Category: Life

… you’re walking down the street, see the number ‘256’, and in your head you vocalise it as ‘two fifty-six’. It’s a long and slippery slope…

It was with some sadness today that I read that the BBC’s weekly music show, Top of the Pops, is to end its run of 42 years.

Top of the Pops was without a doubt one of the programs I watched the most as a child. My sister is 7 years older than me, so in 1983 when she was entering her teens and I was 5 I was surrounded by the Thomson Twins, Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran, etc. There were certainly darker periods (the late 80s and an excessive amount of Stock, Aitken, Waterman come to mind), but TotP was the one time of the week where I could sit for half an hour and actually see the bands I liked perform (I was a big fan of No Limits on BBC2, but that only had a brief run, and later on I quite enjoyed Chris Evan’s TFI Friday)

I’m surprised the BBC haven’t found a way to keep ratings up. Sure, the internet and satellite TV offers ‘yoof’ (like the Janet Street Porter reference there?) a million different ways to see and hear bands, but there was always something magical about artists getting up on stage and actually performing live (and in periods of TotP’s history often not miming.)

ITV’s similar CD:UK show remains and I now hope that it will keep going. Yes its for kids, but so was Top of the Pops, and I hope the internet doesn’t kill off all these kind of shows.

Hi – welcome to my new Life blog! I’m planning on updating this semi regularly with various interesting snippetts on life in the Big Apple.

For this entry, I just wanted to mention I’m also keeping a ‘photo blog’ going, and just added are pictures of my new apartment. You can see my photo blog at http://mikebroberts.blogspot.com

A year has passed since I moved back from New Zealand which can only mean one thing – its time for me to leave London again! Today I return to the USA, after living there 2 1/2 years ago. Back then I wrote I definitely hope to live in NYC for some period of my life and that is exactly what I’m doing.

Last summer I was thinking very strongly of moving back to the ‘States, but the events of July 7th were, unsurprisingly, quite hard so I decided I probably needed somewhere comfortable to live with a bunch of friends around me. In fact, I have enjoyed London over the last year probably more than I’ve ever done, and so its nice to leave on a high.

Last November I visited New York to catch up with my friend Tatiana from Boston, and it was while there I remembered how much the city excited me. Over the last few years I’ve realised one of the things I enjoy most about life is observing and interracting with people, and for sheer variety and openness I don’t know of a predominantly English speaking-city in the world better to do that in than New York. That and the energy, culture, and awesome food (yes, I do think with my belly!) makes the opportunity to move there as part of a possibly longer stint of living in the USA one I am thrilled to have.

Initially I’m going to be staying in a friend’s spare room in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but I hope not to over stay my welcome and move out fairly soon. My plan at the moment is to find my own place somewhere south of midtown Manhattan – the east village or thereabouts – but that depends whether I can find something I like in my budget. I’ll try to post updates here on how that goes so if you want to come visit me when I’m moved in keep your eyes peeled.

Work-wise, I’ve left ThoughtWorks to make this move, and have joined the NYC-based firm Finetix, but you can read more about that over in my tech blog here.

Here’s to an awesome summer!

Last weekend I visited Spain for first time by taking a short trip to Madrid. It was really good to get away for a few days. Especially good was the food, weather and extrememly civilised drinking hours! (i.e. there aren’t any, as far I could tell)

I’ve put some photos here, using my newish ‘Photo only’ blog.

The last few weeks haven’t been all bad. In fact they’ve been a bit of a rollercoaster. Just 5 days before being on the bombed Aldgate train I settled in for the day at a mate’s house to watch complete coverage of the London Live 8 concert.

Live 8 was a big event for me. The original Live Aid concerts are one of my early memories that I can appreciate (I was 7 at the time.) For some strange reason the artists I remember most from that day are Howard Jones and Phil Collins, but thankfully my music taste improved soon after!

Another reason Live 8 was a big deal to me was that I agreed with the cause. I remember from a few years back that people were talking about cancelling debt in Africa, and the unlikelyhood of it happening, but here was an event pushing for much more than this on the road to gaining real social justice across the world. People have criticised Bob Geldof for being too ‘chummy’ with Tony Blair but what’s the point of trying to change the world unless you have real influence over our leaders? And much as I disagree with Blair’s policy towards Iraq, he has always said that he feels that the situation in Africa is something that should, and can, change.

But despite all my political pretentions, the biggest reason I was so excited about Live 8 was that Pink Floyd were playing, and not just the 3 original members I had seen at Earls Court in 1994, but the complete foursome of Gilmour, Waters, Wright and Mason, something I thought I would never see. Pink Floyd are the band of my life. The Wall got me through my teenage angst years, Wish You Were Here was the album of my summer 2 years ago when I was in Boston thousands of miles from home, and so many other memories besides.

I was somewhat nervous about what they would be like. When I saw them 11 years ago they already seemed pretty old (although it was still the best gig I have ever been too) – would they still be able to hack it? Would Roger Waters throw a tantrum and storm off half way? Would the crowd stay silent wondering who the old gits were on the stage?

My fears were unfounded. Yes, they are getting old, and yes they can’t sing like they used to (to be fair they never had the best voices anyway) but they played damned well. 2 Dark Side of the Moon tracks, the crowd favourite Wish You Were Here and my favourite song of all time Comfortably Numb, with Dave Gilmour ripping his axe like he was standing back on the top of the wall 24 years ago.

Quite a day really. I thought a lot of the younger bands gave it their all, even ones I don’t like that much such as Keane and Razorlight. Madonna wins top marks for effort (plus how a woman of her advancing years can still look that good is unfathomable), and Robbie Williams, despite being a twit and not the greatest musician who has ever lived was, in a word, fabulous.

But I will never forget the sight of Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason, Rick Wright and (I still don’t believe I’m writing this) Roger Waters hugging and smiling on stage after all they’ve been through and all that’s been said between them. Thanks guys for putting arguments, even ones that last for decades, into perspective.

On July 7th, a week and a half ago, I was on a Circle Line Underground train, in the rear (6th) carriage. Just before arriving at Aldgate station there was a very loud bang, the train stopped very quickly, the lights went out and fair amount of dust filled the air. The shock of the bang and the speed of all these events meant a few people screamed or gasped, but very quickly everyone on my carriage realised we were all OK, and just confused about what had happened. I had seen a quick flash at the time of the noise, and my best guess was that we had de-railed, or there had been some kind of electrical problem, causing a big power surge of some kind.

After a few minutes we could hear one or two screams from further up the train. I presumed that some people had probably fallen over with the speed of the deceleration and maybe injured themselves. A couple more minutes after this and some people in the next carriage opened the doors between the carriages and walked into ours. I decided at this point to walk right to the rear of the train to allow space for the people walking into the carriage.

About 15 minutes into the event one of the Underground workers came and opened the rear driver’s door. Being at the rear of the train I was about the 5th person out. The person who had opened the door told me to walk down the tracks on the other side of the tunnel, past my train, and up to the Aldgate platform which was just over 100 metres away. Thinking about it afterwards I realised how shaken the guy was.

It was very soon after this that the horror of the event started to dawn on me.

Once I was walking past the 4th and 3rd carriages I could see broken windows and people with blood on their faces looking out at me. I could see fear in their eyes like I’d never seen before. About this time I saw in the dim light of the tunnel that one of the train doors was lying a few feet away from the train in a mangled state. I started to wonder what on earth had happened.

As I was carefully walking around the remains of the door I heard someone on the train shout out ‘whatever you do mate, don’t look left’. It was good advice. I didn’t take it. With the speed of reflex, I looked left at where the door had been. There have been photos of the Aldgate train in the news, and we are bombarded by images of such events, whether fictional from Hollywood or real from the world media, but I can honestly say that seeing this kind of thing for real was something completely and utterly different and something I hope to never experience again. What I saw was the human equivalent of a bomb blowing a door out of a train, which I realised with horrific clarity right then was exactly what had happened.

With the same speed that I had turned to look at the train I snapped my sight back forward with every intention of getting out of the situation as quickly as I possibly could. The tunnel was eerily quiet and there seemed to be no-one around. I climbed up onto the Aldgate platform, up the stairs and into the station entrance. Being so quickly off the train, there were very few emergency services on the scene. Those that were seemed to be tending to a few people who had got off less lightly than me, yet had been able to get off the train. Again, the sight of people so terribly scared with blood all over their faces made me see how fragile human beings really are. A little later on in the day as I was walking around London I couldn’t help but feel the juxtaposition of the strength and achievement of humanity surrounding me, with the potential for weakness of the human body and spirit I had seen that day.

I walked out of the station in complete shock, and spent the rest of the day talking to friends and family. The following day I came down from the adrenaline with a huge bump and felt the whole day like I was having some kind of out-of-body experience. For those first few days afterwards I was unable to grasp the actual entire situation, I only had enough mental and emotional strength to deal with what I had been through myself.

In fact, I had been incredibally lucky. Everyone I’ve seen in the news who walked away from one of the scenes of the, as we now know them to be, suicide bombs said they were incredibally lucky too, but actually we’re not. We all suffered a terrible experience that will take time to recover from, but the appreciation of how close we came to being killed, and the desire to look forwards to the future makes us strive for positive elements in an awful situation. For myself, I don’t just look at my luck, I’m also trying to see what I’ve learned and experienced and make something constructive out of this.

As I type this I’m shaking, but the whole thing is getting easier to cope with every day. I’m not having nightmares, I am sleeping properly, and I’m not having visions of what I saw for those awful few seconds every 5 minutes like I did in the 2 days after the bomb.

I am trying to form an opinion of the whole situation. We know something now about what happened – 4 British suicide bombers with fanatical beliefs – and I’m trying to reconcile this, and my own personal experience, with my belief that a progressive, inclusive, multi-cultural society is an effective and enjoyable way forward for our race. I passionately hope that everyone from every culture and background that lives in this wonderful country really can pull together to figure out how to make sure these events never happen again.

I have moved back from New Zealand to the UK. Its been a very hard decision to make for a whole bunch of reasons, most of which I don’t want to go into here, but I did want to write a little about my experiences there.

New Zealand is a fantastic country. The most obvious thing is that it is beautiful. I hardly made it down to the South Island, where all the famous bits are, but even the North Island offers some great countryside. 20 miles from the centre of Auckland you can be walking through national parks of native bush and hardly see another soul.

New Zealand also has a culture that I like. It offers a healthy mix of honesty and compassion, and I think this has lead to a tolerance that I haven’t seen in other places. Sure, the fact that there are only 4 million people in a country only slightly smaller geographically than the UK helps, but I’d like to think that everyone could learn a lot from such a culture.

New Zealanders are also an intriguing bunch of people. They are resourceful beyond brits or americans, probably again because of their country’s relatively small size, but I guess also because of their isolation. Using the IT industry as an example, you are much more likely to find ‘jack of all trade’ developers than in the UK, where specialisation tends to be the norm.

Its not a perfect country though. The distance to anywhere else, especially beyond Australia, is hard. Apart from anything else I think that New Zealand could look more beyond itself, but maybe that’s just plain impractical. It also suffers hugely from emigration. Something like 15% of kiwis live outside of their own country, and of course this creates a huge ‘brain drain’.

New Zealanders are also terrible drivers 😉 .

I’m back in London now, at least for a few months, at which point I might move on somewhere else. Of course, there are many things available from a London life that I missed in New Zealand, but I will always look back fondly at my time there.

It was a spring day early last year when I joined a million other people in London alone to show my disagreement with going to war in Iraq. I’m not an actively political kind of guy, but it just seemed fundamentally wrong to be going to war over (at best) tenuous evidence. Robin Cook agreed and resigned, despite being a senior member of the UK’s government and therefore having access to a whole raft of information that the general public could not see.

The justification for war given to the British population was that Saddam Hussain was hording Weapons of Mass Destruction which he could readily deploy against our green and pleasant land with a mere flick of the wrist.

As a new report today shows, we were lied to.

The american people were told that they were going to war to stop Al-Qaeda launching any more attacks on their country. But now Donald Rumsfeld says he knew of no “strong, hard evidence” linking Iraq with the terrorist organisation.

But does all this really matter? The war is over and there is nothing we can do? I would argue that more than 10,000 civilian deaths and 1,000 military deaths (and let alone the economic cost) shout for justice.

I voted Labour, and so for Tony Blair, at the previous 2 British General Elections. I will not vote for someone who treats war so casually again and so will not vote Labour until Tony Blair resigns. I challenge anyone who believes in justice and truth to think similarly at the upcoming US and UK elections.