The year of magical thinking: 2010

I have recently turned 25, and via a small win on the genetic lottery I have always had a brilliantly fast metabolism, allowing me to literally eat a shish kebab every night and still cut a slim line figure (as you can imagine most of my female friends have a small amount of hatred for me.)

But as the mid-twenties loomed I noticed my metabolism slowing down and the paunchy belly creeping in. So I decided to take up some exercise that would keep me fit and healthy. I opted to go swimming, it being a complete body workout and also providing the added bonus of a free shower, which as we’ll all agree is something to be embraced in life.

On my first venture to the local leisure centre I was immediately reminded of what had put me off swimming all those years ago, and no it’s not the self consciousness of essentially being naked in front of strangers, (I mean I don’t want to boast but I look pretty hot in my Speedo all in one with matching goggles- one must always accessorise darling!) It is, in fact, the lane swimming system. Now, as with all ideas, on paper it looks great, the terrible and lazy swimmers can go in the Slow Lane, in the Medium Lane average joe can give a mid-paced breastroke their best shot (and who doesn’t enjoy a lovely spot of breastroke?) and the super speedy “I could’ve been a contender” wanabee Olympic swimmers can make waves in the Fast Lane.

However, as we all know this is not the reality. Not wanting to seem cocky I went for the Medium Lane, but within seconds I had someone behind me hitting my legs with their flailing arms as they seemed to be doing tryouts for the 2012 Games. I try to remedy this by graciously allowing them to go ahead of me, only to find myself being barged, splashed and repeatedly lapped.

Full of lane rage, in a last ditch attempt I moved over to the Fast Lane. I was worried people would think I was arrogant, but at this stage I was willing to take the risk – anything to escape the speed demon in the medium lane. I set off, and for the first few laps everything seems to be going shall we say swimmingly..... That is until the person in front of me apparently thinks its fine to do the slowest backcrawl in the world (or are they just drowning? It’s hard to tell...) and so with their furiously kicking feet inches from my nose, I give up and retire to the hot tub with my patience being the only thing exercised that evening.

So due to this traumatising experience, I have decided to launch a nationwide campaign. I propose there should be a “Swimming Test” carried out on every adult in the UK wanting to use a swimming pool, and at the end they are awarded either Slow, Medium or Fast lane swimming ability and under NO circumstances can they change it. I haven’t been in touch with David Cameron about the idea yet, but I’m pretty sure he’ll be up for it, after all the Tories are big fans of keeping people in their place (yes that’s right kids I got satirical- BOOM!) And until my idea becomes law I think I’ll have to stick to just one kebab a week.........

Here’s the thing, I’m a fan of language , it if were for example a Facebook App, I would most certainly be giving it the old “thumbs up”. I do however believe even the greatest words composed in utter perfection will never really effectively express the vast arrays of human experience we encounter, but that’s for another blog.... So part of my fascination relates to signs.

The dictionary defition of signs is as follows ;–noun

1. a token; indication. 2. any object, action, event, pattern, etc., that conveys a meaning. 3. a conventional or arbitrary mark, figure, or symbol used as an abbreviation for the word or words it represents. 4. a motion or gesture used to express or convey an idea, command, decision, etc.: Her nod was a sign that it was time to leave. 5. a notice, bearing a name, direction, warning, or advertisement, that is displayed or posted for public view: a traffic sign; a store sign. 6. a trace; vestige: There wasn't a sign of them. 7. an arbitrary or conventional symbol used in musical notation to indicate tonality, tempo, etc. 8. Medicine/Medical . the objective indications of a disease. 9. any meaningful gestural unit belonging to a sign language. 10. an omen; portent: a sign of approaching decadence. 11. sign of the zodiac. 12. sign language ( def. 1 ) . 13. Usually, signs. traces, as footprints, of a wild animal. 14. Mathematics . a. a plus sign or minus sign used as a symbol for indicating addition or subtraction. b. a plus sign or minus sign used as a symbol for indicating the positive or negative value of a quantity, as an integer. c. multiplication sign. d. division sign. e. a symbol, used to indicate a radical or factorial operation.

Now what I am mainly dealing with in this blog is definition 5 , with the beauty of my I phone camera I have over the last few months taken pictures of the best signs in London town in order to examine this phenomenon.

But I do like the overlap with this of definitions 2 and10,our inclination to see things as “signs” or objects of meaning when they are,in reality arbitrary. Apparently, this occurs due to the evoloution of the human mind, our brains have a tendency towards something called “patternicity” – interpreting stimuli according to an expected model, this has developed to help with survival and reproduction of our species back in the day, and although seeing patterns where there are none seems to be unhelpful, it hasn’t been kicked to the kirb by evoloution because the results of doing this are not harmful in comparison to us NOT seeing patterns where they actually do exist eg “There’s a lion , I saw it eat my mate Derek last week but I’m sure it won’t eat me.....Oh hang on, I’m dead.”

My favourite song lyrics on this topic are by the lovely Bloc Party ; Two ravens in the old oak tree, one for you and one for me/Bluebells in the late December, I see signs now all the time/The last time we slept together, there was something that was not there/You never wanted to alarm me but I’m the one that’s drowning now/I could sleep forever these days because in my dreams I see you again/But this time fleshed out fuller face in your confirmation dress/It was so like you to visit me to let me know you were ok/It was so like you visit me, always worrying about someone else/At your funeral I was so upset, so upset/in your life you were larger than this statuesque/I see signs now all the time that your not dead your sleeping/I believe in anything that brings you back home to me. The last line in particular sums up my feelings on why we see “signs” in our lives and surroundings.

But anyway, on with the show, I feel our heavily signposted lives in western society also come from another aspect of human phsycology, the need to be told what to do in order to absolve responsibility and feel safe and as if we are doing the right thing by playing by the rules. The most famous example of this is Milgram’s 1963 experiment in which a cross section of people were ordered as “teachers” by a perceived authority figure to give another person a “learner” ( an actor faking being shocked unbeknownst to the participant) electric shocks in increasingly high voltages as the person got questions wrong. Despite the “learner” protesting in pain and complaining of a heart condition as the voltage got higher, due to being instructed to keep on administering the shocks and being assured that they would not be held responsible for their actions, 65% of participants gave what they thought were 450 voltage shocks to the “learners” three times. This and subsequent studies have exposed this tendency within us.

Hence why signs dominate our lives, telling us to “Stop”, or “Slow Down” or to “Please Wash Our Hands”. If we are surrounded by barriers and boundries we feel safe, we embrace the bars of our cages with unbridled joy, otherwise where would be? In a state of absolute chaos and uncertainty? The reality is of course that we are, but we are able to have an illusory sense of control with these methods.... Now my philosophical rant is over onto the amusing pictures.....

During my “collecting” I’ve observed that signs seem to fall broadly into 2 categories, signs to 1. Inform/ Warn/Chastise or to 2 Entice/Entreat/Encourage

Category 1 .........

This is a brilliant example of something I love about British culture...... “Here’s a lovely piano designed soley for the purpose of being played and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES must you use it for that!!” Also the irony that the sign is blu tacked to the spotless piano- surely sullying it with sticky goo? Who am I to comment.....

Of course not all warning signs come in written form and with London having many a tourist about the place it’s useful to visually communicate the message..... its quite an alarming image of palms being burnt by the powerful rays of heat from the handryer, dramatic and yet effective........

Now the next two are my favourite kind of signs in this genre, the textbook warning sign typically featuring a lot of red, incredibly officious and giving you the impression that disobeying their commands will almost certainly lead to heinous consequences.......

This is great , taken in a hospital its the good old red line through the circle tip, also amusing for me personally due to the fact I’m an actor and so in my mind a theatre gown is a full length 18^th Century dress... I had mental pictures of women in bodices being refused a sausage sandwich. Also most concerningly, as with most prohibitive signs we see, they are put up because at some point someone has flaunted the rule, so I'm guessing a student surgeon spattered in blood meandered in for a latte only to be flatly refused.....

Now this is the second example of the textbook warning sign....this was snapped at the Clipper docking area in Greenwich, this is great, its going all out on the most scary words in red and also going the full mile with a royal crest!! Thats another thing about keeping people in a state of fear, if general and yet ominous warnings are issued our brains will fill the gaps with our own specifics, in Hitchcock's thriller Physco, you never see the killing onscreen and yet we are terrfified due to our minds imagining the rest......

I incidentally wasn’t alarmed by this sign, I’ve had my jab......

This is also great, it’s a step down from the textbook warning sign, but taking some of the key elements aka words in red, as mentioned before these signs are posted because someone has given them cause to be, I think in this example we can safely say a nasty alrtication with some Nesquik has occurred, and yet they welcome hounds with open arms..... any old dog not just guide dogs.....astounding.... maybe Kelis tried to hang out there,I think we all know what her milkshake does.....

Before moving onto the next section, I give you the last step on the ladder of this category, this is the homemade or handwritten sign normally seen in small scale operations.......Patricularly brilliant because as soon as a prohibitive sign is written or typed out you get more of an idea of the writer’s voice, it somehow becomes more personal.

Loving this, particularly the use of capitals, I think it gives the sense of someone shouting it at you, which is I’d imagine what they wanted.....FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LEAVE THOSE HATS ALONE!!!!

This isn’t massively well photographed, but you get the gist, now this is a lovely powerpoint print out jobbe aint it? This is a little odd, it meanders into the murky waters of morality, it was taken at a social club in the rural idylls of a Wiltshire village, and apparently “the management committee” have decreed that BAD LANGUAGE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED again going to the red and caps lock option to really hit home. I always enjoy a message prefaced with “polite notice” they tend to subsequently be anything but.... There are however a few issues here, what exactly consistiues bad language? Someone using the wrong tense or pronoun? Or simply saying Cunt? And what does the lack of tolerance take the form of? A ban? Maybe they take you outside and burn you as a witch.... well its is the west country after all..... This also features my favourite prohibitive phrase “ your cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated” an assumption of your compliance thrown in the mix alongside that terrible standard template border.

Moving onto category 2.........

I thought I’d open with this.... it’s beyond brilliant ....

Now........ what a lovely banner. Oooh an open day you say? How very exciting! What for? A cemetery! So many questions and so few answers, this is the first example of banner based signage, and wow did I start with a bang! I have two key questions 1. Why is a cemetery having an open day? and 2. Who is attending this open day?

Maybe someone like this???????????

This is another great example of the handwritten sign, I’m enjoying the fact that the author had underlined the entire statement which I feel negates the impact of underlining words, but who am I to say whats wrong and right in this mixed up world??? I’m also enjoying how brilliantly subjective this statement is, one man’s reasonable is another man’s absurd, and also an air of desperation methinks......

This is my fav shop front in London, although for a business is it a good idea to encourage window shopping?? I do however lovs the casual spelling giving it a definite air of cool and finesse ...”What you doing Steve? “ Oh you know Jim, chillin out in Juz Lookin...”

The best food based outlet in LDN I’ve discovered thus far, with branding it’s all about building an idea in the customer’s mind.... I DO want a Pattie, but god forbid it should be arid, oh hang on what’s that I see? A JUICY Pattie Shack? Yes please!!!!

Now admittedly this isn’t a sign , it’s packaging but at this juncture I had to throw it into le mix, the coolest biscuit brand the world has ever seen.....

I’ve included this because I enjoy the paradoxical nature of it being an advert for adverts....also enjoying the fact it doesn’t reflect the fact its 2010 in any way shape or form, a kind of nostalgia and completely pointless.....

And now ending this section with the pieste resistance in terrible low scale advertising....

Again the handwritten approach gives you an idea of the person behind it all, I just love the idea that the author is a disgruntled estate agent, who after being sacked from his local branch of Foxtonshas resorted to setting up his own agency, and why go to the trouble of paying for advertising when a simple post it note and pen will suffice??? Also loving the opening as an exclamation “ What do I do?” “ Buy Houses that’s what I do!!!” Very proud of how low his standards are too, literally ANY house – Crack Den? Brothel? I’ll take it!!! ... this man will go far......... Again a mental picture ensues....