I am going to take a trip literally down memory lane. A figurative trip from A to B, where A is my house, and B is an actual street in Birmingham called Memory Lane. Click here for the Google Map. It’s only 90 miles - it could be done on a bike in a long day (though yes, after my little trip From A to B I have retired from long-distance* cycling) or a walk in about 2.5 days. I will drive**.

This has the potential to be as dull as any motorway journey, only without a proper intended destination at the other end. So I plan to both simultaneously figuratively and literally take a trip down Memory Lane, by grabbing someone I haven’t seen in years, to join me on this inevitably disappointing journey. What can possibly go wrong? So, I am about to get in touch with a few people who I haven’t seen in donkeys years - to  see if they can’t join me on the trip.

*for “long-distance”, read “any distance”

** I cannot drive. I am 32 years old. I will have to find someone to drive me. This makes me feel at once regal and childish.

Cue AC/DC's hit: "Highway to Hell" or Chris Rea's "Road to Hell"

Few people can honestly correctly say they’ve literally been to Hell and back for a cause they believe in. I am one of those very people. And Hell is a goldmine (figuratively) for doing things literally. Hell is a fairly small village on the outskirts of Stjørdal a third of the way up Norway with a population of just under four hundred people. It is thirty kilometres to the East of Trondheim (Norway’s third largest city), and therefore an obvious place for Trondheim-Værnes airport. Or Barcelona-Værnes as it is known to customers of one Irish airline, and a mere 3200km coach-ride to Barcelona city centre.

I wandered out of the centre of Hell, a little westwards, along the railway line, and towards the fjord, treading over a light sprinkling of frozen snow. The waters of the fjord were dark, and disappointingly ice-free. A few hundred yards further on, back in some residential areas, I found exactly what I was looking for. A couple of small ponds, frozen solid: Hell was literally frozen over.

Music snobs will be pleased that piped through the shopping centre of Hell, was the music of Keane. And predictably Hell was full of little kids rolling around on “heelies”, crashing into my shins. There is little to sell Hell’s shopping centre. After I’d drunk more black coffee than anyone could ever want, I judder around, accidentally grossly miscalculated the exchange rate and buy 4 moose salami and 4 reindeer salami for almost a hundred pounds. Note to self – learn the 13-times-table better. I chatted to a few people, meeting the mother-in-law from Hell, and the Neighbours from Hell.

I wrote a postcard to my office. It included the line: “It will be a cold Day in Hell before I come back to work.” It was not very well received, at one stage almost invoking a disciplinary procedure against me because of it. Still, that’s probably the last time I will work for a small Christian charity.

Postcard from Hell

I was looking forward to seeing this film. And then I saw this clip….

Various hotels, theatres, nightclubs, and transport companies (including the subterranean one based in London I worked for years ago), use pre-arranged coded messages in their tannoys in case of emergency. This makes sense: it is best not to start a stampede if they are not sure there is an fire/bomb-threat/other emergency, or if it is in a localised part of the building/station.

The most common code seems to be: “Would Mr/Inspector/Mrs* Sands please report to [wherever the hell the fire/suspected fire is]“. This directs employees to a fire or suspected fire. Apart from the fact that this is now too well-known, and some people start leaving when they hear this message - it has another problem. Some people are actually called Sands: the actor Julian Sands, Bobby Sands, some of them are even women: Jodie Sands, and Tara Sands.

So there are two possibilities when a real person named Sands shows up. Especially if it is Julian Sands.

1. Someone wants to meet Julian Sands. He is in the hotel. They tannoy for him: “Could Mr Sands please come to reception”. The fire brigade are immediately called, hundreds of staff and guests start legging it out of the fire escapes in order to flee the assumed fire in reception. Mr Sands saunters (look at the photo, he looks like a man who would saunter) into reception, only to be hosed down by firefighters and 30 of the hotel’s fire marshals. This is the less bad possible outcome. I imagine this happens to Julian Sands around one hundred and thirty to one hundred and forty times each year. (Yet he still saunters.)
2. A huge fire breaks out. In trying to keep the panic to a minimum, a hotel employee casually as he can tannoys “Mr Sands please report to the ballroom”. The curtains around the room are all blazing and spreading the fire upwards, the heat is intense, the huge chandeliers (it is a grand hotel, or was, before this fire started) start to rain molten glass onto the tables below. We cut to Sands, he knows that on occasion, as an actor**, he is needed in all sorts of places including, on occasion: ballrooms. He saunters, swaggers even, towards the ballroom, not noticing the nervous sweating employees gently running away from it. As he pushes open the doors, a backdraft is created, and Mr Sands becomes toast.  (This has not yet happened - we would have heard about it on the news, or at least Wikipedia would have an end-date on his page.) (Alternatively this may happen, but at a lesser frequency than the first scenario, and when it has happened, he is so wet from the false-alarm hosing in scenario 1, he survives any tragic fire-induced injury).

The morals of this story are two-fold. Firstly: if you hear a tannoy for “[any prefix] Sands” it could be a low-level or imminent emergency, and it might be a good idea to head outside for some fresh air. Secondly: if you are named “Sands”, or spend a lot of time with Julian Sands (ladies?***) bear in mind that any tannoy could be for a fire, not you. Why not change your name to something neutral, like Mr Smallpocks, or Mr Julian Assange (they do look alike) I’m sure neither of those names would cause any trouble.

*it is the 21st Century. Deal with it.

**an actor who has appeared in a film written by Bono. He must be good.

*** look at him, ladies.

In a couple of hours I am cooking dinner for a pregnant friend. As ever, the conversation with pregnant friends will turn to baby names. My wife and I have rules for baby names. We have no baby, but we are prepared.

1. Any name has to pass “the Myra test” - the name cannot be sufficiently rare that any one individual can ruin the name. Myra was quite a nice name, until Myra Hindley. So as a ballpark figure, you should be able to name at least 6 famous people with the first name.
2. You have to be able to run into a crowded park/cinema/supermarket/country and shout his/her name, without (here’s the crucial part) feeling like a twat. For this reason it is unlikely that any of our offspring will have more than 4 syllables, or be “Raif”.
3. No same initials in the same house. So our offspring will have no names beginning with “P” or “V” or any initials in common. This makes naming several thousand personal items over the next sixty years significantly easier.
4. No identical first names to anyone in the extended family. We are not Americans.
5. The word must not mean “ass-hat” or “kleptomaniac” or “yak penis” in Flemish, Urdu, Geordie. Thank goodness for Google.

Tonight I will, as ever, be lobbying for the middle name “Isambard”, regardless of baby gender. And if I ever had offspring of my own - it’s a dead cert. If I’m allowed it.