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Ha, how soopa do the kitchen tiles look? They look farging soopa! Never mind they still need to be grouted n' stuff, I care not. This is the first time I've actually seen something going in, as opposed to being ripped out. The boys are tromping along at a furious pace. I'm trying not worry about the fact that my chief builder and leader of the whole Bulgar invasion has gone on a five day piss- up in Morocco with ten of his mates. 'Beer is 30p, water is 30p, who would drink water, hahahaahaha!' Let's just hope he comes back. Master plaster mysteriously dropped a day, but he's back in full effect and will hopefully finish all the rooms by the end of the week. Loved One has been on leave and has worked like a trojan to paint the front room single handed, the woman is a saint etc. We've now shelled out for a roof refurbishment and two velux windows in the loft along with foam insulation, so the music room is a lot closer to completion than expected. The fact that we will be paying it off for the next ten yers is neither here nor there, I larf in the face of ludicrous outlays of money left right and centre. I larf like this haahahahahahahahahahahahahhaahahaahahahahahahaha. Ha.
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Right, this is all getting a tad repetitive but there you go. The chimney breast in the en suite has been boarded up and awaits a supporting bracket. There is now a mountain o' shite piled up in the front garden, but for half the price of a weeny skip, you can have a mountain o' shite van come round and drag it all away in one shot; if you don't mind destroying your front garden. Doors have now been bashed through to the en suite and what will be our walk-in wardrobe on the right. The reception has been completely stripped now of wood chip and awaits God's Plasterer (TM). This individual is held in awe by the rest of the Bulgars, 'He is machine' they say, 'No breakfast, just cigarettes and go.' We witness this for ourselves, as, in the space of the first ten minutes of our arrival, he's plastered the chimney breast in the kitchen and both sides of the stud wall in the utility. The reception awaits his machinations, as does the en suite and the main bedroom. Two weeks before we move in, the crew shrug their shoulders nonchalantly and say 'No problem.' We shall see.
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Not sure how cathartic posting these pictures is actually going to be, but at least we can see progression of sorts. Here we have the gutted utility room and brutalized kitchen chimney breast. Loved One and I attempted some DIY this weekend, but were stunned into inertia by the enormity of it all. That and the enormous outlay for tiles and carpeting; in the inimitable words of Green Day 'It all keeps adding up\ I think I'm cracking up'. Soon we hope to have a sense of how it will all look in the end, but right now it's a vast builder's crack, from which no light is shining.
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'Hey, that boat's like, burning and stuff.' No you stoner eedjit, it's covered in wee mirrors and driving my camera insane. Big Chill on Saturday evening is filled with extremely monged people. Weavers, staggerers, fallers over; essentially, as one individual put it 'We're all twatted!' I shall wax lyrical on this event tomorrow, as right now I'm feeling the effects of minimal sleep in a shitty half-man tent and maximal intake of alcohol and its close compatriots. In the meantime, here is a link to more pictures.
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Young Zach, gazing out the window at the sky, lost in information overload. Thanks very much to Mum and Dad for a delicious piece of lamb, a cheeky chianti, and very nice dessert wine to push us into oblivion.
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They describe it as a banksy backlash, but really it's just a fun way to infiltrate the common consciousness without coming on all heavy about art. The Grand Tour has dotted prints of classic works of art around Soho and the West End, for the man in the street to admire or ignore as they see fit. You can go on a tour of all the prints and submit your pics to their flickr site, specifically set up for roaming photographers to upload their snaps to. had I known this beforehand I would have made more effort with the picture. Ah well, they can't all be gems, anyway, it's about the art maaaannn. Cool thing about Van Eyck's classic seen here, is that he wrote 'VanEyck woz here' above the mirror on the back wall in which his own reflection can seen, hard at work behind his easel. He like totally invented graffiti, eat that banksy!
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Captured from a distance with the old camera phone while security wasn't watching, Eddie Izzard about to take flight on yet another elaborate tangent. I love this man. I love this style of comedy. So what if there was old material cropping up, I don't care. He can do it all again, over and over, it bothers me not. Jam, Darwin, flies, Nuns, wasps, chickens, Mohammad, French, German, God, intelligent design and the Romans. The man's a genius. It's good to see him on stage where he belongs. Not poncing about with Clooney n' co, not doing a bad American accent. Not on screen. Film is not this man's medium, I wish he'd just accept it and come back home to the London that loves him.
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Any lingering desire to attend Glastonbury and its inevitable mud-bath has been firmly quashed by the relentless deluge which accompanied our sojourn to Hyde Park to see veteran rockers Aerosmith. With Loved One and Rocker/Rockette in tow, we establish ourselves in our traditional spot in front of the sound desk, and settle in for the evening. In order to insure we didn't lose anyone from our party we built a lager, er, laager around ourselves, which lasted about a minute before it was trampled carelessly into the mire by myself. Undaunted, we bought another forty pints and prepared ourselves for former Soundgarden front man, Chris Cornell, to ponce about on stage. Since mowing off his locks and starting up Audioslave with the former Rage against the Machine crew, Cornell has lost it IMHO. The nadir of his career being, as any fule kno, the utterly wet Bond theme, for which he should be brutally coshed. I, however, am man enough to overlook this descent into naffdom, especially as he does a smokin' rendition of 'Jesus Christ Pose' - my all time favourite Soundgarden choon. Temporarily placated, I went on the first of many grueling journeys to the portaloos to download urine. There will be a nobel prize for the first person who perfects festival ablutions, but probably not in this century. I opt for the cover of the trees and irrigate an oak in the company of an extremely inebriated man, who appeared to be weeping while he wee'd. Asking no questions I waded back to base, tramping on endless feet and receiving hearty abuse from all and sundry. I return in time for Jet to come on and ask me whether I'm going to be their girl, which I have to politely decline. These Aussie boys do good and the crowd are well primed for a hard n' heavy dose of the 'Smith. We've been joined by T n' E who've miraculously found us in the human storm and look both fresh, dry and sober in comparison to our sodden, sozzled selves.
So on to the main course and here is Steve Tyler in a fetching 10 gallon hat and traditional mike scarf, belting out the classics like he'd never taken every drug in creation and drank most of the Jack Daniels in America. These ancient rock gods must have some truly unique DNA to allow them to recover from a life of debauchery sufficiently enough to be able to do it one mo' time for the fans. I'm hoping to osmotically absorb some of this magic elixir, as I feel a monumental hangover may be in the offing. Rocker has taken on the wild eyed mentalist look I know and love and abandons us suddenly to go off in search of rockette; that's the last we see of them then. This us unfortunate, because 'Walk this way' is brilliant to hear, as are all the old faithfuls, and Joe Perry lashes his machine with his usual lascivious intensity (You can just make him out, leaning back on the drum stacks above.) Hell, it even looks like Gerard Depardieu has joined the band, tho we may be mistaken. My trendy jacket has confirmed that the term 'shower proof' means exactly that and not a drop heavier, and I seem to have inherited Rockette's leather stockman's hat. Praise the Lord for sober friends with a car, as we inch towards Hyde Park Corner and the sanctuary of a Mini Cooper. Thanks for making it out there kids and even more thanks for getting us home. Now, has anyone heard from Rocker?B
Ah yes, those photo shop filters never cease to amuse. This is mostly to disguise the starry look in Loved One's eye and the flushed skin of Billsworth. A trip to Manchester inevitably involves the odd drink, and Saturday night was no exception. Rather than ease our way into the afternoon with a genteel glass of chenin blanc and polite banter, a keg of Dethmuller was cracked open and plonked down next to some jugs of Sangria. As I'd already opened a Magners, I was mildly concerned that we may have been leaping into proceedings with unnecessary enthusiasm. Come 7 o'clock, we'd polished all that off and were violating the odd bottle of red. Come 8, we seemed to suddenly be on Brandy Sours. Come 9 I recall Disarrano and Christ preserve us, was that tequila? Come ten, an element of nudity is creeping in, nipples are being flashed and there is random falling over. Come eleven, we are discordantly abusing the Rocky Horror back catalogue and the jaunty labrador pup has turned into some crazed hellhound, all glowing eyeballs and salivating jaws, or was that just me in the bathroom mirror? Come twelve and I appear to be back on the Magners, and the last taco shell is dribbling into Loved One's hair from her brother's mouth. I'm hoping by 1 we'd gone to bed, please let it be so.
Ah well, at least we scored a bargain on a sofa thanks to Grand-ma-age, hopefully one day soon we'll have a house to put it in.
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For more evidence visit flickr
Having never actually been to Wimbledon Common despite setting off there with great intent on a number of occasions, I was pleasantly surprised. There are a number of fairytale forests you can disappear into and not see a soul for hours, apart from random joggers and the odd slavering Labrador. Juju and Chatsie had provided a hearty chicken for us to gorge on and a fine selection of tarts to appease our sugar cravings. The children disappeared into the primordial bracken from time to time for a game of not really hide and please seek me a bit quicker thanks. The sludge infested pond revealed all manner of exciting bugs and gelatinous plant life for study, and many minute frogs fled for their lives as small fingers scrambled after them. Altogether a very pleasant day and one which I would prefer to blog about rather than the house hunting farging nightmare we seem to be embroiled in yet again. I'll leave it at then shall I?
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The fiendish look of concentration, the pursed lips, the hurtling chunk of metal, it can only be the Boule d'Or. Once again we gathered in Cleaver Sq, to chuck over-sized goons at a small wooden pig/ball. Once again we were horribly trounced by practically everyone. I'm not sure what it is about our boule skills. We seem perfectly adept, yet still we find ourselves suckling the proverbial hind tit. I would like to lay blame at the sandaled feet of Au Savage and the Bernmiester, but sadly I am equally at fault. We just literally and metaphorically, drop the boule, but nowhere near that tedious little pig. Still, it was a very pleasant day, the Oranjeboom flowed free and we were united in our despondency. In the coming year, we should really entertain the thought of actually practicing a bit, rather than waiting for the next d'Or to come around before raising our wrists. Crazy talk I know, but we want to win that cake and those marzipan boules, God I could almost taste them!
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Question marks hover over the Wighnomy Brothers' heads as both my camera and the crowd ask 'where are all the tunes?' DJ Koze came no closer to answering this question, having forgotten to pack any himself in that mad rush for the airport. Electric Cabaret put on an ok party, big warehouse, dire portaloos etc, tho £4 beers demand five star entertainment and that was sorely lacking. The crowd were edgy and largely unimpressed with the constant 'kill the beat, bring back the beat' school of not really dj'ing at all. When the two teddies eventually made it to the decks, they spent the first twenty minutes wallowing in atmospheric excrement they appeared to be extracting from each other's vast rumps. Had this poo'dling resulted in some cataclysmic break down which promptly booted the lethargic lysergics into a higher gear, we'd have instantly forgiven them, but noooooo. Almost as an afterthought a dull thud crawled out of the bass bins and lay dying on the floor at our feet. We thought perhaps any beat would be a good beat at this stage, but the plodding doof of manure rhythmically plopping to the ground beneath the decks, sounded the death knell for our evening and we headed South.
I'm a miserable clubber at the best of times. I have a magnetic attraction to elbows and glowing cigarette butts and loathe the constant jostling and jabbing that inevitably sends one or other of these items into my eyeball. A particularly insolent crew of Spanish chica midgets chose to surround us on this occasion and jabber incessantly into their phones whilst wielding their marlboros like carcinogenic light sabres in our faces. Is it wrong to want to batter a Spanish chica midget to death with its own phone? I think not.
Praise be to the N35 which carried us back to Tunetopia, a red room jammed with delights and an upstairs neighbour having his own party, it doesn't get better than this. Yet again, we are forced to ask ourselves, why do we ever go out?
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Renowned South African artist Diane Victor is featuring an exhibition of work in tandem with a group of other SA artists at the Cork St Gallery. The pictures that make up the series 'recent dead' capture the faces of people 'snuffed out' as it were by HIV. I don't use this term flippantly as the images themselves have literally been coaxed out of the smoky impressions left by candle smut on paper. The technique creates works so fragile the slightest bump can reduce them to dust, their innate vulnerability echoing the flimsy substance of human existence etc etc. The artist continued this theme with a series of pictures of missing children, drawn from photos found in old police reports and family albums, forlorn portraits of the lost and forgotten. Naturally I've bought a whole bunch of 'em to lighten up the front living room of my new house, wayhey! That's just it really, noble and powerful and meaningful and brilliantly executed though these pictures are, you don't really want a row of ghosts staring down at you while you're watching 'any dream will do.' Must I feel bad for not purchasing 'worthy' art? At £900 a pop I feel nowt, but if you got the cash and the conscience, pick up one of these today, they'll go great above the mantelpiece next to your bowling trophy.
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Nothing like the management of your gig venue coming over all warm and fuzzy. Well, let it be said, last night's sounds were anything but bland, boring or monotonous. Dark, furious and f**king loud, but definitely not bland. The hen night in the corner were possibly expecting a few Al Green classics, maybe that nice Beyonce and Shakira track. They moved downstairs smartish as the lo-end shattered their eardrums and left brain matter all over the nice wooden floors. That seemed to do it for punter activity, the rest of the night was spent entertaining the five odd people brave enough to return upstairs. On reflection, this is perhaps not the ideal location for journeys into experimental sound. Ah well, t'was worth a try.
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Only Tortured Artist could get away with sporting a cardie of such epic cheese as this. The fly fishing theme is carried through to the front, with an elegant wooden rod curving artfully over the left breast. It being his birthday n' all, I was willing to rise above this pret-a-poisson moment in the interests of being a good sport. We could have lingered endlessly in Soho with the b'day boy, but Loved One and I had a prior engagement with Captain Eager and the Mark of Voth.
Yes, sadly it was as shite as it sounds. Potentially a good idea homaging/pastiching the old Dan Dare comics but while the clunky set vaguely amused, the clunky script failed dismally on many levels. Despite the welcome presence of Green Wing alumni Tamsin Grieg and Mark Heap, the emaciated joke starved to death in front of us. The screams of larffter from the crew and cast in the front row, gave you the impression you were sitting in on someone's hilarious family video of that wacky themed Christmas they all had in a cottage in Cumbria. Still, it's not often you attend a world premiere of a film where the director stands in front of you with a guitar and sings a little ditty to introduce his opus. I'd like to see Michael Bay introduce Transformers with a few choice licks from a ukulele, now that would be entertaining.
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And so it came to pass that the local authority in Bethnal Green deemed the W.S.Bartlett building the perfect place to erect cheap student accommodation. That a thriving gallery space had existed there for the last year was of no consequence to them, down it must come. Thus, we gathered for the last time on that blustery rooftop, to pay homage to Tortured Artist and his crew and see the old place off with a somber little gathering, quiet contemplation and birdsong.
Ha, fat chance, instead we have a fuckwackdoodly balls-to-the-wall Hooliebashjam-athon. (a party so big, it requires new words to describe it) Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of art going on too. Dunebug did the installation you see above involving a caravan of clay boxes being dragged through various holes and some cathartic hammering. TA did some of his distinctive daubing and profound doodles. A lot of insects gave up their limbs in the name of fashion jewelery. Art was definitely there, but so was everyone else. By 2a.m the place was seething and the Bastard Sons of Bass had already been on the decks for 3 hours. Much to the relief of the crowd, we'd taken over from the noisecore four piece 'band' who'd punished everyone beforehand with a diabolical cacophony that couldn't even hide behind the term avant-garde it was so shite. We banged it out to the very limit of both our tune collection and our bladder capacity. With a distinct lack of ablution in the place, the men were forced to take measures, ahem, into their own hands and pee off the roof into the alley below. I'm not wild about such fetid behavior, but desperate times etc, and anyway, the whole place is being demolished next week which is the kind of giant pisser you just can't top.
Hopefully the legacy of Bartlett will live on, perhaps to be reincarnated elsewhere, we can only but hope.
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Ha, how soopa do the kitchen tiles look? They look farging soopa! Never mind they still need to be grouted n' stuff, I care not. This is the first time I've actually seen something going in, as opposed to being ripped out. The boys are tromping along at a furious pace. I'm trying not worry about the fact that my chief builder and leader of the whole Bulgar invasion has gone on a five day piss- up in Morocco with ten of his mates. 'Beer is 30p, water is 30p, who would drink water, hahahaahaha!' Let's just hope he comes back. Master plaster mysteriously dropped a day, but he's back in full effect and will hopefully finish all the rooms by the end of the week. Loved One has been on leave and has worked like a trojan to paint the front room single handed, the woman is a saint etc. We've now shelled out for a roof refurbishment and two velux windows in the loft along with foam insulation, so the music room is a lot closer to completion than expected. The fact that we will be paying it off for the next ten yers is neither here nor there, I larf in the face of ludicrous outlays of money left right and centre. I larf like this haahahahahahahahahahahahahhaahahaahahahahahahaha. Ha.
