On hoping for a refund

Dear First Great Western

I'm writing to you to ask for a refund. Apologies in advance for the length of this letter. Hopefully you won't roll your eyes at this (I know how tiring long customer services letters must be), but this is just to make you aware of the process I've been through to try and get a refund.

My mistake (and I fully admit it) was to arrive at the station with the wrong debit card by accident. I know it was wrong, but I didn't think it'd be that bad. After all, thetrainline allows you to use “any valid debit/credit card” to pick up a ticket. And, the Paddington ticket machine seemed to agree with me. It said that, yes, wrong card, but I could go to the ticket office to pick up the tickets.

After queing at the ticket office, the man there sent me to the Information Desk, saying the woman there could help me. Her response was to inform me, in an exasperated sigh, that I shouldn't have been sent to her, and that my best bet was to either contact First Great Western to change the booking or buy a new ticket.

I went back to the ticket office and had the good fortune to speak to the same man. He offered to sell me a new ticket and suggested that I contact First Great Western for a refund on my original ticket. “But I am contacting First Great Western,” I said. “I'm talking to you.”

At this point the man in a First Great Western booth, wearing a First Great Western uniform and a First Great Western badge, said proudly: “I am not First Great Western.”

I'm very proud of the fact that I did not at this point lose my temper. I may have gaped, but I think that's reasonable. I bought a new ticket and he went away and eventually came back with a phone number for me to ring.

Sitting on the train, I rang the number and spoke to a very helpful man who told me he couldn't actually give me a refund, but how I could use my laptop on the train to do it. This was partially true. What he did not tell me was that my laptop needed to be connected to a printer. Unaccountably, I had failed to pack my printer, so sadly, could not print out the resulting PDF in order to mail to you.

Not to worry, I thought. I'll do it when I get home. By the time I got home, my session on your website had expired. When I logged back in, it claimed “Aftersales Performed” on that journey, and wouldn't let me print out the PDF.

So I rang the helpline again. Perhaps someone there would tell me how to get to the PDF. I explained my situation. Not a problem, the man said, all I needed to do was to write you a letter and attach the tickets.

I then reminded him that I did not have the tickets. At which point he suggested my best bet was to travel across London, back to the station, with the correct debit card and collect the tickets. Startled, I queried this. Not only did this seem a very laborious process, but I also questioned whether a ticket machine would even issue tickets for a journey now long in the past. He agreed that this seemed unlikely.

He came up with another solution. He suggested that I write this all down in a letter to you and that, once I had explained my case, you might send me a refund request form.

Stunned, I asked him if, perhaps, you'd simply refund me after reading the letter without the added complexity of then sending me a form, me having to fill in a form and then send it back to you. He said he rather doubted it.

And, after the day I've had, I rather doubt it too.

It's just data

A thing I have learned in the last couple of days is an important thing about our modern era of digital video: It's just data.

In the old days when I filmed something, it would be on a tape. I'd digitise that, and then the tape would go and sit in a box in a cupboard. If a hard drive melted, that's fine, cos there's always that tape in a cupboard.

It's all changed since we all moved over to the glossy, baffling world of HD Video (what is the difference between i and p? Can anyone ever explain that in a way that doesn't make you want to burn their star wars figures?). You'll film stuff. It'll sit on a card, which is like a tape but a hundred times more expensive - so you don't keep the card, you back it up onto a hard drive. Which... in theory is fine.

Until something goes wrong. A couple of nights ago, halfway through some work, a hard drive just wandered   away. As it went, I started frantically moving stuff off of it. I was glad of the warning, and so acted quickly.

In my completely calm and rational search for 500 gig of space, I noticed a project on a random hard drive. "Oh, that old thing" I thought, and deleted it.

A day later, looking for something, I realised. I hadn't deleted a random backup of an old project. I'd deleted the project itself. Months of editing work, gone. But, you know, I could always get it back from the rushes.... only, also gone were all the rushes. With the same click.

In the old days, if I'd had to, I could have reassembled the project - I keep copies of the project in dropbox, so it's just a matter of redigitising the rushes. Only the rushes no longer sit sleeping in a cupboard. There is no cupboard. They nestle snugly in the folder itself. Until I pressed "delete".

That's the difference between tapes and tapeless. In a crisis panic, I'd never open up a cupboard and throw out my rushes. Even if I'd bought an especially mimsy cardigan that needed hanging up really quickly, I'd never do that. But it's not the same with tapeless rushes. They're just space.

Clearly, I need to think differently about backing up projects - no longer is it enough to have a spare copy on a hard drive. I need to buy a hard drive that is effectively that box in a cupboard. And even so, a hard drive is not as reliable as a box in a cupboard. We all know that feeling where you plug in an old hard drive after a couple of years and it goes "hmmm" like a winky Sauron, its contents shifting into a Schrodinger state. Does that happen with a box in a cupboard? No.

A cameraman told me a relevant story about digital projection in cinemas. A hard drive of the "film" is delivered. Each time you play it, it needs a code fetching from a server to unlock it. A problem that cinemas (especially small, independent ones) are experiencing sometimes is getting onto the server to get the code to unlock the film. So they end up showing the film from the emergency backup DVD.

By the time I die, we'll all exist backed up on hard drives. Which will be fine. Until someone can't get onto the server, or find the right power cable. And then we'll sit there. In a box in a cupboard.

Once I had a stalker

And I've just found my old emails about it. It was a curious affair, so I'd better hide a few names.

It all began in the October 2000. I'd just got a job running the BBC Cult site. The BBC at the time had a Cult TV messageboard. Ironically, I didn't yet have access to moderate it, as I'd only just got the job. However, just before I joined:

1. The BBC had changed the timeslot of the X-Files (nothing to do with me)
2. There'd been a mistake in an X-Files quiz (nothing to do with me)
3. Some members of the messageboard had complained that the atmosphere on there was unfriendly.
4. One of the messageboard moderators had, without my knowledge, grandly announced I'd been appointed to run the new site which the X-Files messageboard would become part of.

With me so far? First of all (we'll call him) Mr Stalker posted an angry message to me, blaming me for changing the scheduling of the X-Files. This was removed, but not by me. IT being as slow to set up an account as it was, I couldn't have, even if I'd wanted to. I had no direct contact with the BBC Messageboard team (they were a pretty independent bunch paid for out of my budget). Mr Stalker then posted the following about "my actions":

This is without any doubt the strictest and most disgraceful moderation I’ve ever seen. I would like to propose a Week Long Blackout of the BBC X Files Forum starting from Monday Morning. If you would be interested in Operation ‘BBC BLACKOUT’ please say so here. I don’t want to do this, but the moderation is disgraceful. Does the host have any comments to make ? 

What? No posts about the X-Files? For a whole week? The Head of the BBC Messageboards sent him an immediate email:

"Hi [name removed],
  

It seems I need to sit down with the hosts and moderators and talk about this message board and how it is run.  It's YOUR message board... Let me sort this one out for you.

Please send me your thoughts.  Ring me if you like too."

I know she sent this email. Not only did she then forward it to me, the forum moderators, my manager, and my manager's manager ("Can we organise a meeting to discuss this urgently please?"), but... well, we'll see why later.

The moderators were actually quite unhappy with the Head of the BBC Messageboards' instant response (They copied me in on a lengthy report to her which concluded "It's simply not true that we delete 'whole threads of relevant posts' as Mr Stalker is suggesting. We're disappointed that in this instance you didn't feel it necessary to consult us first").

This is when it gets weird. A strange message appeared on the board from Mr Stalker:

"Jim, did you get my phone call?"

I hadn't. I was curious as to why he was calling me Jim, and to what phone call he was referring. I wondered if this explained the sudden number of empty voicemails we were getting on the home answering machine (mind you, at the time, we had "Livin' La Vida Loca" as our answering machine message). 

He then continued to post. Apparently I "had a nice house". Mr Stalker also had some observations of my personal habits. This was getting creepy. 

We now reached December. And Mr Stalker posted the following:

"Jim,

Maybe you should start by accepting help when you are offered it. You ignore me. Well... If your going to treat your regulars like sh*t then you can shove your fuc*ing quiz... Trust me Jim, you wouldn't appreciate help if it came up and bit you on the ass. And if the moderators are going to delete this, please advise Jim that I think that even rapists show respect to their victims, than James does."

It was eventually taken down, not because it compared me unfavourably to a rapist, but because he'd gamed the swear-word filter. 

I considered this was progress. Not only had he got my name right, but he was now sending me abuse. Perhaps he could be banned? Instead, here's an apparent response from the Head of the BBC Messageboards to Mr Stalker:

I thought you might want to have a 'between you and me' type discussion so that I can sort this out.  I can do some internal stuff to improve the situation.  I have already spoken to James Goss today about this, explaining that I feel you may have a point/deserve a hearing.

(I say "apparently" because this email wasn't copied in to me. However, as you'll later see the style is quite consistent with it being from the Head of the BBC Messageboards.)

As a result he wasn't banned outright, just suspended. Shortly afterwards, he was allowed to rejoin. At which point he posted the following thread about me. Its title? "how he likes 2beat himself". 

The moderators removed this (thankfully before referring it to me for fact-checking) and suspended his account for a short period of time.

Shortly afterwards, the BBC received the following email (edited) from Mr Stalker:

Mr. Stalker wrote:

To: cult@bbc.co.uk 

Dear Sir/Madam,
Recently a new HOST has been appointed, Mr.James Goss. I have reason to belive he is conspiring to repress me.... A moderator/s also continues to harass me on the forum by deleting every single message that I post... He has intimidated me through private mail from his private AOL address... It's making me really upset, as there are no grounds for deleting my messages... I hope there is a line of investigation you can take for this matter. Could I have a BBC contact number!

!

, where I could telephone a complaint in person as this problem has reduced me to tears on many occasions.

Now, this was a serious allegation.  His email had come through to an inbox I had access to. I read it, and then duly passed it to my manager and asked him to start an investigation. Luckily, the investigation into me was helped by Mr Stalker. Here's a sample email I apparently sent him:

Snowie[deleted]@aol.com

Good to hear from you! 

I know I can be a bit of a wally sometimes-like with the WMM topic- but would like to think that I am a fair and reasonable person and I don't mind a bit of good humour even if it is directed at me!

So as of next week I am going to start to email you the quiz for you to proof  read and I would welcome any other contributions/suggestions/ideas you may have in making the board the success it is.

Cheers

Jim :0)

PS Ok Snowie is a bit fluffy but it is a nick name that was given to me by an 

ex-partner which has kind of stuck!  lol!!!! I will consider your suggestion 

of something a little harder!! lol!! 

It's weird reading an email that's apparently written by you. I didn't write it. Here's why:

1. Why  would I email someone not from my BBC address about BBC business?
2. This is "intimidation"?
3. Much as I love Tintin, no-one has ever called me Snowie.
4. lol!!

This didn't stop us all taking it very seriously. My manager looked into it. It was decided the emails were forgeries and we asked that Mr Stalker be permanently banned. Lol!! 

Instead, the Head of the BBC's messageboards continued to "reach out" to Mr Stalker, asking him for more evidence and allowing him to continue posting on the boards.

I'll look for your reply tomorrow. Hold tight and I'll try and improve things. Once I have your permission, then I'll have a quiet word with James Goss.

So, to summarize, Mr Stalker had likened me to a rapist, talked about my masturbatory habits, and claimed to know my home number and where I lived.... and, instead of banning him, the Head of the BBC Messageboards seemed to think Mr Stalker "may have a point" and that a "quiet word" needed to be had with me. 

Maybe she was just acting as a genuine peacemaker in the best interests of the community, but from my point-of-view I was trapped in a situation that was uniquely BBC Kafkaesque. I was the subject of a hate campaign, much of it published on the BBC website, and the person responsible for overseeing that bit of the site wanted it to continue. I was alarmed and scared and my flatmates wondered about changing the phone number.

Which is where my manager came into his own. I had an... interesting relationship with him. He could be very intimidating. But this was definitely his finest hour. He summoned the Head of Messageboards to a meeting. This is how I remember it going:

MANAGER: Ban him. Permanently.

Head of Messageboards (HOM): No. We can't. It's a community.

MANAGER: So, you intend allowing this persecution to continue? 

HOM: Persecution, that's a strong word.

MANAGER: Where does your traffic come from?

HOM: From the... er... users. The community.

MANAGER: But how much traffic comes from the links to the boards from the Cult site?

HOM: uh... I'd have to go through the logs.

MANAGER: James?

ME: About 90%

MANAGER: And how long would it take you to remove all those links from the Cult site?

ME: Er, about half an hour.

MANAGER: Do it.

HOM: Wait... wait!

This is when my manager played his trump card. You see, Mr Stalker had started up a website. Where he not only posted up all the email he had purportedly received from me, but also all the (seemingly genuine) correspondence from the Head of the BBC Messageboards. Such as:

Would you like to have a chat with me to discreetly air your views re: the Cult TV Message Board? Thought you might like to be given the opportunity. I'd like to help (discreetly and confidentially with no-one else knowing)...I promise, faithfully to do what I can to resolve your situation.

Best wishes...

Her reaction to finding this had been republished online was rather less conciliatory. We know this because Mr Stalker also helpfully published it:

I went over to see both the Host and Editor of the Cult TV message board this morning.  I have also had a meeting with the BBC Moderators, and our lawyers. You are presently breaking BBC Copyright/the law by hosting a website which is defaming a BBC employee - it also contains BBC copyright images. 

The site was taken down and he was permanently banned.

End of story?

Not quite. It became a case study for safer management of BBC Communities and the protection of BBC Staff. I was even allowed to host the BBC Messageboards, but under a pseudonym. A happy ending?

No. A year later, the BBC Communities team launched a series of chat rooms. Understanably nervous/terrified about this, I warily agreed that there could be a weekly "Cult Chatroom", but wanted nothing to do with it. It lasted three weeks and then, the morning after the third one, I received an email from one of the community team:

Something happened last night. Ask to see the log of the Cult chatroom.

Intrigued, I asked the manager of the Chatrooms. There was a long "I don't think you  need to see that" delay. Eventually, after some chasing, the log turned up. It made increasingly painful reading as the moderator clearly didn't know anything about any of the BBC's Cult television programmes, and the chat moved from gentle mockery, to abuse, to name-calling to angry chaos. The name of the moderator? "James Goss".

Worse, the chat ended with "James Goss" announcing  "We're closing tonight's chat and the Cult chatrooms until further notice." And then, "If you have any comments, please email [myemailaddress]@bbc.co.uk"

Guess who emailed me? Mr Stalker.

A restricted view of tonight's Martian Invasion

War of the Worlds live.

Yes, it was all kinds of amazing, but... (oh, how hateful to carp about these things) but... but for £50 tickets I'd hoped for something a bit better than a view of some speakers and the lighting rig. I'm sure there's a very exciting, engaged debate to be had about non-subsidised arts, but really and honestly, I can't remember a notice when I was booking saying "There'll be a restricted view of your Martian Invasion".

Being a long way away from these things normally doesn't matter. After all, in these arenas, there are usually screens. And yes, there was one screen showing what was going on - it was the screen hidden behind the speakers and the lighting rig. Hum.

If you're going (and do, if only to marvel at the Martian War Machine on stage), then clearly, if you want to see death rain down on you, you're going to have to pay more. There, an actual Death Tax.

Not keeping up with 70s concept albums, I was unaware that this was the dubstep remix on tour. I had no idea a dubstep remix could tour. Indeed, I've only a hazy idea what a dubstep remix is, but it seems to be a bit of "wobblewobbleboosh" over samples of Liam Neeson saying "black clouds" (Note: the Gran in After Henry once peerlessly described Walkman music as "going wickaboom wickaboom, that's all it is"). Anyway, if you're going to fiddle with something, you may as well fiddle with it harmlessly. And it gave us the joy of watching Jeff Wayne conduct the dubstep bits using Dad Wedding Dancing.

Looming over the action was a big screen. The big screen we couldn't properly see. From our £50 seats. (Yes, I am going on about this, but you can't help sitting in a packed arena and doing "How much is this making?" maths). On the big screen are a lot of computer graphics. It's as if Jeff's popped down the local technical college and told them to go crazy for their summer project. And go crazy they duly did. Some of the results are amazing and impressive. Some of them... well, Jason Donovan's suffered a lot of indignity in life, but to see him dragged off stage and then rendered as a CGI barbie doll being devoured by a tripod against clip art of a church is possibly a new low.

Maybe I was missing the full beauty. Due to the speakers and the lighting rig getting in the way. Of my £50 seats. That's the real victory of the Martians. Making you feel cheap for only spending £50 on tickets.

Do go, though. There's a lot of spectacle you can enjoy, really enjoy. You can also marvel at how tiny the average human bladder is. War of the Worlds is not a long show - it's two 45-minute albums, after all. With an interval. And yet there was a constant trickle to-and-from the bogs. As the Artillery Man commented, the nice thing about the Martians invaded was that the sewers were flushed clean and sweet.

The final shame was that, if a stadium could be said to scarper, it scarpered before the end. This wasn't a matinee showing of 27 Dresses at the Vue. This was War!of!the!Worlds! Live!on!Stage! with a Real!Live!Tripod!, but the people of Manchester grabbed their coats and made for the exit before Jason Donovan had even finished his curtain call. Which is a real shame, as they then missed the genuinely impressive bit at the end where they let off all the remaining pyrotechnics. Which looked amazing. Even from my £50 seat.

The quick wilderness

One of the advantages of my boyfriend living in Manchester is that it's just possible for us to nip to Scotland for the weekend.

One the trip we learned the difference between the two types of Too Good To Be True when it comes to hotels.

Hotel #1: £40 for a hotel room in Glasgow is cheap, but not insanely so. The booking website said it was nothing special, but would be fine. It was actually horrible. Horrible in a "reception full of building waste and a man behind the counter asking if we minded having no bathroom" way. The room was tiny and filthy and we checked out in about 5 minutes.

Hotel #2: £35 for a hotel room on the shores of a loch? Now that is ridiculous. But, actually, I can recommend the Arrochar Hotel. I can imagine it's hideous in summer when it's a coach trap for American tourists, but out-of-season it's The Shining with a great view. A really great view. A view so great that when I went to the breakfast bar I just stood and gawped at the view before even trying to locate the grapefruit segments. The bar was a laugh - it was lit like an airport lounge, and a man stood in the corner crooning hits from the 50s. But we didn't care - we spent the evening in our room, watching Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter and drinking scotch.

Hammer Time

Fans are mental. It's almost part of the definition. However, if you drew a Venn Diagram that showed "Loving something too much", "The Internet" and "HD Video Standards" the overlap would be the Hammer blu-ray releases:

As far as I can work out, the story goes like this - after years of firms slapping out "will this do?" DVD releases, Studio Canal come along and decide to lavishly restore them for blu-ray. You'd assume the result would be rejoicing in the streets. Instead it's more like this:

I find the whole thing baffling. There's a special blog in which Hammer painstakingly (to the point of eye-watering tedium) explain every single restoration choice in a language which is practically machine code (Sample sentence: "1.66:1 – a predominantly UK and European widescreen aspect ratio designed to be centre matted from a 4-perf 35mm frame..."). And underneath is a torrent of comments, bandying about acronyms and aspect ratios like quadratic equations (1.66:1 COF = 1.33:1 DNVR DPOD).

Like staring into the Matrix, it's mesmerising without making much sense. On one release the restorers offered a print that was deemed "too sharp without enough of the original grain visible". When they eased the effect back for the next release it is screamed at for being "too soft and too grainy". Clearly, they cannot win.

One of the latest furores involves The Devil Rides Out. On original release there simply wasn't the time/budget to finish the effects. The restorers have dared to sympathetically finish them - they've not added lens flare laser guns, CGI kangaroos, and Greedo does not shoot first - they've simply pasted in the odd background, tidied up some nasty matt-lines, and risked painting in a missing fetlock on the Angel of Death's horse. That kind of thing. You'd assume they'd be thanked for bothering.

No.

The outpouring of qaudratic anger is unstemmable. (http://blog.hammerfilms.com/?p=321#comments) Some of it is understandable - a few years ago, Optimum restored The Avengers, and nearly every release had to be recalled, reissued or apologised for, leading to a lot of fan cynicism about "restored releases". But in this case it seems to be some nice people caring very hard about some films for the first time in 50 years. I'm on their side (a deciding factor is that, on the special features, they all appear to be hot). Also on their side is a commenter who pops up, like a voice in the wilderness, to say:

"Chris Walker: It must be soul- destroying to restore a film after months of painstaking work, and then have to face a ton of abuse and criticism from so called “experts” who all know better...  It is a 55 year old film made for peanuts by a small company. It is never going to look like “Gone with the Wind”, so people please deal with it."

Bleak House

Bleak House has been defeating me for 20 years now. I guess I was spoiled by the amazing television version with Diana Rigg and Denholm Elliot:

I think it was on in the same amazing year that gave us Twin Peaks, GBH, and, er, Star Trek TNG Season 2. But I remember how great it was.

So, I remember how odd I found trying the read the actual book before going to University, how I abandoned reading it at university, and how I've picked it up ever since, read those first few pages about fog, and then put it sadly down. I've even bought repeated copies, as though somehow owning more and more would allow me to read it by osmosis. They all remained unread.

Every time I picked up another book, and I'm not kidding, I've always felt that tiny guilt that I wasn't finally getting on with Bleak House. I've not had this problem with other Dickens books - but there's something about this one. Perhaps it's that the title and the atmosphere are matched to a plot that (for all it's grubby tangles) is really quite simple.

Earlier this year, I tried again. I got quite far, then suddenly found myself reading half a dozen Perry Masons and thinking "Perry would have solved Jarndyce and Jarndyce in an hour and then gone out for cocktails and dancing with Lady Deadlock." Ever since, I've picked it up, got a little further, and stopped.

Finally, wonderfully, I found this:

I'm not sure entirely what to think. It's kind of cheating, especially when poor Hugh Dickinson is doing so much work (he really do do the police in different voices, he do). It's about 30 hours long, and I dread to think how long it took to record. But it means I'm whipping through it.

I am finally going to finish Bleak House.

Expensive Farts

It's our anniversary. Yes, two years since this blog stopped being fun.

We celebrated by going to a Vegetarian restaurant. I hate Vegetarian restaurants. There are exceptions, but, by-and-large you find yourself smugly overcharged for chickpea curry. I decided to be cunning, and asked friends on Facebook. I then presented my boyfriend with the crowd-sourced list and said "pick one".

He picked the wrong one. It was a bland shed lit by tea lights. In one corner a man read a Russian novel. In another, two women talked church politics ("I always find that black women, when you're dealing with them...", "Well, I'm black, and I never-", "That's you, dear."). We sat in a corner and looked at the menu. It was depressingly uninventive. He ordered the chickpea fritata. I ordered the chickpea curry.

We ate in glum silence. It was kind of like prison food, give or take a human ear. The whole dreary process lasted less than an hour and cost over fifty quid. We then went and bought anniversary gaviscon.

The shoddy horror of the whole experience is that there is fun vegetarian food. Inventive, exciting stuff - raw burgers, tofu fantasies, seaweed surprise. Not stuff worse than you could make at home. The shocker was the mark-up. Half a tin of chickpeas each is not exactly wild truffles.

We then went to a party (pausing only to stand outside McD's and sigh) and got talking to a beautiful Frenchman, who said "Me and my boyfriend, it's only been two years, but I tell you, you know after a few months. I knew immediately. I'm going to propose. Seriously. Here's my mind map for how it'll work." It was pastel-coloured. We said nothing.

After that we went home, watched a Hammer film about incest and drank scotch. Happy anniversary.

Your bacon isn't smuggled

One discovery of my flight to Berlin is that you can take bacon in your hand luggage. You do get a funny look from the x-ray lady, but no-one has yet discovered a way of weaponising bacon.

Don't Mention Berlin

I'm standing in a flea-market in Berlin. A young American girl walks past, dragging her hot German boyfriend.

"Oh wow, this stuff is amazing," American girl enthuses. "We have a wonderful word for this, you know. Kitsch."
"Yes," says her boyfriend, "we have that too."

Going to Berlin is a little bit like going on holiday to the Death Star. You can try very hard, but you can't quite forget that something dreadful happened here. There's still an abundance of wide-open spaces, leafy gaps appearing in rows of houses, sudden wastelands glimpsed as your train crosses districts.

You're even reminded of it in museums. I went to see the Pergamon Museum (do go - there's almost an entire Greek Temple and the Gates of Babylon. Indoors. Amazing), and even there there's a small exhibit explaining how the temple was damaged during the bombing, taken by the Soviets, and grudgingly recovered. It was then that they realised that still more bits went missing, and someone had the job of touring the home counties, visiting members of the English army who had taken away the odd souvenir.

The on-trend thing to do if you're a hipster is to break into the Spreepark and then announce that it's so over. The Spreepark is a theme park that went bust a few years ago. Its owner absconded to South America - not the first time someone from Berlin's done this, but he did take the rides with him, which must have been quite a unique DHL phone call. He and the rides returned, but customs discovered he'd stuffed the rides full of cocaine. So now the park remains, a creepy ruin, chained-up... with fences just begging to be climbed, and a giant ferris wheel spinning in the wind, making the sound of the screaming of a thousand souls. We broke in, and it was enormous fun.

It's a curious sensation - amusement parks are designed to give you safe, exciting thrills - and you get a similar sense of artificial danger sneaking around a closed one, trying to avoid the security company. We dodged one patrol and fell through some bushes onto a forgotten railway track. It is, actually, quite hard running on a railway. We ended up crouched by a stagnant log flume as a police car and a bicycle patrol went past our heads. It was at this point I said to my boyfriend, "Well, we've climbed over a wall and we're being chased by guards. In East Berlin." Hipsters have reinvented the cold war.

We left, feeling very daring. We then passed a crowd of American tourists kicking a padlock before clambering through a massive hole in the fence. They strolled around, taking photos with the flash on and laughing about how, if they met any guards, they'd just bribe them.

Later on, we went to a bear bar. Two giant screens hung over the bar. One showed bear porn. The other showed The Muppet Show. The bears stood around trying to be serious and growly (although one tried to chat another up by pointing at the Muppets' guest star and cooing "That's Gilda Radner. She's fabulous!").We stood around laughing at the terrible carpet in the porn.

When we left, my boyfriend complained "It's weird knowing everyone's looking at you working out how much you'd cost." He paused. "I'm sure you must have felt that way once."