What do you make of these boxes, guides and painted footprints around cash machines on Bethnal Green Road, here in London's East London?

Several thoughts occurred to me the other day when I noticed that every cash machine on my walk towards Brick Lane had them:

• Wow, something newly ugly on this already rather ugly street with all its litter, fag ends, fractured paving stones and regularly spaced discs of gob!
• Does the council think we're so dumb that we don't know which direction to face when inserting our cards?
• Law-abiding people possess 'personal space preferences' and don't need them to be painted onto the world by the council.
  
• If someone wants to snatch the £10 I'm taking out for my food for the month, then they're not going to be deterred by the painted feet.
• Why do the feet all seem to be men's feet? I realise that this thought is susceptible to accusations of sexism but you know, thoughts as swift as meditation or the wings of love sometimes just come flying into your mind.
• Do wheelchair users feel excluded by this iconography?
• What animal walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening?
• Wouldn't it be better if they painted dance-step patterns on the pavement instead?

I was prompted to contact the head of Head of Transportation & Highways at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets (I think this can go on record as my first instance of being your actual 'busy body'), who happens to be a very friendly and responsive woman.

In her email she assured me that this strategy is: "...a way of raising awareness of personal security issues and is actually targetted at the crime hot spots.  If one person thinks twice about using the machine with someone standing behind them, then it will have paid off. We were acting on instruction from our advisor on designing out crime, so I would assume there is some evidence of their effectiveness - but I will research that further and try to get back to you."

I'm not sure if she meant that they are designed to stop people using the machines when there is somebody standing behind them, because what happens when somebody starts queuing when you are half way through your transaction?

Everyone knows that there are at least nine other undesirable options to choose from on those keypads: Top Up Mobile? Check Balance? Upload Happy Slapper File? Switch Mortgage? Open Account? Charge Electricity Fob? Eye Test? Diabetes Scan? Would You Like a Receipt? Withdraw Cash?

Anyway, I wait to be convinced but who knows, maybe they do prompt people to be more cautious and in the end reduce street crime? Maybe it's worth the ugliness and the insidious degradation of the environment? I know what I think but how about you? All I know is that they don't do this in Rome so why would any other city?

It's nice that they have them for couples, though, like 'love seats' in old fashioned cinemas:

Since opening My Own Private Turbine Hall, I've been on the lookout for the next piece in the occasional 'Fallout Art' series.

Still mulling over the major Mark Rothko exhibition I saw in Rome last year, and sitting down to a delicious mini-smorgasbord of spicy treats at Albannach on Trafalgar Square, my keen collector's eye seized upon the dipping sauces that were set down with my snacks.

This lost piece by Rothko, entitled 'Sweet Chilli, Tamarind #1', can now be seen on the walls of the Fallout Turbine Hall and is currently valued at $18,000,000. It comes with tiger prawn tempura, smoked haddock croquettes and mini haggis bhajis.

The price has increased considerably since Rothko said: "Look, it's my misery that I have to paint this kind of painting, it's your misery that you have to love it, and the price of the misery is thirteen hundred and fifty dollars." (Mark Rothko: 'Art/Painting')

One of my favourite shops in the world: Grant and Cutler, the foreign language bookseller, is just up the road from the Soho Screening Rooms where I watched many of the new releases last week. I couldn't resist nipping in there between films to denude my bank account further.

The shop is heaven for anyone fetishistic of delicious grammar books and stylish foreign imprints or looking for that Arabic or Hebrew Scrabble set. I rarely leave their tightly packed Italian shelves without having collected an expensive armful of guides, grammars and romanzi.

The last time I went, I noticed that the new edition of 'The Big Green Book of Italian Verbs' had a CD Rom of interactive exercises attached. Oh boy, this is the kind of thing that gets me really excited, so I decided to donate my old copy to a fellow Italophile and buy the shiny new version (along with three or four other items, naturally).

Later that day I loaded the CD into my laptop and almost fell off my chair when this chap in the picture (American actor Patrick Fischler) materialised, like Spock beaming back on board, to welcome me to the programme.

Do you recognise him? Fans of David Lynch's 'Mulholland Dr.' will know him as the strange and terrified man in Winkie's on Sunset Blvd, telling his therapist or psychiatrist about the dream he had about that particular branch of Winkie's. According to imdb.com, the character's name is Dan.

The scene is intensely unsettling: the camera hovers with the free-floating dreadfulness that Lynch has made his own and Patrick's performance is so mannered yet convincing that the whole thing draws you into an unexpected bubble of tension, fear and nervous comedy.

As a fan of odd prepositional usage (see 'off of' and 'out of' in Mr Barratt Close...), I love Dan's use of the US English version of 'behind', which is, as you know, "in back of". Let's revisit the scene:  

Dan: I just wanted to come here.
Herb: To Winkie's?
Dan: This Winkie's.
Herb: Okay, why this Winkie's?
Dan: It's kind of embarrassing.
Herb: Go ahead.
Dan: I had a dream about this place.
Herb: Oh, boy.
Dan: See what I mean?
Herb: Okay, so you had a dream about this place. Tell me.
Dan: Well, it's the second one I've had, but they're both the same. They start out that I'm in here, but it's not day or night. It's kind of half-night, you know? But it looks just like this, except for the light. And I'm scared like I can't tell you. Of all people, you're standing right over there, by that counter. You're in both dreams and you're scared. I get even more frightened when I see how afraid you are and then I realize what it is. There's a man...in back of this place. He's the one who's doing it. I can see him through the wall. I can see his face. I hope that I never see that face, ever, outside of a dream.

[He looks down and shakes his head again, clearly terrified of the memory, and sniffs, as though close to tears]

Dan: [Herb cocks his head, waiting for more. The music becomes increasingly ominous] That's it.
Herb: So, you came to see if he's out there.
Dan: [leans in] To get rid of this godawful feeling.

To see what happens when they go in back of Winkie's to find the man who's doing 'it', watch the terrifying conclusion to Dan's Dream on Youtube. It's interesting to note that the 'man' they find out there behind the dumpster is actually a woman: the incredibly striking actress Bonnie Aarons.

So now, when I want to practise conjugating the passato remoto, condizionale or congiuntivo imperfetto, I have the terrified Dan as my companion. You can see him here, complimenting me on getting 5/5 questions correct. Go me! It's a godawful feeling when I get fewer than 3 out of 5; I hope I never get scores that low, ever, outside of a dream.

The small question mark icon in bottom left of this screen summons Dan/Patrick from his digital lair and each time I come across a different style of question, I call him up. He takes one step forward, kind of twitches his left arm, raises his right arm, waves vaguely towards the list of options or questions, and talks me through the exercise.

The things that 'character actors' have to do for extra money...but I'm very happy to have the marvellous Patrick Fischler at my beck and call. To check out more of his work, visit his link on imdb.com. Now if I could only find the software whose Help system is presented by Naomi Watts...

Following on from In Which I Pretend to be a Film Critic, I can now reveal the ten new releases I watched for Radio 4's Film Programme and I'm going to give them ratings out of 10.

My favourite of the ten by far was the new Irish tragicomedy, 'Garage', which is wonderfully written and filmed and revolves around a brilliant performance by renowned Irish comedian Pat Shortt.

Because of one brief shot of the cover of a certain video, the film has been given a wildly over-cautious 18 certificate, which it by no means deserves. 

These are the films I saw:

• Black & White (Dir. Subhash Ghai, 2008)—6/10
• Diary of the Dead (Dir. George A. Romero, 2007)—7/10
• Fade to Black (Dir. Oliver Parker, 2006)—6/10
• Four Minutes (Dir. Chris Kraus, 2006)—6/10
• Garage (Dir. Lenny Abrahamson, 2008)—9/10
• Son of Man (Dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2006)—8/10
• The Game Plan (Dir. Andy Fickman, 2007)—3/10
• The Other Boleyn Girl (Dir. Justin Chadwick, 2008)—5/10
• Vantage Point (Dir. Pete Travis, 2008)—4/10
• We Are Together (Dir. Paul Taylor, 2006)—8/10

My job was to condense these 10 films into a 60-second poem and here's the result. I've inserted hyperlinks to imdb.com (and one Bollywood film site), so that you can see which lines or phrases refer to which particular films. If you like, you can still hear me reading the poem on the Film Programme's website.

 
Cinema Purgatorio
When the serpent switched to talkies and proffered the fruit,
Eve might have said, “Sure, I’m not that pushed on apples.”

Free from The Fall, we’d have no regrets and no need
for flashbacks to fill in the blanks of our stint, for example,

with the SS, or to fret over presidents, kings and heirs, and little point
bedding or beheading either one of the dull Boleyn girls.

But it’s writ in the sacred Book of Mckee
that we hound our hero to the top of a tree

and stone him once there; maybe send up a bear.
So we’re stuck with assassins and plotters

and life-changing visits from cute, unknown daughters.
And for each dusty Lazarus raised,

a Winnebago of Romero’s desperados
who’ll bury a bullet or spade in his brain. And the orphanage must burn.

But fortunes can turn and I’ve seen how a well-placed Bollywood number
can alter the heart of a suicide bomber.

Well, it’s all for the craic, grab your notes and press pack,
let the phantoms parade and then fade to black.

You sometimes get interesting results from a fairly low-tech, tiny-lensed, phone camera. I often walk from the BFI's extremely popular Um Bongo Bar up the river, across the Millennium Bridge and on to Bank tube. St. Paul's at night is a dependably wonderful sight and yesterday the reflections in the Salvation Army HQ were intriguing enough for me to snap this on the hoof.

Well, I did post a cement mixer for Christmas, so maybe this can be my concession to Easter, since it's just around the corner?