Cosmopolite: The work of Matt Tucker

Since Monday, I’ve woken to the sound of ice being scraped off cars each morning; winter has come bitingly soon. I’ve dug out my hat, gloves, scarf and hot water bottle. My housemate is from Italy and is finding it difficult to adjust to the cold, despite living in the UK for three years. He has no gloves and was on a desperate mission to buy some ASAP yesterday. Is this another manifestation of climate change? The press loves to talk about the weather, like all British people. I suspect we are due much media speculation on freak temperatures this winter. A cold winter is supposed to mean a hot summer and after being robbed of a summer for two years in a row, I say bring on the sleet and snow 88|

My comments about tasteless comedy in my last blog entry were well timed with the current furore over the obscene remarks made by Ross and Brand on Radio 2.

Russell Brand, a man who has built a career over having an uncontrollable mouth and a taste for controversy, is often funny and likeable. He has also been a loose cannon for some time, someone who would eventually stitch himself up; it’s a shame an advisor has not kept him on a shorter leash.

Jonathan Ross strikes me as a bit of a bully, hiding behind smiles and jokes; his chat show guests often seem on edge and a little scared of him. With his power, influence and sharp tongue he may well have the power to make or break those at the beginning of their show business career.

Why does Ross present the BBC Film 2008 review programme? What makes him such a film guru? Are there no other presenters with an equal love of film?

It's typical for some of the British press to quicken a person’s downfall once they smell blood, but this case appears justified; quite rightly the licence payers are not accepting what’s dished out to them without thinking twice.

Victims of their own success, the actions of these two men seem to be rooted in arrogance and a belief that they have become untouchable.

I went to the Jongleurs Comedy Club in my hometown last night for a friend’s birthday. We were treated to three comedians for our money’s worth: a guy whose jokes were based around the fact he was Welsh and Jewish, another guy who looked and sounded like Phil Jupitus (and was just as unfunny), and an ex-alcoholic comedian who joked about his impoverished upbringing and violent Father.

The Phil Jupitus look-alike noticed our table weren’t laughing very much at his jokes, so proceeded to refer to us as the ‘Christian table'; supposedly referring to our prudishness. This religious stereotype doesn’t stand up to scrutiny when you consider the vast numbers of young Christians who enjoy a joke like everyone else. At the interval I noted that of the six friends at my table, five actually were church going young Christians. So he got it right - we were the ‘Christian table’. But that’s not why we weren’t laughing ‘Mr Phil Jupitus wannabe’; you just weren’t funny.

Live stand up seems to involve the most controversial jokes, covering topics such as Nazism, paedophilia, disabled persons, and homophobia. Topics that even the most talented comedians struggle to make light of.

I laughed a few times, but not enough to warrant my £17 ticket. Comedians who make it on to TV are the best of the best - I think I’ll stick to watching the big names on the box in future.

Spending less and saving more has now become a necessity for most, but cutting back has its limits. The bank bailouts and sliding house prices have made the pursuit of a second source of income an alternative for some. Our spare time is precious and being a wage slave is no one’s ideal, but making money on the side needn’t involve speculating on the stock exchange with complex financial models or investing in a string of properties.

For beginners there are car-boot sales, but if the 5am Sunday morning starts don’t appeal to you then you might prefer the glow of your home computer screen: online trading can be a profit maker and even a full time occupation. ‘One man’s junk is another man’s treasure’, a saying that is nowhere more true than on eBay, the global auctioning site that sells everything from broken dishwashers to cars and property. eBay is a great way to introduce yourself to the trading world and get a taste of what makes good marketing. Money can be made from buying poorly marketed items and selling them at a profit by uploading clearer photos, inspiring description with perfect spelling and grammar and with an auction end time at a peak period of the day. eBay items are sometimes advertised as faulty, if you have a mind for mechanics then buying, fixing and selling an item could create a profit.

Looking outside of the Internet, we all have hidden talents that can be capitalised: do you play an instrument, consider yourself good with young people, able to make complex concepts feel simple, are you green fingered with an eye for what a beautiful garden should look like? Then offer your services locally as a private teacher or gardener. Start by charging less than others to build experience and to get initial customers. With many sources of free online advertising, your overheads need only be your travel costs and time.

If you don’t want to go it alone, then pool your resources and aim for a family business. In any family there is a broad range of skills that can be drawn upon and you will know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. An inspirational example is my friend’s family business, Deluxe Materials, a small company with a big name in glue for the modelling enthusiast industry. Founded in 1973, the year of the three-day working week, the business has grown to become the UK’s leaders in specialist glue for model aeroplanes and doll’s houses, run entirely in spare time. Alex Bristow, son of the company’s founders, has fitted in University and a hectic teaching career whilst contributing to the manufacture and promotion of his parent’s glue products.

Whatever your thoughts may be, research your business venture thoroughly and take advice from experts rather than well-wishers. Remember that investing in your spare time can help you discover your inner entrepreneur.

Bars and nightclubs have been looking quiet recently, very quiet, at least in Reading. Venues that would normally be heaving, with queues at the door, now have empty dance floors.

Is the credit crunch pushing people to choosing to have nights in; drinking at home, cosy evenings in with a DVD? It looks that way. You can’t blame people for choosing the cheaper option when prices are noticeably going up. I ordered two glasses of red wine in a club (one that is not known for being the classiest in town) and the total came to £10.20. I might expect those sort of prices in central London, but not Reading.

As we know, prices are definitely on the increase, even estate agency fees have been raised. Everyone is in a scrabble to grab money where they can and the consumer has to be more wary than ever.

Space. The final frontier, and presumably smell free. Apparently not, scientists are trying re-create the smell reported by astronauts after they remove their suit following a space walk.

‘Hot metal and fried steak’ was one description. It’s a bizarre concept that 99% of the universe should smell like a welder cutting metal in a rotisserie, but also strangely fitting. If I were asked to imagine what space smelt of, then I would say it was bitter, tangy, harsh and clinical, like the charged and heavy air during a storm.

My understanding of space is that it is literally the space between matter, where there is no atmosphere because there are no molecules: a vacuum. Since smell relies on the detection of air molecules it follows that space would be odourless. Testing this theory is impossible; on the first sniff our heads would explode with the pressure.

But it's logical to suggest that if exposure to space were to be a trigger for a chemical reaction in matter, then that could accompany a new smell. What could cause such a reaction? Background radiation in the universe slowly microwaving everything it comes in contact with? Perhaps all smells are based upon a reaction with the earth’s atmosphere, take away that atmosphere and smells become skewed. Similarly, maybe space walking makes astronauts’ sensory perceptions go awry; space fever taking hold. My view on space has changed forever and I’m eager to discover the full explanation.

It is a great shame that the last Titanic survivor, Millvina Dean, has had to sell off antiques from the Titanic to pay her nursing home fees.

Millvina expects to raise £3,000 from relics including letters and clothes connected to the White Star Line Titanic. I suspect she will raise a great deal more; the block-busting film may have been over ten years ago, but the fascination with one of the worst 20th century disasters is still alive.

My Grandmother, the same age as Millvina, has a vague memory of the sandwich board headlines of the Titanic disaster. My Great-Grandmother reportedly remembered it well.

Whilst Mellvina can sell valuable historical items, many elderly people are forced to sell their house and use their children’s inheritance money to fund a comfortable level of care. Let’s hope the media attention she’s received over her financial plight will pay off.

My ambition to break into Freelance Journalism has been kick-started with the launch of my online portfolio: www.matt-tucker-journalism.co.uk.

After doing an evening class at Thames Valley University, I picked up a few web design skills and I’m pleased with the results. I like Adobe Dreamweaver; it can be a little fiddly with getting the layout right and keeping track of the structure of the site pages, but it’s all worth it and quite fun. Photoshop is great too, allowing you to manipulate the images and get them just the way you want them. They’re both really powerful software applications and good to use, despite Photoshop being a bit buggy when saving images into web friendly formats.

Hopefully I’ll get some positive attention from my site and ideally get me some work!

Any suggestions for improvement would be welcome.

Thanks,
Matt

The UN is staging the world’s first hand-washing day today, when children across South Asia will be washing their hands simultaneously.

This may appear a gimmick to some, intended more for children than adults, but I believe this is one of the greatest steps towards combating the spread of human disease. I always wash my hands when using the bathroom, few people would want to admit otherwise, but this basic premise of personal hygiene is frequently overlooked. I often see people rinse their hands under a tap, give a quick shake of the wrists, and they’re done. If we don’t wash our hands properly then the germs go on the door handle of the bathroom, along with every other person’s. No one wants to be seen as having a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, often characterised by hand-washing, so comments are usually restrained.

It is said that if everyone washed their hands regularly we would cut the amount of colds circulating the UK by half. In countries where killer diseases are rife, washing hands at the right time can reportedly reduce diarrhoeal diseases by over 40% and respiratory infections by 30%.

The film Donnie Darko contained the quirky character Donnie explaining that the greatest invention in human history was antiseptic in 1895, as it was the first time there was sanitation in medicine. But over 100 years later nations are still struggling to give soap the priority it needs and nearly half the world does not have access to basic sanitation.

Perhaps the next act could be to pass a law making access to free soap a basic human right. Sounds extreme, but like the UN Hand-washing day, it could be one of the best decisions ever made. However, it is not just access to soap that would make the difference, education is vital too. In previous years the Western World has found it easy to assume that the discipline of hygiene is well established, but the rise in ‘superbugs’ and MRSA has been caused by serious lapses in hospital hygiene. Also, the BBC reported in May that many office keyboards were ‘dirtier than a toilet’, with five times more germs than office loos. If sanitation access and education were spread across the globe the world would be changed dramatically for the better.

The BBC reported today that the Internet is now a proven defence against mental decline, joining the ranks with crosswords and book reading, helping us steer clear of Dementia and Alzheimer.

No doubt this is also good news for the majority of web surfers who have felt occasional twinges of guilt at those ‘wasted’ Sunday afternoons when nomadically roaming the Internet for fun. We can all relax in the knowledge that computers are making our brains bigger and better.

But wait, was it not reported in the mass media just a few months ago that internet search engines have dumbed down the population, turning us into mouse clicking zombies and devaluing past traditional skills of discovering knowledge through resourcefulness and ingenuity? Surely not.

The BBC seems to become a little over-excited at the latest do’s and don’t of a healthy lifestyle. For instance, one week the news website suggests that coffee drinking is the carcinogenic road to cancer, the next week it reports on ‘ground-breaking’ research that coffee is good for us and five cups a day will see us to our 150th birthday. The BBC website is probably the best site on the Internet, but freshly published research often receives too much coverage, with the reports making a readable story, but not necessarily ones that will make it into the 21st century encyclopaedia.

But if they say Internet surfing will give me a smarter cerebrum, then who am I to argue? Pass me the mouse…

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Many remember the Banbury nursery rhyme from their childhood: “Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross”. Many, except me. So when I visited Banbury this weekend for a friend’s 25th birthday I looked blankly when passing the “fine lady” at Banbury Cross and spontaneous chants of the nursery rhyme erupted from my tipsy partygoers:

"Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross To see a fine lady upon a white horse With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes She shall have music wherever she goes."

I had nursery rhymes in my early years, including a dim memory of one about ‘a lady with ringers on her fingers and bells on her toes’, but this rhyme, and its significance to Banbury, must have bypassed my playground.

The “cock horse” is an extra harness used to pull a carriage up a steel hill, and the “bells on her toes” refers to the fashion of the 12th century nobility to attach bells to the pointed ends of shoes. First seen in print in 1784, the rhyme has sustained popularity over the centuries, affording its own statue in honour of the “fine lady” at Banbury Cross:

The identity of the seated woman is not entirely known with ruminations of the rider being Elizabeth I or the Welsh Goddess of Rhiannon. It is even suggested that she is Lady Godiva, although this “fine lady” of Banbury appeared to be fully clothed on yesterday’s chilly October evening. If you’re curious to see what the fine lady of Banbury Cross is up to these days then she obligingly has her own webcam:

http://www.banbury-cross.co.uk/webcam.htm

Oh, and Happy Birthday to Tracey from Banbury! :wave:

My new blog comes at the end of a ‘meltdown’ weekend when many companies, and perhaps Banks, will be announcing bankruptcy and liquidation. The BBC News website made grim reading on Friday morning with its predictable headlining title: “Major Tumble for European Shares”. The BBC website has done a thorough job in covering one of the biggest stories of the decade, the global financial crisis, one which has been inescapable from all forms of news media. Robert Preston’s face, the BBC Business Editor, has recently been a permanent fixture at the bottom of the news website and a regular on the evening news. The media are covering all aspects: the facts and figures, the effect on the person in the street, and the taste of revolution in the air. With the US elections in November and the persistent questioning of the Brown Government, the question of whom to blame holds particular significance at this crucial corner in political history.

There are many groups to point the finger at, not only the Banks and their lending policies, but those behind the curtain of consumerism: Advertisers, Credit Card companies, trusted brand names, all with the aim to part the consumer with their credit. Their role in the creation of our debt-ridden society is clear. However, there has been no commentary on the recent effect the media may, or may not, have had on the buying confidence in the Financial Sector. For example, excessive coverage of the drop in global share prices can only diminish faith in the money markets further.

Not all media coverage, however, has been negative; local and national media are full of advice on how to cope with the credit crunch: 'ten top tips' on cutting domestic costs, with the emphasis on saving rather than spending. People are changing their outlook. I've cancelled unnecessary direct debits and started to turn to supermarket basic ranges. Many are adopting a thrifty outlook, an attitude that might have saved us from the crisis if the Western World had adopted it a little earlier. We are learning our lessons the hardest way: recession, perhaps depression.

Despite Personal Finance being an accepted taboo of conversation, the credit crunch has pushed our money situations into the open and to the forefront of our minds. For the comfortable and privileged in the wealthy UK, money is no longer a background noise. The money markets cannot be taken for granted by any person and the reticent stance on discussion of our personal finances is dissolving. These are grim times with lessons to be learnt.