Mr Monk and the London Buses

PARSLEY'S COMMLOCK

TV Review : Monk - Mr Monk Goes To A Rock Concert
My Mum has introduced me to this amazing show which she discovered by accidentally leaving the TV on after something else she was watching. At first she thought it was crazy, then she got hooked. She describes it as Seinfeld with detective work.

It stars Tony Shalhoub as ex-policeman Adrian Monk who keeps getting involved in murder cases. He is fastidious and obsessive-compulsive, always straightening things out and noticing when things are out of place. He's also completely paranoid about germs and spends a lot of his time wiping his hands with tissues.

The show is remarkable in that in a relatively short episode it solves the murder, has a sub-plot or two, lets you enjoy Monk's crazy behaviour, and still finds time to let the camera linger on certain scenes so that they don't feel rushed.

In this episode Monk pretends he knows what a rock concert is, only to be completely freaked out by the crowd on his arrival. He clings on to a car imploring the dancing people around him (to no avail) that this is a car park and not a dance floor. He is absolutely terrified of the portaloo toilets, one of which he mistakes for a phone booth.

It's implausible for someone with such a slim grasp of reality to have the necessary insights into murder situations, but through his rather 'Rainman' autistic behaviour it is made vaguely credible and extremely entertaining.

There is also some schmaltzy romanticism in the sub-plots, which I'm afraid I lap up. In this episode the Police Captain's son has gone missing at the concert, and father and son learn about each other through the storyline. It would probably slightly annoy a standard palette but for me it's judged just right and it's not irritating.

My friend Tony Reeve advises me that the back-story of Monk has changed over the years. At first his aberration began with the death of his wife, but more recently his time with his wife is portrayed as the one period of sanity in his crazy world.

This was one of the show's 5th series, which is showing everyday on the Hallmark channel, and the show also makes an occasional appearance on the BBC. Highly recommended.

Travel News : Bus Information
Ever since my father waited on the wrong side of the road for the bus that was bringing us to him, I've had an interest in the guesswork that goes with public transport. These days we can take it for granted that bus stops have the name of the place on them, but it wasn't always so, and still isn't outside metropolitan London.

Finally buses that 'tell you' what the stop is, and display it on dot-matrix displays, have arrived. They've been in Germany and Sweden for years. The other thing that has arrived is barely trained bus staff.

I took a ride on the 226 recently. It follows an elliptical route to take in such places of interest as Ealing Broadway, the Central Middlesex Hospital and Cricklewood, whilst skirting across the dreaded traffic jam known as the North Circular Road. Either as a scam or through not knowing how to work his announcement system, our driver was running 2 or 3 stops behind the announcements. I don't think anyone was actually confused into getting off the bus at the wrong stop. It became more interesting when a small child took to repeating the announcements at the top of his voice.

The other slightly confusing innovation, of which the 226 route is in part using, is having the bus stop anywhere i.e. not only at bus stops. This makes something of a mockery of the draconian system of drivers refusing utterly to open their doors anywhere other than their prescribed stop, except when it suits them. I think if I was trying to get off and a driver got 'a bit ridiculous' about this I would be tempted to use the emergency handle that opens the door, however I couldn't condone breaking whatever regulations we are supposed to be bound by whenever we get on buses.

Only once in my life have I been on a bus that forgot where he was going and went the wrong way. He would have carried on if a confused passenger hadn't alerted him.

It will be interesting to see if an alcohol ban is any help in preventing bad behaviour on the bus. For me it's been a fact of travel for as long as I can remember, although the West End late night is particularly grim.

I do know of a bus journey that cheers me up though. It's the 142 that I get in Stockholm on my way to and from rehearsals with The Moving Sounds. I couldn't say that the journey was substantively different from the London equivalent, but my God it feels better.

Late night Stockholm public transport has a similar feeling to London i.e. imminent risk of a sudden altercation, but it generally doesn't happen, and at least the tube does run late into the night. It also appears to run to places that people actually want to go rather than being a 15-minute walk away, although that could be my imagination. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner that I love Stockholm so.

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]