LONDON NEWS

TUPNews learned today that a stitch in time does, in fact, save £45, which is the cost of relining my winter coat after the lining was scratched almost a year ago after being stored safely in an overhead luggage compartment. Over the winter, it has almost completely disintegrated. Rather gallingly, the £45 repair cost represents 45% of the original purchase cost. I do love that coat, though.

If you need clothing fixed cheap, TUPNews recommends that you deal with it sooner rather than later. But regardless of when you deal with it, I recommend my tailor, located near the corner of New Bond Street and Brook Street.

Walk west down Brook and look out for a side street called Haunch of Venison Yard (I know, it’s fantastic!). Go down the little passageway and turn immediately to your right – a white door is directly in front of you. You should be able to see them working away through the first floor window. Ring the buzzer, go inside and climb the wrought iron spiral staircase.

There’s no name on the door, as it is basically a sweatshop – about four or five Middle Eastern guys stitching away in a tiny room. If you were to go into one of the more impressive Savile Row tailors and request a basic alteration or repair on an inexpensive item of clothing, it will almost certainly be farmed off to my tailor, but charged at Savile Row prices. Cut out the middleman!

UPDATE:

Just picked it up, it's a work of art. Lining is now satin. I was so pleased I even tipped him. Now I can go back to looking the dapper gent, rather than wearing my stand-in fleece that makes me look like a middle-aged lesbian.

LONDON NEWS

TUPNews has zero beef with the UK's surveillance culture, but I was a little surprised by the cinematography on last night’s 36 bus from Victoria to Camberwell Green. Sitting back-seat-top-deck like a rude boy, I quickly realised that a camera was trained directly on me – and just me. This meant that every six seconds, viewers of the in-house CCTV, i.e. the rest of the bus, were treated to an establishing shot of yours truly. I didn’t mind the invasion of privacy so much, it’s just that I felt a vague pressure to entertain them in some way, and couldn’t think of anything on the spot.

SERVICE UPDATE

Some of you may be experiencing service difficulty with your TUPNews-feed. I will endeavour to fix the problem by doing nothing and hoping it fixes itself.

LONDON NEWS

TUPNews was out for a stroll this lunchbreak, when I came across a man holding court and cracking wise with three or so companions on the steps of St Giles-in-the-Fields. He was doing so in sign language, and they were all pissing themsleves. I only ever see signing on TV or occasionally in buses. I never see deaf guys just standing around shooting the shit, so I thought it was pretty cool.

BUSINESS NEWS

This morning, TUPNews attended a press conference hosted by Russian oil giant Lukoil at the Four Seasons Hotel, just off London’s Park Lane.

I’ve never understood why the visitor to London would want to stay in any of the hotels clustered on Park Lane and the western tip of Piccadilly. It’s a nice enough walk out there from Piccadilly Circus; past The Ritz, Green Park and the cool model oil tanker in the window of the Hanjin Shipping offices, but once you get a bit further on, it’s just a massive dual carriageway and the Hard Rock Café – although it theoretically overlooks Hyde Park, the immediate surroundings are pretty unpleasant. The Four Seasons itself is of the 1960s brutalist school of architecture, and wouldn’t look out of place in Sofia or Bucharest. I suppose it’s all the same to taxi-bound aristocrats.

The interior is pretty special, though. Lavish and understated at the same time – a lot of mahogany going on. The presentation took place in a medium-sized conference room, decorated in the Georgian style and featuring a rectangular chandelier set into the ceiling.

It was Lukoil that added the nicest touches, however. There were about sixty people in the room, a mix of journalists and bank analysts from both Russia and the UK (including a smattering of gorgeous Russian girls). To reflect the international nature of the occasion, the ranks of tables on which we sat all sported intertwined mini-flags of the Russian tricolour, a white Lukoil flag and the Union Jack. Brilliant.

But best of all, the Russian executives all addressed us in their native language, giving us the opportunity to use those cool headset translation things. The translation device was about the size of a bulky remote control, with a small glass bulb on top. There was an on/off button and two dials – one for volume, and one for language selection. The language selection allowed the user to potentially choose from twelve language options, each represented by a yellow star, mimicking the flag of the European Union. Of course, there were only two options in this case. A Russian woman sat at the back of the room in a soundproof booth, translating.

TUPNews always struggles to maintain alertness at such presentations – not because of the subject matter necessarily, but because of the soothing nature of the environment. Listening to the woman’s voice through headphones created a feeling of disconnect from what was happening – by the time the second speaker took the dais, I was starting to drift. The second presentation included a ten-minute summary of Lukoil’s worldwide exploration and development activities, illustrated by ten minutes of pictures of plants and facilities in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and even Iraq. This send me completely into my own hypnotic world, and I didn’t really recover until I again found myself pounding the Piccadilly pavement on my way back to the office.

LONDON NEWS

The borough of Lambeth has launched a crackdown on street trade of marijuana, TUPNews can report. Under the ‘No Deal’ initiative, anyone caught buying, selling or smoking marijuana in Lambeth will be automatically arrested. This follows the previous “Go ahead, smoke up in the street” pilot initiative of a few years ago, which was widely regarded as a failure.

Of course, when I say “automatically arrested”, I mean “automatically arrested, unless you are a member of the middle-class.”

TUPNews was enjoying a post-gig marijuana cigarette in a Brixton back alley on Wednesday night when the boys in blue turned up. Actually, they weren’t in blue, they were plainclothes, and one of them was a girl. They read the riot act to TUPNews’ companion, who happened to be holding the jazz fag at the time, searched him good and informed him that he faced automatic arrest under the new policing initiative. My companion basically shat himself.

As the search of the unlucky loser of “pass the parcel” went on, however, the rest of us fell into some good-natured banter with the other officer. It soon became apparent to both officers that we were in fact rather posh. The deal was sealed when the arresting officer asked my companion whether he had been born in London. “No, Bath.” “Really? That’s a nice place”. Having established that we were in fact middle-class, tax-paying, Oystercard-holding yuppies, they let us off without a caution.

Britain: one law for the rich, and one law for the poor. Thank fuck for that!

SPORTS NEWS

Football
Rymans League Division One
Champion Hill Stadium, East Dulwich

Dulwich Hamlet FC 0 – 0 Dover Athletic

TUPNews recently visited Champion Hill to watch Dulwich Hamlet FC take on Dover Athletic. As two of my housemates are longtime Dover Athletic fans, the match had special import.

The first half was all sound and fury, signifying nothing – knee-high tackles flew as the two sides fought a war of attrition in the midfield, but with nary a shot on goal the whole half. A scrappy game of non-league football on a bitterly cold January afternoon – TUPNews was in heaven. There was even a good old-fashioned 22-man fight at one point. Every unfair assumption you might have about the city of Dover is reflected in their football club – basically eleven white skinheads who play like a prison side. This makes for very entertaining football.

During the first half, TUPNews overheard one spectator explain that Peter Crouch, now of Liverpool and England, had once donned the pink-and-blue of Dulwich Hamlet while on a month’s loan from Tottenham. He was shit, the team were shit, and they were relegated that year.

At half time the sizeable Dover away support (over seventy) switched ends, and TUPNews retired to the club bar to check what delights the magic of the FA Cup had delivered in the third round. Everton trailed one-nil at the Den, while Manchester City were a goal down, at home, to Scunthorpe. Furnished with drinks and dry roasted, TUPNews’ companions elected to stay warm indoors for the second half, and take advantage of the elevated, panoramic view of the pitch the bar affords.

Dulwich started to look a bit more likely in the second half, stringing together some passes and putting pressure on the Dover back four. The visitors continued to play like animals, and the somewhat erratic referee finally dished out a second yellow for the Dover captain, who threw his armband at the referee in disgust.

Sensing a Dulwich victory, TUPNews persuaded colleagues to venture out into the cold for the last quarter hour, for the atmosphere. Of course, 10-man Dover simply went into pure defensive mode, and Dulwich were unable to bag a late winner.

My decision to return to the stands, however, was vindicated by what happened at the final whistle. Dover fans rushed to the tunnel to scream abuse at our players and the referee, as is their wont. Dulwich striker Charley Side took exception to being called a “cunt” and smacked a Dover fan across the face. Within seconds a full-scale brawl had erupted, involving players and officials of both teams and a few Dover fans for good measure. We ran down to the bit of the stands overlooking the tunnel and had a spectacular bird’s-eye view of proceedings. It ran on for five or so minutes, and was quite simply the funniest thing I have ever seen at a football match.



Spectators at the recent Dulwich Hamlet match. TUPNews visible in the top right corner. Photo from www.onionbagblog.com, which also covered this match.

LONDON NEWS

BREAKING NEWS

There is a large fire raging in Leicester Square, TUPNews can exclusively report.