Another possible superhero pairing is just too irresistible not to include, combining as it does two fabulously-named sportsmen from two different sports – I’d love to see the Australian ex-rugby league player Steele Retchless teaming up with the ex-Fulham, Spurs and Sunderland midfielder Steed Malbranque in a partnership which also manages to suggest bad American detective shows from the 1980s!

Then we have the baddies: there’s Daniel Killer, who was part of Argentina’s 1978 World Cup winning squad, and the professional ice hockey player Miroslav Šatan. Plus, there have also been several possible relatives of the Grim Reaper in professional sport, including the long-standing Reading goalkeeper Steve Death and the Aussie rugby league player Jason Death (who was, apparently, nicknamed ‘Doctor.’ Ahem.).

Culture vultures:

I’m going to start this section with one of the best names ever – that of the late-1940s Australian goalkeeper Norman Conquest (thank you to the very large number of people who suggested him!). As a geeky historian, I find his name particularly wonderful – although I suspect he faced a fair few 1066 jokes in his time! It does make you wonder what his parents were thinking when they named him, though…

When it comes to musical names, I’ve already mentioned Creedence Clearwater Couto, who is better known to confused Brazilians as Paulista (and yes, his parents were big fans of the 1960s American rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival…). I also spotted the Croatian goalie Stipe Pletikosa (who is, disappointingly, no relation to R.E.M.’s Michael).

Shakespeare gets a look in too, with the Armenian midfielder Hamlet Mkhitaryan and the South African international Macbeth Sibaya representing the Bard. I also found the rather unlikely intellectual pairing of the ex-Belgian international Danny Boffin and the young Manchester United and England player Tom Cleverley…

Nominative determinism…. or not:

Sometimes your name predicts what path you’re going to take in life, which was surely the case for the American high jumper Nathan Leeper – and for the astonishingly-named Segar Bastard, who was both a footballer and a referee in the late 19th century (a not uncommon combination in those amateur days). I can almost hear the fans chanting: “Who’s the bastard in the…. oh.”

However, sometimes it’s just the opposite. Mike England played for and managed the Welsh national football side. Germán Villa is neither German nor from Brum (instead, he was capped more than 60 times for Mexico). Justice Christopher is a Nigerian midfielder rather than a judge. And the Honduran international Carlos Costly certainly wasn’t when he signed a loan deal with Birmingham City in 2009…

Stop that, it’s getting silly:

I was particularly taken with the Seychelles international footballer Johnny Moustache, although I could find very little about him. Any more information on this intriguingly-named player is very welcome! I also rather liked the Twitter suggestions of the Danish cycling road racer Bo Hamburger and the Burundian footballer Faty Papy.

Another one for the list of ‘what were his parents thinking?’ names is ex-England rugby union international Austin Healey, who appears to have been named after a type of vintage car. Rugby union also gives us the famous ex-All Blacks number eight Zinzan Valentine Brooke (his brothers, also rugby players, have slightly less romantic names, being called Robin and Marty).

Then there’s the ex-QPR winger Doudou (not his real name, fortunately), the now-retired German midfielder Torsten Frings (well, I’ve always though that a silly name…), and the superbly-monikered Harry Daft, who was an England international in the late 19th century – as well as playing first-class cricket for Nottinghamshire along the way (this sporting combination was not as uncommon as you might think, even as late as the 1970s).

Daft as that may be, it’s difficult to beat this one, which has to be one of the best names I have seen in a long time: meet Cerezo Fung a Wing, a Dutch defender from the tiny South American country of Suriname (originally a Dutch plantation colony). However, my absolute favourite in this category has to be another Twitter suggestion: Nortei Nortey, the young Chelsea reserve team right back. Yet another Twitter correspondent suggested that this lad should be playing for Halifax Town, because their nickname is The Shaymen (after their ground, The Shay, and not after the “naughty naughty very naughty” early 90s ravers The Shamen, sadly).

Utterly glorious:

Some of the names on my list are really just utterly wonderful, particularly in the world of football. I mean, you can’t argue with the likes of Christ Bongo-Zanoni (the Congolese striker), Surprise Moriri (the South African midfielder), or Danger Fourpence (the Zimbabwean defender), now can you?

More footballers with glorious names include: the Zambian international Laughter Chilembe, Scottish midfielder Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Panther, South Africa’s Naughty Mokoena (who was sent home from the 1998 World Cup for being… um… a bit naughty), and his fellow ex-Orlando Pirates player Tonic Chabalala.

However, I could find very little detail about my absolute favourite in this category; the singularly-named Have-A-Look Dube, who apparently played for the Njube Sundowns in Zimbabwe. I’d love to hear from anyone who has any more information on this player!

Massive thanks to all those who contributed to this post on Twitter and elsewhere, and apologies to everyone who has been waiting patiently for it – real life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of blogging sometimes…

Watch out for Part Two of this list (The Possibly NSFW Ones) coming soon. If you have any more suggestions to add to my list, please leave a comment here or tweet me!

Update – 01/05/13:

Just updated the post with a few names I noticed that I’d missed off the end of my list (I need more coffee, I think!) and a couple of new ones suggested by one of my Twitter followers – thanks to everyone who has read and shared this already!

In the meantime, you can still find Another Kind Of Mind on Tumblr (feel free to follow), or you can tell me off for slacking on Twitter (ditto).

Thanks for your patience!

Horace Bent of The Bookseller magazine (which runs the annual prize) obviously approved of this year’s winner, commenting:

In Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop the public have chosen a hugely important work regarding the best way to protect one’s fowl from the fairy realm’s most bothersome creatures.

The award was accepted on behalf of Mr Bakely by the book’s US editor Clint Marsh, who was clearly delighted at the prize:

Reginald and I take this as a clear sign that people have had enough of goblins in their chicken coops. Our campaign against the fairy kingdom continues.

Consider yourselves warned, fairy creatures all….

Richard has long been a controversial figure historically. Not initially ‘born to be king’, he is believed by many to have been a severely physically disabled and emotionally embittered man who connived his way to the throne, murdering his young nephews in the process (these nephews being the sad little figures known to history as ‘The Princes in the Tower’); a dark image both reinforced and exacerbated by the works of some near-contemporary chroniclers, later plays such as that by William Shakespeare, and countless portraits and engravings produced long after Richard’s death.

However, some believe that Richard has been unfairly maligned by both his successors and by later historians, chroniclers and artists. There is certainly evidence that he mediated between warring factions in the north of England and made stringent efforts to protect this vulnerable area from Scottish raids. He was also responsible for introducing legal reforms that protected the ordinary person, including laws written in English (thus understandable by anyone), and concepts (such as the use of bail) that we are still familiar with today.

Good king or not, Richard only managed to enjoy the crown for a mere two years, which is, incidentally, one of the shortest reigns in English history, before being comprehensively defeated in battle by the Lancastrian claimant to the throne, Henry Tudor – who then became King Henry VII, thus beginning one of the most famous royal dynasties of all (his son being the notorious Henry VIII and his grand-daughter Elizabeth I).

This defeat at the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485 (and the dynastically significant marriage of Henry Tudor to Elizabeth of York less than six months later) effectively ended the Wars of the Roses, a long-running and very bloody 15^th century squabble over the throne between two powerful royal and aristocratic factions – the aforementioned Yorkists and Lancastrians (whose symbols were the badges of the white rose and the red rose respectively).

After so many years of war and upheaval, the new monarch knew that this fragile peace still had to be maintained, and that his power needed to be grasped even more closely – this was especially true if, like Henry VI, you knew your claim to the throne was somewhat weaker than that of the man you had just deposed. It was here that a clever use of propaganda came into play – a use of propaganda that has remained part of Richard’s story right down to the present day.

The most famous surviving sources concerning Richard III, such as the work of various chroniclers and Shakespeare’s play, are from this Tudor period and later, and they almost all seem to be very much biased against him. An interesting example of this type of negative portrayal can be found in the Royal Collection, where there is evidence that an early 16th century portrait of Richard has been amended to show him with a very distinctive hunchback.

The remains found in the Leicester car park certainly showed evidence of scoliosis (curvature of the spine), but it seems that this deformity was exaggerated by Tudor artists to make Richard seem as physically twisted as he was portrayed as psychologically twisted and evil by the writers and playwrights of the day. This exaggeration would be designed to show him in the worst possible light, thus making Henry VII’s claim to the throne seem only right and proper in the face of such a ‘monster’ as king.

Whether or not Richard III was actually the two-dimensional murderous and evil pantomime villain of Shakespeare’s play can never now be ascertained with any sense of finality, but the evidence suggests that it seems more likely that this was a highly exaggerated version of his life, an account that, in the hands of a master playwright, probably melded fact and fiction to create one of the greatest theatrical bad guys of all time.

Richard was, without a doubt, a very powerful man – and we all know of the destructive behaviours and attitudes that invariably result from the exercise of such power, even in the 21^st century. And he was also a man immersed in a very violent and bloody world; this being an era in which warfare was common, and life really could be nasty, brutish and short.

This combination of power and violence would indeed make it entirely possible that he was involved in the deaths of the young princes, as later chroniclers such as Sir Thomas More and Raphael Holinshed (both sources for Shakespeare’s take on Richard) would have it, although it must be said that there is no definitive evidence either way.

But Richard was almost certainly a lot more complex – and a lot more human in his complexity – than the chroniclers (and playwrights) would seem to have us believe. The well-known actor Anthony Sher, who has played Richard III for the Royal Shakespeare Company, rightly points out that, despite so many assumptions to the contrary, the play “wasn’t a historically accurate depiction: Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian… This is one of those cases where the fictional account of a person’s life has become more famous than the real one”.

However, the fact that this very deliberate posthumous interpretation of Richard and his life has echoed down the centuries to us today is a vivid example of how we interpret lives and events both around us now and in the past via the media and historical writing – and very clearly demonstrates a wider truth: just how powerful and persuasive even relatively subtle political spin and its associated propaganda can be. From this, it becomes obvious that these seemingly modern concepts have been utilised effectively for centuries – because they work.

And they work because of human nature being the way it is. It can be easy to believe such simplistic and two-dimensional popular media interpretations of, for example, a long-dead king, simply because such accounts come from sources we believe (or want to believe) are knowledgeable and reliable, and that conform to (and are reinforced by) long-held collective stereotypes of what we think a man of ‘that type’ should be like – stereotypes in part produced by the repetition of often subtle propaganda.

It’s comfortable and safe, we believe, to stick with what we think we know. It’s harder to analyse the available historical sources with an eye to whether they are trustworthy or not, from the perspective of the 15^th century, say, and with an open mind to the possibility of what we discover not being what we think we know – and harder still to take a further metaphorical step back into the past and look at the life of a man such as Richard III from the perspective of his human existence instead, with all the faults and flaws (both large and small) that entails.

Looking at the bigger picture, the truth is very rarely as simple as an individual being solely ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – and the truth, however we define it, is even more rarely ideologically black or white, especially when it comes to history. It is true, though, that much of the history that we know has been written and interpreted by the privileged and the ‘winners’ (and mostly continues to be so), so you’re usually only going to get a particular version of somebody’s life or a sequence of events rather than a more complete view of the matter in hand.

However, it is important to remember that such versions of history, which can often become historical ‘fact’ given enough time and repetition, are frequently only what we think we know about a medieval monarch or a famous battle or a revered public figure of the past (or anyone, really), and what we think we know isn’t always true – but it often comes with a kernel of truth at its heart. Sometimes that kernel of truth is hard to find (as, it seems, with Richard III), especially when the sheer weight of centuries means little in the way of sources – reliable or otherwise – survive.

Powerful figures will always create their own public image during their lifetimes, but this public image is also often created for them, whether by the media, or friends and family, or enemies of the personal or political kind. It becomes crucial to try to see beyond the public face and remember that how a person wants to portray themselves (or is portrayed) to the outside world and how a person appears to be in public is not the same as who they actually are – or were. The reality of such a person is wrapped up in a deliberately created covering made up of  many complex layers of image and exaggeration and perception and propaganda which only increase with time and reiteration.

As a human being it is very difficult not to have sympathy for somebody that I cared about deeply, but it is also important to remember that that person that I cared about deeply did not in fact exist. I cared deeply for somebody whose life was intermingled with mine, and that person’s life story is a fiction.

These are the words of an activist, named only as Lisa, who gave evidence to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee last month. Lisa’s testimony about her ex-partner is part of the Committee’s Interim Report on undercover policing, a subject which has rightly caused a great deal of outcry and controversy over the last year or so.

The collapse of a high-profile court case against a group of environmental activists in early 2011 revealed that a police spy known as Mark Stone (real name Mark Kennedy) had successfully infiltrated various activist groups over a long period of time, acting as what can only be described as an agent provocateur.

This case was just the start of a series of revelations concerning the activities of Kennedy and a number of other undercover officers – revelations which have left many within the activist community quite rightly shocked and angered, and have led to wider calls for public inquiries and investigations into the use and tactics of police spies like Kennedy and his colleagues (hence the Home Affairs Committee’s involvement) .

The fact that these undercover officers were basically used as agents provocateur against peaceful protest groups was bad enough, but even worse was the way that, in a number of cases, they (appallingly) used the identities of dead children for their cover stories, and that many of them started often very serious romantic relationships with women within these activist groups as further cover for their actions – women like Lisa and the other female activists who gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee.

Lisa’s comments above are very telling of the human cost of such thoughtless and entitled police tactics. And it is this human cost that needs to be remembered. When physical relationships with activists are formed by police spies, it seems to me that their presence becomes less about undermining and informing on groups and movements (although the paranoia and suspicion that leaves behind is deeply damaging), and more about destroying the personal autonomy and free will of the individual women concerned.

Most of us have had at least one relationship in our lives in which our ability to trust has been dented by the actions of a partner, for whatever reason (I know I have) – but very few of us have found ourselves in the situation that these women did: in a relationship with a fiction, where our trust and everything we thought we knew has been utterly and comprehensively betrayed by a partner who was not who or what he said he was.

None of the women who gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee deserved to have the presumed certainties and emotional commitments of their lives and relationships totally ripped apart because they stood up for what they believe in – and were therefore targeted by the likes of Mark Kennedy. I can’t begin to imagine the sense of shock and anger they must feel, but I wish them all the best as they begin to heal from this trauma and betrayal.

The complete Interim Report can be read here.

Last Saturday, I headed off to Sipson to wish the wonderful Grow Heathrow project a very happy third birthday. Although they have the possibility of a legal judgement looming over them that could – sadly – lead to their eviction from this fantastic site, they still know how to throw a great birthday party – and I hope they have many more!

Awarded by The Bookseller magazine since 1978, the Diagram Prize exists to honour not the book of the year, nor even the oddest book of the year. Instead, the prize goes to the oddest book title of the year; a concept that greatly appeals to me (as you can probably see from my posts on previous Diagram Prize nominees here and here).

So, without further ado, here’s the nominations for this year’s oddest book title:

Was Hitler Ill? – Hans-Joachim Neumann and Henrik Eberle (Polity Press)

Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts – Jerry Gagne (Foy’s Pet Supplies)

God’s Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis – Tom Hickman (Square Peg)

Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop – Reginald Bakeley (Conari)

How Tea Cosies Changed the World – Loani Prior (Murdoch)

How to Sharpen Pencils – David Rees (Melville House)

I’m still debating my choice of favourite title, although I’m wondering how you goblinproof anything – and I’m singularly curious to know how a whole book can be written about sharpening pencils…

If any of these bizarre titles have piqued your curiosity too, you can vote for your favourite here – the winner will be announced on 22nd March.

Yes, even Spiderman himself likes nothing more than a nice day out on the canal! I spotted him – all poised and ready to steer his boat in the direction of the bright lights of central London – at a mooring in Ladbroke Grove yesterday. I wonder where he is now…?

It may still be distinctly chilly in London, but there are already signs of spring in the air. And this means that Syon Lane Community Allotment is beginning to come out of its winter hibernation at last. If you look very closely, you can see new growth appearing everywhere as the cycle of the seasons repeats…

Interested in what we’re doing at the allotment? You’re in luck. Spring also means that the Syon Lane Sunday open days are back each week from 12pm. All are welcome!

For details on how to get to us, see the website here – and you can join in the discussion on Facebook and Twitter too.

You can find more of my photographs from Syon Lane here.

It’s hard to believe that this year’s Reclaim Love was the tenth of these annual events in London. My first was in 2010, and that seems like a mere five minutes ago… (you can find photos from previous Reclaim Love events here, here and here).

After last year’s downpour, the weather gods were kind to us – and old friends came from near and far to celebrate ten years of bringing peace and love to the streets of London. Here’s a few pics from Saturday’s gathering at Piccadilly Circus…

May all the beings in all the worlds be happy and at peace…

Decades:

5 – the number of decades covered by my #Top50 list

2 – the number of albums on the list released in the 1960s

6 – the number of albums on the list released in the 1970s

11 – the number of albums on the list released in the 1980s

30 – the number of albums on the list released in the 1990s

1 – the number of albums on the list released in the 2000s

Years:

8 – the number of albums on the list released in 1993 (the most in any one year)

6 – the number of albums on the list released in 1994

5 – the number of albums on the list released in 1989 and 1992

3 – the number of albums on the list released in 1990 and 1991

2 – the number of albums on the list released in 1971, 1986, 1987 and 1997

1 – the number of albums on the list released in 1967, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1983, 1988, 1995, 1996, 1999 and 2006

Genres:

(NB: These are very loose and highly subjective classifications!)

17 – the number of indie/alternative albums on the list (the most of any genre, but it is a very general one!)

9 – the number of electronica/dance albums on the list

8 – the number of metal albums on the list

6 – the number of grunge albums on the list

5 – the number of rock albums on the list

3 – the number of ‘other’ albums on the list

2 – the number of punk/new wave albums on the list.

Instead, and to the astonishment of music fans (of a certain age, mostly) everywhere, the mysterious and now almost mythical shoegazer band My Bloody Valentine finally released the very belated follow-up to their classic 1991 album Loveless onto their website in the early hours of this morning, to a response on Twitter that can only be described as mass indie hysteria.

Unsurprisingly, the demand for mbv (as the album is inventively titled) almost instantaneously crashed the band’s website, and it remained down for several hours – leading to frustrated jokes aplenty about MBV frontman Kevin Shields breaking the internet or spending 22 years creating a beautifully crafted error message instead of an album.

In a way, all this was typical of My Bloody Valentine – they’ve never been a band to do anything the conventional (or even easy) way. The recording sessions for Loveless, for example, comprehensively demonstrated Shields’ notorious sonic perfectionism at its peak, plus the completed album ended up almost bankrupting Creation Records in the process.

To follow that with an album that took over two decades to make, the release of which has provoked such paroxysms of delight from the fans who have patiently waited for it for so many years, does show how important many people still consider the band to be. After all, how many other indie/shoegaze bands from that period could provoke such a reaction with their first album in more than 20 years?

Admittedly, there is also an element of the power of youthful nostalgia in the fan reaction – Loveless was a huge album for those of us in our teens and twenties back then, and still is massively influential. The stories about Kevin Shields and his recording techniques that emerged in its aftermath, and the length of time it’s taken them to get on with its follow-up only deepened the mystery and mystique already associated with the band and their music.

And it’s that which is the problem here. This isn’t Loveless. It’s too early to say precisely how good (or not) mbv is (although I am hearing from a number of people that the last three tracks are astonishing), but I do wonder whether the long wait has made some of us approach it through the prism of the past rather than with the fresh pair of ears that is needed after this 22 year hiatus. After all that time, this is obviously not going to be the MBV of 1991, is it?

Or is it? I don’t know. I haven’t heard it yet, although I am waiting with baited breath to get my hands on a physical copy once the fuss has died down a bit (assuming a physical copy exists – anything’s possible with this release!). I like to take my time with an important new album like this, and, although I understand the desire to review it on first listen – as many have already done – I agree with this over at Lazer Guided Melody that it’s too soon for that.

However, having said I’d eat my hat if mbv was actually released this year, I suppose it’s not too soon to start looking up hat-related recipes… Straw hat and custard, anyone?

You can listen to mbv on the Creation Records website, or buy the album from the My Bloody Valentine website.

25) LED ZEPPELIN – IV (1971)

24) HÜSKER DÜ – Candy Apple Grey (1986)

23) THE CLASH – The Clash (1977)

22) R.E.M. – Murmur (1983)

21) NICK DRAKE – Pink Moon (1972)

20) SEPULTURA – Chaos A.D. (1993)

19) JOY DIVISION – Unknown Pleasures (1979)

18) MOGWAI – Come On Die Young (1999)

17) SCREAMING TREES – Sweet Oblivion (1992)

16) JEFF BUCKLEY – Grace (1994)

15) MANIC STREET PREACHERS – The Holy Bible (1994)

14) MINISTRY – Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs (1992)

13) ORBITAL – Orbital (The Brown Album) (1993)

12) ELLIOTT SMITH – Either/Or (1997)

11) UNDERWORLD – Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1993)

10) NIRVANA – Bleach (1989)

09) NEW ORDER – Substance (1987)

08) PIXIES – Doolittle (1989)

07) MASSIVE ATTACK – Blue Lines (1991)

06) THE STONE ROSES – The Stone Roses (1989)

05) THE WiLDHEARTS – Earth Vs The Wildhearts (1993)

04) DEPECHE MODE – Violator (1990)

03) THE PRODIGY – Music For The Jilted Generation (1994)

02) THE FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON – Lifeforms (1994)

01) SUGAR – Copper Blue (1992)

And here’s a few honourable mentions – eleven albums that very, very nearly made the final list (in no particular order)…

PRIMAL SCREAM – Screamadelica (1991)

THE BREEDERS – Last Splash (1993)

BIG STAR – Third/Sister Lovers (1978)

DJ SHADOW – Endtroducing….. (1996)

PORTISHEAD – Dummy (1994)

PAVEMENT – Slanted and Enchanted (1992)

TEMPLE OF THE DOG – Temple Of The Dog (1990)

PEARL JAM – Vs. (1993)

BEASTIE BOYS – Ill Communication (1994)

THE ORB – The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (1991)

LOVE – Forever Changes (1967)

In compiling the final list, I worked to these (very) basic guidelines:

1) Only one album per band/artist is included on the list, otherwise it would, quite frankly, get boring

2) The list can contain studio albums, live albums, soundtracks, mini-albums and compilations

3) This is not about appearing ‘cool’ or ‘hip’: these are all albums that I love and which mean something to me.

Now that’s all clear, here’s the first half of my #Top50 from 50 to 26…

50) L7 – Bricks Are Heavy (1992)

49) THE VELVET UNDERGROUND – The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)

48) SLAYER – Reign In Blood (1986)

47) PINK FLOYD – Relics (1971)

46) THE CHARLATANS – Some Friendly (1990)

45) JANE’S ADDICTION – Nothing’s Shocking (1988)

44) SISTERS OF MERCY – Floodland (1987)

43) SOUNDGARDEN – Badmotorfinger (1991)

42) THE WHO – Quadrophenia (1973)

41) BURIAL – Burial (2006)

40) THE VERVE – A Storm In Heaven (1993)

39) THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS – Dig Your Own Hole (1997)

38) BIG BROTHER & THE HOLDING COMPANY – Cheap Thrills (1968)

37) CARTER USM – 30 Something (1991)

36) FAITH NO MORE – The Real Thing (1989)

35) LEFTFIELD – Leftism (1995)

34) SMASHING PUMPKINS – Siamese Dream (1993)

33) SOUL II SOUL – Club Classics Vol. 1 (1989)

32) ALICE IN CHAINS – Dirt (1992)

31) HAPPY MONDAYS – Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches (1990)

30) MACHINE HEAD – Burn My Eyes (1994)

29) PULP – Intro: The Gift Recordings (1993)

28) RADIOHEAD – Pablo Honey (1993)

27) TOOL – Ænima (1996)

26) NINE INCH NAILS – The Downward Spiral (1994)

Watch out for the second part of the countdown from 25-1 coming soon…

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 17,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 4 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

And a very big thank you to everyone who visited and read in 2012. I wish you all a happy new year and lots of light, luck and love in 2013!

The arrival of the huge Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square each December is a familiar part of the festive season for many people in the capital, Londoners and visitors alike. Some years back, entirely by accident, I found myself in the Square on the evening the tree was due to be lit. As darkness gathered over the city, carols were sung and speeches made – and, with great ceremony, the switch was flicked, lighting the tree to an admiring chorus of oohs and aahs from those watching.

However, what many of those delighting in this seemingly timeless Christmas tradition may not have known is that it is not quite as ‘traditional’ as they might think.  The annual presence of such a tree in Trafalgar Square actually only dates back to the late 1940s and the immediate post-war period – and it is back to the Second World War (and across the seas) we must go to find out exactly why this is…

Technically neutral during the First World War, the highly strategic Scandinavian kingdom of Norway had hoped to retain this status when the Second World War broke out in 1939. It didn’t work out that way – the Norwegians were dragged into the conflict when German forces invaded in April 1940.

Despite resistance from many Norwegian people, the country was occupied until the end of the war under the rule of a collaborationist government, led by the notorious Vidkun Quisling. However, the pre-occupation government and the Norwegian monarch, King Haakon VII, had managed to escape to London, where they quickly set up a government-in-exile.

From London, Haakon and his government regularly broadcast news and inspirational speeches over the radio back to Norway, encouraging resistance efforts and supporting clandestine military campaigns against the occupying forces. As a result of his activities in London, Haakon rapidly became an important symbol – both literally and figuratively – of Norwegian freedom and of their resistance efforts at home and abroad, and remained so until the end of the war.

But what does that little history lesson have to do with Christmas trees? Well, during the cold and austere winter of 1947, a mere two years after the end of the war, the Norwegians decided to send a thank-you present to the people of London for all their support and friendship during the years of occupation – and what could be a more perfect seasonal gift than a very large Christmas tree?

Every year since then, various British and Norwegian civic dignitaries have met in Oslo for the annual ritual of selecting the tree, which is then transported by ferry across the North Sea to the UK. From its port of entry, a lorry then carries this precious Christmas cargo to London, where the tree is set up in Trafalgar Square.

At more than 20 metres high and decorated in the Norwegian style with over 500 low-energy halogen lights, the tree is a striking seasonal addition to the city, easily holding its own against the Square’s most famous year-round resident; old Nelson and his column (as you can see from the photograph above).

The tree’s sheer size and the warm glow of its lights draws people in – when I visited recently, mine was not the only camera snapping away. In the chill air of an early December dusk, while the city roared around me, I stood on the steps by the National Gallery and watched for a while as people took photos of each other, smiling and laughing, in front of the famous Trafalgar Square tree….

A very merry Christmas to you all!