Tall story

One of the best days of the year for me last year was spent in Shanghai. We did two things of note; travelled on the Maglev train which runs from the Pudong District to the new airport, a distance of 30km; it takes 8 minutes (reaching 430km per hour) and secondly we had a drink in a bar called Cloud 9 which is on the 86th floor of the awesome Jin Mao Tower. I will report on the totally crazy Maglev another time but I found the card for the bar the other day and thought I'd try to explain how it felt to go there. (Also Cloud 9 was the name of a band Dom and I were in in our teens, Dom sucessfully and for a reasonable period of time, me for one practice).

The tower is also in Pudong which is a former area of marshland where mega-buildings are emerging as though they are growing. The building sites are manned 24 hours a day, at night they are brightly lit, there are stacks of porta-cabins on site where the off-duty shifts sleep.

We had visited a number of amazing places in China, seen the Great Wall, the Forbidden Palace in Beijing and the Terracotta Warriors, all of which were amazing. But I never saw people react to a tourist visit the way they were, coming out of the Jin Mao Tower. It is 88 storeys tall; and there is an observation floor at the top. We thought we'd probably do that, but I knew that there was a bar in the Grand Hyatt Hotel which occupies the top 30 or so floors. It was less straight forward to get to but we eventually made it via several lifts and passing through doors that were for guests only.

The building itself I would liken to a giant metal worm. I remember learning in the former stable that served as the "science block" at school that worms have little barbs on them called chetae that help pull them along (and prevent them from being pulled out of a calculator, but that's another story). The tower is like a massive erect, square cross-sectioned wormbot. It is so massive I would admit to finding it a bit scarey to look at, particularly in the dark, when it is lit to awesome effect. The bar cunningly occupied two floors so the windows were double height and then the floor stepped up to the core of the building all the way round so that no matter where you sat you had a view of street level (rather than just the sky). The spectacle was enhanced but the fact that it was quite dark in the bar. The blackness and the exposed girders everywhere lent it a bit of a "batman set" feel. A bar where you need a drink.

Two or three cocktails and several descents in lifts later we were back outside the monster, giddily gazing up and trying to correlate the surreal fact that we knew we had just been all the way "up there" with the fact that moments later we were now in the street. There were a handful of coaches parked nearby and tourists were being disgorged from the door to the observation deck lift. Like me they were all gazing upward, many of them were jumping about and laughing nervously/excitedly as if they had just had a miraculous win. (Batophobia is the fear of being next to tall buildings).

Charity work

Yesterday I received a text from a ring tone company confirming my order and the fact that they would be charging £4 per week for their services; they went on to offer me the opportunity to cancel my order by dialling a premium rate number. I had of course never heard of them.

Last week though, I got a letter from the National Trust, thanking me for my continued support and reminding me that they would be taking £36 from my bank account in the next few weeks. Perhaps five years ago they successfully removed a similar amount from my current account despite my having cancelled my direct debit at least a year before. This latest letter had been forwarded to me by my bank; "we have a mutual customer; we have lost contact with him, blah blah blah". I contacted my bank who were super friendly about it, offering to call the offending charity and sort it out, (the person I spoke to had their number readily at hand) and stating that if it proved that I hadn't issued them with a new instruction, they would reimburse me and then chase the naughty charity. When I pointed out that I relied on them not to let anybody who fancied it, remove arbitrary amounts of money from my account willy nilly, they said they'd find out who was at fault. I asked them how it could happen and they told me the organisation in question may have invented a new reference number.

It is all depressingly cynical.

"Hello Mr Bank, we are a big charity and you have been our bank for some time. But we're thinking of changing to a bank that helps us generate more cash. We used to have an arrangement with some of your personal customers. If you don't mind, we will have a go at removing money from their accounts (many of them won't notice), if you'd be busy with something else whilst we're at it, that'd be jolly amenable; this will ensure our continued beautiful sybiotic relationship. Lots of love, Bent Charity".

Perhaps I should get in touch with that supercilious bloke from Radio 4.....probably could, but the arse who came up with the scam, sold the idea to his bosses by pointing out that I don't really have the time or inclination (The bank just left me a message to say that they've credited my account with the £36 that the NT swiped from my account last year....without me noticing!)