Yes We Can

Pimped

To The Burberrymobile!, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Stop Worrying...

I've been enjoying the Atheist Bus Campaign (which is on tubes as well as buses. I saw the ad pictured at Moorgate the other day).

They make me smile when I see them... which seems to me to be all they're really intended to do.

For those who don't know, they were proposed as a whimsical notion by a writer called Ariane Sherine in an article on the Guardian website. (I ought to point out that I know Ariane. Not especially well - but she does beat me at online scrabble from time to time).

Anyway... the idea for the ads came as a reaction to seeing some Christian adverts on buses that, while innocent in and of themselves, contained a url for a website that told anyone curious enough to look it up that they would spend all eternity in hell if they didn't believe in God. Criminy.

The whimsical notion became a reality as readers got behind the idea and said they would donate money towards an atheist ad. Instead of one bus ad, they raised enough money for 800. I like the ads even more for being the result of people power.

I have no idea how many atheists there are in Britain but it is very easy as an atheist to feel like you have no voice. While faith of almost any kind is uniformly accorded a degree of respect, atheism isn't. Even Mormons are listened to more than atheists... and their faith is young enough for the historical record to exist proving that the whole thing is founded on the words of a proven liar...

Anyway... in today's news I see that a Christian bus driver in Southampton has refused to drive one of the buses which carried one of the ads. The company he works for have been very understanding... which is genuinely very nice of them... but I can't help wondering whether they would have been quite so understanding if one of their atheist bus drivers (of which there must be many) had refused to drive a bus with the Christian ads because it offended his or her sensibilities?

If you step back from the issue and afford both views equal respect it seems to me to be abstractly more offensive to threaten people with eternal damnation than it is to recommend they enjoy their life. One contains only a positive message and the other... well, it's a threat.

What if a teetotal driver refused to drive a bus that carried an advert for alcohol? What if their teetotalism was a matter of faith? What if a Jewish bus driver refused to drive a bus which was advertising pork?

I-I-I-I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape

Sad that it took news of P.McGoohan's demise to remind me of this great tune... you've got to love Ed Ball.

Subtitles

Pumping Station, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

You can learn a lot from subtitles.

In Stockholm at new year I caught a not-very-good American sitcom on my hotel TV that had Swedish subtitles. I was delighted to learn that the Swedish word for 'corduroy trousers' is 'manchesterbyxor'.

It must be to do with the city's history of cotton mills - I believe that in Australia bed linen is often referred to simply as 'Manchester' - but even so, it's a most unlikely word to discover in the Swedish lexicon.

A few days later in Copenhagen I watched an episode of Ice Road Truckers with Danish subtitles. (I do go out, by the way.)

This time I learned that the Danish words for 'oops' is 'ups'. Which must be good news for Fed Ex.

Stadshuset

Stadshuset, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Gott Nytt År

I've been away for a week to start the year. I spent a few days in Stockholm with some friends who organised a most splendid New Year's Eve before heading to Copenhagen for a few days alone from where I also took a day trip to Malmo.

I've eaten well, read lots and taken hundreds of photos. I decided not to take a laptop and to go without the internet for a brief while also. I thought I might regret that decision. I didn't. It felt good to cut the cord.

Of course I now have a few thousand e-mails to read and a load of other things to attend to... but that's okay. I feel relaxed and unrushed by life. Hello 2009.

Of course the first thing I need to do - and that I highly recommend you do also - is mosey on over to the Steve Lamacq page at the 6Music website and cast a vote to get Helen Love's Calm Down Dad on the rebel playlist (You have to scroll right down to find it.) Go on. You know it makes sense.

I don't know if I was just unlucky with Copenhagen - and I am aware that January isn't the best time of the year to be visiting that city - but the sky was permanently grey and the place had a somewhat dour edge to it. Stockholm might have been colder but it had crystal blue skies and Malmo - only a 30 minute train ride from Copenhagen - was similarly blessed. In fact, having spent just one day walking around freezing cold Malmo, with the sun bouncing off the frozen edges of the Øresund (or Öresund depending on which side of it you hale from) I ended up with a sun-burnt brow and frost-burnt thighs. The only thing that got burned in Copenhagen was my wallet.

Still it was really some solitude I was after and I'd packed a load of books to keep me company. I can highly recommend God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens. (Obviously I trust a lot of people will see the title and know it's not for them... although, y'know, it is good to challenge yourself sometimes.) Anyway it's really energised, funny and full of righteous indignation that means it really zips along.

And if a book about the lack of God doesn't appeal then a book about a man who thought he was God might. The Damned Utd by David Peace is a novel (the book describes itself as "another fiction based on another fact") about the 44 days that saw Brian Clough as manager of Leeds United. He makes for a fantastic protagonist; proud, self-possessed and yet fragile and haunted. I love the chutzpah of taking on such a slight slice of life and I found the repetitive use of language beautifully hypnotic. Fabulous.

Right. I've voted for Helen Love. Now I'd better read some of those e-mails.