Crackpot

So the final day of raku summer school was all about the firing. We did about 5 firings. Stack the pots in, heat it up to 1040ish, open the kiln, take out the red hot pots, put them in a dustbin and fill it up with sawdust. All very exciting, lots of fire and smoke.

Sadly all my pots came out with cracks in. Some of them were structrually unsound (and are now crock waiting for plants needing new pots). Others of them are just about ok to look at but useless for anything else.

The Kiss

He's clasping her to him in a long embrace, pressing his lips onto hers with enough vigour to tip her backwards, one foot off the floor, back arching. After they stand sheepishly chewing gum, looking opposite directions down the road, as if it never happened.

A short play about filing, or laughing

Set: Bibliographic Services Department, open plan office.

An envelope with hand-written address is lying on the floor by the bin. It has a strip of celotape along its length, with loose ends that have stuck and got crumpled up.

EW: Is that yours, Harriet?
Harriet: er, yes
EW, concerned: What is it, a letter?
H: Yes, (joking) I was just filing it there
EW: Really??
H picks up the envelope, opens it, shows the contents: Its empty!
EW: laughs
H: I find the floor is a good place for filing papers
MA: yes me too, but I don't normally celotape them down
H: Oh I think sticking them down is really effective - you can vaccum round and they don't move out of place [laughing]
Harriet's mobile phone rings and is answered during the last sentence.
Boyfiend: Who are laughing with, girl?
H whispering: its the library staff [laughing uncontrollably] there's this letter... stuck to the floor...filing....
B, annoyed: I can't understand what you're telling me...
H: but but....its a letter with celoptape....[weeping with laughter]
B: call me back when you get control of yourself. Click.


Perhaps you had to be there.

Hair raising

There's a tall man standing directly under a ventilation shaft on the tube carriage - the front end section, midway between the seats. The air is being sucked out of the carriage through it. His hair is being lifted up and the ends disappear into the shaft. He keeps patting it back down to no avail. It makes me laugh. All messed up and not even at work yet.

Two crap jokes walked into a pub...

How much do chavs pay for shampoo?
Pan ten (think of it in a cockney accent)

Two parrots sitting on a perch. One says to the other, "can you smell fish?"

These kind of crap jokes make me laugh. I'm sad, I know.

Lunch

An owner tries to coax her morbidly obese dog to walk home. He's a fat black labrador whose back legs are struggling to hold himself up.

The man at the next door table asks, "what would make you happier, babe?" into his mobile phone. Its the start of one of those conversations where he's full of ideas to solve your problems (ring friends up and suggest things you want to do, make an effort with them, be enthusiastic) and then hits her with the you're-not-very-good-at-being-proactive criticism.

I'm imaginging a snivelling wreck of a woman on the other end, snotty from crying incontrollably with long blond hair. "You have to use your brain to think up ideas that you want to do, rather than just tagging along," he continues.

The fat dog has managed to get half a block.

"What's different between them and you?" She must be having one of those what's-wrong-with-me, everybody else is so lucky, victim whines. "What'll it be like for me when we go to Brazil and I have no friends or family around?" She is suddenly no longer blond but instead a firey brunette.

Fat dog has gone round the corner.

He's moved into motivating mode - trying to get her to do something, go out, look at architecture, do some drawing, get excited. "Can you see I'm trying to help and love you?"

Barf.

Ceramics Summer School

I've been at ceramics summer school for the last two days. It completes on friday week when, fingers crossed for fine weather, we will be firing them in the raku kiln. Its great to go to an arts class for two solid days. Helps you to actually get through quite a lot more than 4 weeks of regular class.




I tried to use a variety of clays (porcelain, stoneware and delta - a slightly pinkish clay). These are strenghtened by addition of grog or in the case of porcelain I put in malacite sand - this helps the clay deal with the thermal shock it will go through during the raku firing process. I also tried to make different shapes. Limited to 30cms high. Between now and next friday they have to be biscuit fired ready for glazing before being raku fired.

Orphan

Bails' father died last week. He had been living in a nursing home for some time after becoming unable to look after himself and needing special care due to having a form of parkinson's disease. He was very frail. She's up in Hull helping his widow (his second wife) deal with the arrangments.

Somehow, however old you are and however regularly (or not) you see your parents, the loss of the last surviving one leaves you feeling like an orphan. My dad said the same when his mother died - he was in his late 60s or early 70s (for some reason I can't remember exactly when nanny died). Something about that person just not being on the planet anymore has a psychological impact on your sense of... not sure whether its security exactly or maybe it is.

Anyway, my thoughts are with Bails, its a busy time, after death, with little time for your own emotions (focus on other people - making sure everyone knows, making arrangments etc).

Recycling

In the supermarket carpark 2 men use metal hooks to grab clothes out of the recycling bins. A third man folds them up neatly and stacks them to take away. Stack after stack.

Surprised

A woman is well turned out. Fresh for a new day. Eyebrows painted on in a perma-surprised arch that finishes some way above the plucked bald brow line. These brows close the gap between brow and hairline, shrinking the already low forehead. Why do women do this?

Eyebrows - a particular obsession of mine.

Man opposite has narrow bushy-in-the-middle ones. Man next to him has fledgling wild ones (I expect his father has big bushy out of control ones that grow long). Behind them a man with a strangely condescending face in repose with one eyebrow higher than the other and slightly handing eyelids. On the other side a woman with natural blond arches and a likely-historic use of powder blue eyeshadow.

Angry flip flops

From the other end of the platform I become aware of an aggressive sounding slap of plastic shoe against foot as a woman storms up towards the train indicator with determination. Angry flip flops I think. How can it be possible to tell the anger from the sound? I glance at her, her face is contorted by a frown. Angry.

The train approaches, we get on. I read the paper - its full of David no-policies Cameron. My inner ticker-tape (I'm on a management course - its full of lingo, I'm studying resilience, hearing your inner ticker-tape is the path to improving your resilience - am I sounding indoctrinated yet?) is thinking about what makes me frustrated and angry. I don't think it usually manifests itself in my shoes.

Get off the train at Moorgate. Angry flip flops are already slapping loudly along the platform towards the escalator. I follow them down to the Northern Line. Is four minutes to the next train. Suddenly they become quiet flip flops as the woman slows down.

Cooking

Before this I had basically used the same cooker for 36 years (not that I actually did the cooking during all that time - they didn't let me start cooking until I was at least 7, even though they taught me how to make a cup of tea at 5 so I would let them sleep in). In the last 6 or so years the oven on said cooker had broken and the temperature was hard to control. But you get used to it anyway.

New kitchen. New cooker. Its oven is fan assisted. I can't get anything right in it. It cooks way too fast. Things crisp over on top before the middle it done. Perhaps it'll take another few years to get used to it. Until then everything will be overcooked but underdone.

Hot July Rain

Hot rain falls. People huddle under the canopy of shops, in bus shelters or doorways. A squash faced old man gurning unintentionally stands on the doorstep of a closed pub. To russians under a tree in shorts and vests look down at their sodden trainers and laugh. Everybody piles onto the bus - buggies crammed on, familes crowding round to check the babies are content. Traffic is slow. We inch forward, rain streaming down the windows, hot air stifling inside. The man in front of me is exuding a smell of damp tweed mingled wiht stale tobacco. Its a relief to reach my stop, emerging into the pouring rain. My umbrella is big but the rain overcomes my sandles and splashes on my legs.

Handle Etiquette

Crowded tubes. Everybody needs to hold on. While holding on there are some difficult handle-politics to master in order to overcome those awkward moments when stranger's hands touch (not in a good way).

1. Try not to lean on the vertical handrails - it's uncomfotable for short people to dangle off the overhead bar, if they can even reach it, and annoying if they rely on bodies around them to hold them up.
2. When holding the handle don't let your hand slip down - it may land on someone else's - acute embarrassment.
3. Choose a place on the pole when you first get on and stick to it. If you shift position while someone else takes an opportunity to turn the page, you risk them grabbing your hand when they reach back for their spot - acute embarrassment again.
4. Order of hands on the pole should go in height order to promote maximum comfort for each holder-on.

DIY

Sometimes I have a plan of something I want to do. It generally takes me several weeks to work up the courage to tackle it. Sometimes it still goes wrong. Sometimes it goes wrong even when its simply a matter of drilling a few holes in the wall. How come drilling holes in the wall is fraught with difficulties? I suspect my drill isn't good enough. Or the walls are extremely hard. They definitely are harder in some places than others. On my current list of things to put up I have: shelves (in the bedroom and hall cupboard), mirror (x2), hooks for african masks (wall here is too hard to hammer a nail into without it bending and bits of plaster dropping off the wall - there's got to be a knack to it), CD racks, curtain rail. So many tasks, so much courage to be found!

Tottenham Folks

It was easily 26 degrees outside. Warm enough to dispense withe the recent 20 degree outfits (tights, jacket) and head to the supermarket with bare legs and sandals. Outside the bus a man purposefully strolled along Tottenham High Road in a sleeveless bodywarmer (nothing underneath) and a woolly hat. On the bus a woman with really long fingernails struggled to open a packet of muffs for her headphones. Once open she struggled to get one out and stretch it over the ear-piece. Wearing long fingernails sort of handicaps you - your dexterity is hindered. Is this a statement about you not needing to work?

Blink and you miss it

A week has gone by. I've not had time to construct a post. Last weekend I had to travel up to Coventry for a training course that took up all of Monday and Tuesday. Fast forward to senior management (trying to decide if this is the way forward or not really). Lots of tests and discussions and posturing for position and trying to figure out who's useful or most like selves. Sometimes these things can be a nightmare. Its like my first MA class - people do a lot to present themselves as they want to be viewed. Takes a bit of time to get beyond that to the real them. It rained all the time in Coventry. I ended up with terrible cabin fever and eventually had to walk around the pond in the rain (and have subsequently developed a good old cough!).

Back from Coventry there were maternity leaving parties (not exactly a baby-shower, since we didn't individually bring gifts) and tender openings that took up muchos time.

Ceramics class came to and end - a year down. A YEAR. Can't believe it.



I went there with the intension of making a bird bath. Finally on the last week I think I may know what I want it to look like - the test piece came out much better than I expected after I glazed it. So I'll have to go back next autumn to actually make it!

Today I'm mostly cutting the grass and thinking that lavender looks very nice with coriander (I let it flower, I know you're not supposed to, but its lovely like that - I think I might grow it in the beds next year).

Next door's dog is whining pitifully because he is lonely. The people in the house next to him are rowing. Their neighbours are playing reggae music. The blackbirds must have babies - they are collecting bits out of the bushes and worms. I'm suddenly feeling a bit suburban. Tottenham isn't as edgy as you might think!

Book List

Sometimes I read alot, other times I read nothing. Recently I've been reading a lot. Brought on by being away and returning to the long and dreaded commute. It's only saving grace is the time it provides to lose myself in a book.

Tracey Chevalier, Falling Angels. Very much liked Girl with a Pearl Earring. Enjoyed this too but not as much. Interesting because it is written from the first person from all the major characters in the book. Viewpoints of the story.

Elsa Schiaparelli, Shocking Life: the autotbiorgraphy of Elsa Schiaparelli. Birthday present from SH who went to the Surrealist Exhibition before coming to my party. Schiaparelli writes in a mixture of 1st person and 3rd person. Doesn't concern itself with dates and analysis, more a flavour of life.

Manju Kapur, Home. Wished I had read this when on holiday in India. Gives a good sense of the country and Delhi and a woman's family life there.

Rachel Cusk, Arlington Park. On the back is a quote by James Lasdun of the Guardian, "a gripping, at times funny, often rather beautiful book". This is not an 'at times funny' book. This is a depressing hate-filled book of unfulfilled women who hate their partners. It is relentless in its gloom and a chore to read.

Jane Harris, The Observations. Liked it, a bit too much speed towards the end.

Isabel Allende, Portrait in Sepia. Passionate, engaging.

Lynette Wallworth @ BFI

We went for a meeting yesterday to see what the BFI has to offer (great access to clips of British cinema and television). They have an exhibition called Hold: Vessel 2, 2007 by Lynette Wallworth. You take a white bowl and enter a dark corridor where 4 light beams fall to the floor. Hold the white bowl under the light and suddenly your bowl is full microbes, then fish, then stars. Reminiscient of watching rockpools and playing in streams with those nets on bamboo poles.

Fleeting moment

In the back of a black cab speeding along Kingsland Road a middle-aged man's head is pressing facedown into a corner. As it goes by and pulls away I see a woman's hand clinging to the seat back. Two people in a long embrace lying on the backseat of a cab. Taxi driver no doubt casting furtive looks in his rear view mirror (rushing to get to the destination before it goes any further).

Public Transport

Today was a day of transport woes. Started with a morning bus ride. Nice to start the day gently, reading, as the bus negotiates the empty bus lanes. Sadly we were stalled behind a jack knifed lorry next to Hatton Gardens. The only way to rescue the commute and arrive at the meeting on time was to jump in a cab for £8.

On the way home, I waited for a bus to take me to ceramics class for 45 minutes. By which point I had 15 minutes to get there. Had to beg the bus drive to let us on when he finally arrived - he thought he was full, actually it was the fact that people hadn't moved down inside. So being late by the time I arrived at Elephant and Castle I rushed down onto the tube and found that the next train was due in 8 minutes. 8 minutes! No way I was getting to class on time.

Towards the end of the class we became aware of something going off outside on Blackstock Road. Two early leavers came back saying it was a riot. On finding a first floor window to look down from it turned out to be Algerian football fans celebrating with fireworks (hand held, spinning off in the street), chanting, singing. The road got cut off. The college evacuated the building and we slipped out the back door.

Southbank Centre

A man with a false nose eats crumbs out of a paper bag bathed in the dim yellow glow inside the Royal Festival Hall. Mostly they are cleaning and packing up around him. Chairs stacked on tables.

The clouds are dark mauve in front of deep ultramarine. Lights dance on the black Thames. The gorms look down from the corners of buildings all around the Hayward Gallery. I discover an easier route to the bus stop, round the back of the gallery. There is an exhibition of sheds on the lower ground. As I get there the bus arrives. The sambuca is rolling around my belly on top of the (too) large Mexican meal. Uncomfortable.

The streets are damp. I like the way damp streets reflect the night. Orange glows and white light. Damp nights are romantic like Renoir. London is more beautiful then.

Work

Kate tried out a couple of spare chairs in the tea room (trying to find an alternative to the executive director's throne she currently uses, that the pregnant lady finds difficult to squeeze past). Nearly fell off with shock when attempting to adjust the back and the seat tipped forward - felt a bit like an ejector seat apparently. Finally managed to find the correct lever for the back but couldn't then get it to fix in any one position. Gave up in the end. We were chatting about Glastonbury (watched it TV) and Shirley Bassey's wellies in particular - DSB in diamonte down the sides (D for Dame). Then heard a little voice from the wireless telephone reciever. Presumably it had accidentally rung someone (trying not to blame the telephone operative here) who was now desperately trying to attract our attention, no doubt driven to distraction by the inane depths the conversation had fallen to. Then Kate told me about the time in Dulwich when she was attempting to buy a slightly broken umbrella. Couldn't find her purse so James Nesbitt who just happened to be standing behind bought it for her. I always thought he was a nice man (more cold feet than Mruphey's Law).

How much online life can one person handle ?

It started with a blog. A presence definitely but gradually building up to interactions with others. Scary at first but soon became habit.

That led to a need for multiple internet-based email accounts. Personal ones, blog ones, tried a couple of providers. It turns out I find it hard to delete myself.

Then there was mobile phone blogging. Had a now-defunct Phlog account that I sent mobile phone pictures to until a combination of factors put paid to it - spam comments piling onto all the pictures and the mobile phone company helpfully adding borders to the pictures that enable email replies but also ruin the straight from phone compatibility. So it sits there but isn't being updated.

Flickr for photos. Useful particularly when blogger stopped allowing access to ftp.

And then people keep sending helpful links to try. Several accounts in existence that I don't use. Including Buzznet and Picasa and others that I forget. More recently its been Facebook - invited to a fellow blogger so I tried it. Almost immediately discovered a real life friend there. Its hard enough keeping up with friends in RL let alone keeping up with a network of virtuals as well. Perhaps its a step too far towards social-networking - it somehow seems too much like hard work. A little too interactive perhaps.

There are the things I do use. Like a not oft-updated Twitter, which I take to be more like old-skool blogging - more one liners, more directing posts at one another and writing about other people's writing. I find it hard to find something clever, witty and fascinating to say several times a day. And an obsession with Celebdaq where I have managed to make £70K in not too long a time - nothing like making money to keep you hooked. Wasn't so pleased this week to find I'd lost £6500. More of a game than an online life.

And finally Second Life. Here is an obsession if ever I found one. A whole virtual world. Full of freaks (well not all of them, some are just porn star wannabes or have tails and horns and wings) to chat to if and when they interact. You can make your avatar be anything and yet the majority look like american celebrities and goths. Spend most of the time there trying to figure out what its all for, collecting freebies, trying to make some cash (not sure why, perhaps it gives one a purpose) and trying to find something to do. Aimless wandering from place to place looking at stuff. Little interaction (honestly it seems easier to avoid it than having to interact with total strangers about some crappy digital art or something, although sometimes it is funny). Something very surface about it - its about looks, and chat up.

And so I think the blog is perhaps the most real - its about something, I can develop a voice that can have some consistency and be bathed in the truth if I chose - real me rather than pretend me. It doesn't require hours of online chatting to be effective or to build connections. Its not real time which helps.

I wonder if we should clean up cyberspace after self - sooner or later it will be clogged with inactive accounts - dead blogs, accounts and virtual lives.

Its been mostly raining

Ceramics Class

Last week we couldn't unload the raku kiln because we ran out of time. This week we got to see the things that were left in. Some of the glazes were amazing but I have decided this is the ugly term. Somehow everything that I make this term has turned out ugly and or weird in some way.



So there's a thing that looks a bit like a bowel or a turd from certain angles, and the sister of Ugly Pot - a wet slab built thing that won't hold water. Still the glazes I tried out returned all manner of results, the difficulty always comes when you think you'd like to do something again.

10 minute exercise this week was based on the instructions issued to makers for Anthony Gormley's field. Make a figure. It has to be hand-sized and easy to hold, have deep eyes and be able to stand unaided. 10 minutes to make as many as possible.

Tower Bridge

On the bridge in a 78 bus when it raised. The street lifted in the middle the double red central lines running up towards the sky. A tall ship with its sails wrapped up passed through and the road closed up again so we could cross.

Man

In the rain under a bush a man holds his drenched thin white shirt away from his body. A crack of thunder and a flash of lightning. Presumably he is modest and doesn't want the wet fabric clinging to his chest hair and nipples.



Men

Late at night, on the way home.

• Red tee-shirt with sparkles
• Patent leather lace-up shoes with drainpipe trousers
• Thick calvin klein elastic showing over the top of dirty jeans
• White pimp shoes
• Big square 70s glasses and Queen's Guard trousers - thick black wool with red stripe down sides, braces
• White cap with black writing AMY across the front
• Hippy dude can't see out of his fringe

Hypothesis: men with open air cars are wankers

NOTE: open air cars (as defined by my sister, aged 8, are ones with soft tops that can be put down in nice weather - she predicted by the age of 18 that I would have a boyfriend who had one - sadly, or maybe luckily if my hypothesis proves to be true, I have yet to meet him).

Evidence:

Blond bouffanty hair, large-stripe shirt with white collar, big shades cruising down Upper Street playing the music ever so slightly loudly. Sporting a big self satisfied smile.

Low slung open top, gold, driven a bit too quickly by a man in a green hoody (hood up), gangsta style, drives the car leaning far over to the side holding the wheel in one hand at the top (like, completely disregarding the 10 to 2 rule).

Coming the other way, man wearing a tight black shirt with pinstripe, sleeves folded up above the elbow, right arm hanging down the outside of the car covered in blue tatts - like sailors ones. Sort of posing in a James Dean-esque manner.

Ceramics Class
Raku

Raku firing is like a kind of alchemy that you see before your very eyes. It satisfies the pyromaniac in you with the edge of danger that fire always presents. I've been looking forward to it all week. And I wasn't the only one at class to feel so.



Pots that have been biscuit fired and glazed are put into a gas fired kiln. The lid is closed and the heating begins. Gets up to 1000C. Inside the kiln (spied through the hole in the top) we watch the pots get red hot, the glaze on them bubbles and becomes like orange peel before gradually becoming completely smooth and very shiny. This is when they are ready. The lid is taken off and the hot pots are transferred into sawdust which sets fire with the heat.

30 minutes later the slightly cooler pots are taken out of the sawdust and sprayed with water which starts to clean off the charring and peels off some of the outer layers. What is revealed is crackling glaze, clay that has turned black, copper glaze that has turned from green to shiny copper or looks like petrol. The ugly pot is transformed. Its not exactly beautiful but is rather amazing - petrolly coloured shiny metallic looking - sort of like the inside of shells. And the cobalt oxide is a vivid shade of blue.

Queueing

KB was telling me about the time she and her husband went into the west end, they saw a long queue of people and figured they must be waiting for something good so joined the end. They waited about half an hour before finding out it was a soup kitchen. She said some of the people lining up were well dressed, so they hadn't realised. I wondered whether they didn't notice people with their bedding under their arms. She said not. I asked whether they stayed for their soup. She said they didn't. I cried laughing. Silently, while the head of libraries had a meeting with the stock services manager at the other end of the room.... Perhaps you had to be there...

Sitting

On a bench in Camberwell Green a woman dressed all in red sits singing, surrounded by long grass that has gone to seed and between lamp posts adorned by hanging baskets dripping with pink flowers. Dog walkers pass behind her on the path giving her sideways looks. Occassionally she stares at them, mostly she sits eyes front, hands folded in her lap.

Commute

I walk the walk, with the short people, the tall people, the people in suits, the people who can wear jeans to work, women in high heels, people in trainers, waddlers, fast walkers and those who drag their feet, with men who bundle people in their rush and those with shoes on with extra long toes.

I stand the stand waiting at the yellow line close to the platform edge. Weight on one foot, or distributed evenly with feet slightly apart. Watching the timer as the minutes tick down. I get on the first train even if it isn't an empty one that's just starting out. I leave others behind who choose to wait for the empty 1 in 3.

I balance the balance with people talking in low voices or louder foreign languages, with people crowded and clinging to poles or dangling from an overhead bar. Bodies pressed awkwardly, bumping, bags digging.

Sometimes when I'm lucky I sit the sit, bouncing along with the other seated, reading the paper comfortably, hiding from those standing around them. Sleeping or reading or deep in thought.

Then we rush the rush at interchanges, where the regulars choose an appropriate place by whichever exit or tunnel required to minimise time spent, or spewing from stations. Tripping over the case draggers and slow steppers and people who cut you up.

Premier

We accidentally found ourselves in the crowd of the premier of the Fantastic Four. 4 podiums of gymnasts in sliver outfits - one hula hooper, one with a long ribbon, one pair balancing the woman over his head.

Lots of saddo celebrity spotters excitedly crammed up against the press enclosures. Minor league Eastender actors, Harvey from So Solid Crew and his sister, and lower division footballers. Girls scream the names of people they want the autographs of. Next to us a group of boys compare their Jessica [Alba] photos and discuss their strategy for getting better ones when they come out.

Every once in a while someone big(ish) signs a lot of autographs and presses the palms of the screaming masses and poses for the occasional picture head to head with the fans until their publicist moves them on with a strong hand to the lower back, directing them to the TV Interviewers.

We saw the one from the Shield who plays the big stone fantastic four character, and the redhead from Harry Potter (desperately in need of a haircut), Reggie from kids TV. As you can tell I'd make a terrible celebrity spotter - I'd make a terrible 3am girl because while I might recognise someone I can rarely put a name to their face. Unless they are really famous.

we left after finishing our ice cream wondering about the lives of these people who spend their time star struck and screaming, desperate to touch the people they watch on TV, as this somehow affirms their own reality.

South London Life

A man with a wild afro, unshaven, walks towards the shopping centre at Elephant and Castle with determination. He's carrying a red shopping bag and wearing a pleated summer print skirt that swings with his strides. Across the road 3 big women on their way to work talking in patois stop to look at him. Laughing. One of them hangs back and takes a sneaky picture on her phone camera.

In the bakers I wonder whether it is ok to wear a totally see-through shirt (albeit baggy with folds of cloth) as long as you are relatively flat chested. The builders behind her in their workboots and high-vis jackets watch her respectfully. She takes her bagel and struts out of there all sking tight jeans, high heeled boots and very see-through white blouse.

A man in a football kit walks along dancing, listening to headphones, his eyes rolled back in his head like a zombie from Shaun of the Dead.

Outside the side door of the office there's a dead baby blackbird. Probably not ready for his first flight. Head frozen up, legs disappeared under him.

On the way home an ambulance attends a man who may have been hit by a car near Dulwich Village. He's in the recovery position, blood all over the back of his head. Further on the journey towards Stockwell police interview both parties of a crash - the car has lost its front bumper and is crushed fairly badly, the post office van is crumpled all along its front and side.

Spontaneity is a dangerous thing

Walking past a hairdressers last night I read the sandwich board outside. "Walk ins available, no appointment necessary". I was overwhelmed by the urge to go in. I was welcomed by a gaggle of hairdressers at a reception desk - straightened, bleached, asymmetric, belts with scissors & combs, pancake makeup and leggings. Told to wait. Clear plastic chairs and old magazines. A smoking hive of activity going on beyond the desk (smoking form from hair dye being applied to an asymmetrical severe fringe). My hairdresser finally came to fetch me with upbeat bubbling enthusiasm. Before I had a chance to think I had agreed to lots off the back, keeping length on the front with layers.

An hour later I left with a very-short-at-the-back and strangely long at the front haircut. Two ringlets coming down either side of my ears (my hair curls more vigorously when shorter) not dissimilar to the Hasidim Jewish boys in Stamford Hill. Its sort of a curly version of an angular bob. Modern, perhaps. Bit silly, definitely.

Woke up this morning unsure of why I did it. Struggling to adjust. At least hair grows.

How to Ruin a Sandwich

I work in a desert. Council buildings surrounded by blocks of flats.

Its saving grace is the oasis of the gardens opposite - recently relandscaped, given those hillocks with trees on and patches of planting that are signatures of modern municipal gardening. They've done lovely things with matching roses - bushes, shruby ones and flat growing antique ones, and droves of lillies.

Outside the room where I work is an alleyway that divides our building from the one stop shop with its roof that looks like it is made out of long strips of gaffer tape. There's a scratch of ground by the side door thats maybe 4 feet by 6 feet full of bark chippings and one dandelion, double yellow lines painted round three sides. Its in a suntrap but they haven't provided a bench.

Our building provides coke-vending and a filtered water machine. Ill served by fetid little shops that cater for the local alcoholics - lots of beer and cheap plonk, pink toilet rolls, biscuits, dried up cakes in celophane and baked beans. And filthy greasy spoons. The closest decent eatery is on Tower Bridge Road - a poncy cafe where a cappucino and small quiche with a frill of lettuce costs £6.50.

Usually I take a trip to the Hair Bakers (so named by people I work with from an incident long before I arrived and passed down in folklore to new colleagues - it took them 3 months to tell me) a couple of times a week. Normally a jacket potato with cheese. Today, a warm one good for sitting in the park, I choose a sandwich. Cheese and salad on a big white roll. All the ingredients were fresh - soft roll, crunchy iceberg lettuce, tomato. But somehow the sandwich was ruined. Something to do with the unimagination used in putting it together, made by a person lacking in tastebuds. Happy to eat bland. Served up something that promised much and delivered little.

Someone could od a roaring trade outside our building with one of those bicycle-drawn coffee shop like they have at Highbury and Islington station. Breakfast coffee and croissants and a decent lunchtime sandwich.

Waiting

I'm waiting for a delivery. Its coming between 6.00-9.00pm. On a Friday night. Strange, but at least I don't have to wait in for it during the day tomorrow which, cross-fingers, looks like it might be a good one. I've mowed the lawn so I don't have to do it tomorrow. And continued my war against the bind weed that has impinged on my garden boundaries - never had bind weed before and its proving to be a sneaky customer. It sends up tiny threadlike tendrils that wrap themselves around other things (roses, grass stems, anything) and grow their delicate seeming heart shaped leaves. Below the soil they have sprouted from thick monster roots that have driven themselves through the soil over great distances sending out tributaries across and down. I've been digging, gently lifting yards and yards of these roots. And still the tiny tendrils appear. One day, one year I hope to eradicate it. Maybe.

Gormley

Strolling through the Southbank yesterday starting spotting the Gormley sculptures standing looking towards the exhibition. Lots of interest on the street and photographers crawling all over the place.





Reviews haven't been good though - Brian Sewell (Standard) and Laura Coming in the Guardian both spoke of his mega-ego, repetativeness and laziness (churning out same old same old).

I think the gorms standing on buildings around the southbank register with public because they are recognisable, and designed to be spotted. People like a little challenge (i.e. they like to feel they have risen to the challenge - so it shouldn't be too hard to get). It reminded me sort of the opening credits of Prisoner where it sort of spun around looking for who was watching you. Popular because of its ability mimic popular culture. The men are all watching the Hayward Gallery (because thats where the exhibition is, stupid). Pointing in the direction you should be going. Boyfiend said they looked like they were about to commit suicide. I haven't yet been to the exhibition but I do quite like his sculptures that are in the public domain - you come across them periodically leaning head to head through a huge plate glass window or leaning on a building's wall in Hoxton. We are surrounded by public art which has little impact on us as we pass in a bus or walk from the tube to a restuaruant. Better these than the old graniose statues of soldiers standing severely on plinths. These are the kinds of objects that you start to have a relationship with just because of familiarity. This is presumably why people campaigned to keep the ones on the Crosby coast - little pieces of everyday art that they like because of their familiarity. They work in situ placed on a human level, unnecessary to be intellectualised or charged with the artist's bullshit in order to be understood. Popular art. Not ever considered good by the establishment but popular with the populace. Perhaps the critics would like it better if he didn't try to put some greater, deeper meaning to it all.

I quite like the men standing on all the buildings, across the river, far and wide. I like them as well as I like the crowd of people in Broadgate, that tricked the boyfriend the first time he saw them (momentarily thought they were real), and the videodrome style floor of one fo the courtyards, or the big steel pod-like thing I see off the number 12 as it comes round the roundabout onto Westminster Bridge (never been close enough to find out who made it or what its called). They make the urban landscape more interesting and lively. But it isn't great art in the sense that you have a real emotional reaction to it.

Flickr photostream of some of the gorms.

Smoke gets in your eyes...

And in your lungs and throat and ... News that another of my dad's friends has cancer. A smoker and drinker. The numbers of them is creeping up.

There was a heavy smoking woman who worked for him. Smoking was allowed in offices then. So presumably more got smoked. There was a friend and colleague more recently, a smoker, but not sure if a heavy smoker. Given six months to live and slowly, or maybe six months is actually rapidly, came to death with a remarkable acceptance and composure. There was a close friend from America.

The common aspect of it is that death by lung cancer is painful. And takes you early. The latest one isn't lung cancer, its in the throat.

Somehow its hard not to link smoking and cancer. Obviously when people are young and start smoking they are at an age when death is an abstract thing. The simple pleasures seen as naughty grown-up vices. And yet they are storing up trouble for their late-middle age. My parents' generation are becoming the proof of it.

Personally I'm looking forward to the ban on smoking in public places.

Bus Journey

One man talks to another. 1st man has a big bag that he keeps pressing against my bottom in an entirely accidental but totally annoying way because it is bigger and more unwieldy than he can manage. He's talking to a man in a very manoeuverable wheelchair who looks like he's recovering from eye-lift surgery. His eye lids are gently bruised - yellow and palest mauve rather than darkly purple and there are stitches in arhces over his eyebrows. They're chatting about how easy it is to ride the bus in a wheelchair. Eye-lift man is saying mostly the buses are very good - particularly the bendy ones like this one. Bagman then asks what he used to do. He used to be a banker working in the city until he was made redundant 13 years ago.

Eye-lift man gets off by Stoke Newington. Bag man leans over to chat to a woman. I decide he isn't out of control of his bag, he just doesn't have a concept of personal space. He makes the woman converse with him by asking lots of questions. She's slightly trapped in the corner and obliges only because she can't really do anything else. She gets off at Stamford Hill, glad to get away.

I look out of the window - a carload of lovelies (small yellow susuki with 5 girls dressed in shiny spangled sequined dresses, hair piled up or tong curled) crosses the lights and attempts a U-turn that isn't sharp enough and ends up 3-point turning on the high road. They zoom off after holding up a line of cars.

Sweets

Either my tongue is much more sensitive or they didn't make sweets in the 70s that were quite so aggresive as the replicas they make now. My sister sent me a couple of swizzel lollies (orange and white, sort of solid and slightly sherberty). Sucking one this evening has made my tongue bleed. Bleed. Its supposed to be a pleasure. This is sort of like torture. And I kind of can't stop.

Karaoke BBQ

I'm mowing my lawn (a weekly chore that I keep up since my neighbour asked me when I was going to do it - the previous owner being very pleased with his lawn and all, personally I would have a planted slower growing variety) and raking to the strains (and I do mean strains) of some neighbours behind my garden having a karaoke bbq. I've never heard so many massacres of the power ballads, love songs and wedding favourites. We've had flat renditions of I am a woman in love, dream dream dream dream, daydream believer, I will survive (sung unusually by a man), hello is it me you're looking for, say you say me..., amongst others, and some almost unrecognisable versions of things sung by extremely poor singers with equally poor pronounciation. The russian neighbours two doors down my street are competing with euro techno. And we reach the end of another ballad - the crescendo into the big final chorus (a screech and missed high note). Its really not enhancing the lovely evening.

A View

In this view of the city the Tower of London is hidden behind Tower Bridge. London is growing to look unlike itself. A tangle of glass, metal and marble - not all of it good. The skyline is rising and changing. Gherkin is huge but seems less imposing because of its shape. The once massive Nat West Tower is being joined in height and stature by other less attractive, prominent and bland tall buildings. One of my old favourites - the Lloyds Building - is dwarfed, its blue cranes no longer visible above its neighbours. Wouldn't be so bad if there was something good but mostly its the naughties equivalent of those 60s office blocks that have been torn down. Cheap. Quick. Ugly. Disposable.

On the Line

Setting off home from Stockwell today hoping to catch the Victoria Line they announced as I walked into the station that the line was suspended in both directions due to a person on the line at Green Park. I wasn't aware of ever hearing this blatant truism before, other lines I've travelled on would refer to it as passenger action. Perhaps the people of the Victoria Line are deemed to be better able to handle the truth than the conservative (small c) and possibly highly strung city workers who frequent the Northern Line. I've only recently started travelling by the Victoria Line regularly recently. I'm going to have to listen to the announcements more carefully to test the theory...

Birthday Cake



Here is a cake. A birthday cake. A 37th (oh my gad, I can't believe I'm that old) birthday cake. The first cake made in my new oven (had it since last November but never had the cause to bake in it as yet). Its not temperamental, and as a result I over cooked it. It was actually slightly burned on the edges, sort of. However by the time it had whipped cream sandwiched between the sponge and jam between the sponge and the cream and butter icing with strawberries on top glazed with rose jelly and shavings of chocolate nobody even noticed.

The WHOLE thing got eaten in almost one sitting - enough people were round for a non-BBQ (rained off, grilled sausages instead) that everybody got a thin slice each and that was just about it.

Ceramics Class

Good news - the college has reprieved the ceramics department from closure at the end of term (big campaign, lots of complaints letters).

Anyway we continue our aim of making pots using crank to be used in raku firings (summer term is a good time to do firings outside using real fire - exciting).

Lacking some inspiration I started making something added frills and then hated it. Encouraged by the classmates I squeezed it. So I give you the resulting Ugly Pot.

New Office New Journey Home

78 bus through Bermondsey past antique shops, past the Cat and Cucumber cafe that I always saw off the train when I used to work in Lewisham several moons ago, and over Tower Bridge. Past Tower of London much less imposing in its modern surroundings than it probably was in its day as royal palace and then jail for traitors.

Around to Aldgate - a part of town that I seldom have cause to visit - and onto Liverpool Street. Past the juxtaposition that Spitalfields has become - the old buildings with narrow windows and red bricks next to the painfully modern glass buildings built with impossible narrow angles like shards of glass or blades of knives and ones in the process of being built boasting of their soon-to-be space, views, dynamic office space.

Then onto the brick railway bridges by Brick Lane. The tea for two building with its arrow and then the trendily shabby shops and bars of Old Street. Often dark and unassuming with suprising wares (70's retro, chandeliers) and services (Prick Tattoo, Sh! women's sex shop).

Change buses at Shoreditch church. Travelling up Kingsland Road past old haunts (used to love to while away saturday night at Herbal - drink, dance, listen to music). Watch trendy young people - their skinning jeans and 70s dresses with smocking, ruffles, bold prints, and asymmetric hair cuts and patches of colour. Tres cool.

The nondescript road turns into Dalston. Centreprise cafe gallery its 30s styled sign coming out from the building. The Rio cinema where I once studied Tape Slide & made a sort of animated film from poems and pictures. Ridley Road market covered in cabbage leaves. Used to pop by on our way from somewhere to home late at night for bagels and cream cheese. Customers drunk and enjoying the food and warmth and yellow glow spilling onto the street corner. An oasis of activity in the cold dark.

Beyond. Getting ever deeper north we arrive at the familiar territory of Stoke Newington. Yum Yum's and Abney Road Cemetery. After the Bird Cage and the new dagenham motor showroom it turns into Stamford Hill. Large estates and big run down houses, Hebrew schools, synagogues and a library which is shut on Saturday but open on Sunday. Men with big beaver hats, long black coats and white stockings. Women with bad wigs and girls in sensible shoes and calf length skirts. There's a new public toilet. Round with cubicle doors all round the outside - perhaps 10 of them. Built by popular demand from older residents tired of being caught short at the shops. Newsworthy due to its status as the cheapest doss house in town, discovered by homeless migrant polish and eastern block construction workers who stay overnight for 20p, sleep on the floor, get up, wash and go to work.

Whizzing past the huge brick St Ignatius Catholic Church, grotty pubs of South Tottenham and along to Seven Sisters. Neve sure which are the actual Seven Sisters trees b ut I know they are here somewhere. Onwards to everyday territory along the home stretch of Tottenham High Road.

New office, new journey home. New enough not to have jaded my vision.

Tube Porn

A woman on the tube is being surrepticiously filmed by a man. What a perv I was thinking as he aimed his video cam at her from his lap. She was flushed and sleeping. Smiling. Head occassionally dropping and her jerking it back up. Never opened her eyes though. She had a ladder in the knee of her tights. When he stood up and filmed in her face the woman sitting next to her gauped in astonishment and laughed. Pervy man smiled at her astonishment. And then panned down to the woman's chest, and slowly back up. Her head went back, right back, exposing her long neck and pushing it forward. Her eyes seemed to be rolling back in her head - eye whites momentarily visible through a crack in her eyelids. Still the grin. Very slight barely perceptible tremours in her shoulders and upper body.

I decided this was a set up. A porn video for one of those "secretly filmed" websites. And it all stopped being pervy and seemed extremely seedy instead. Felt a bit unsavoury witnessing it first thing in the morning on a rush hour tube. Pervy man then seemed smug, rather pleased with himself, especially attracting the attentions of the woman next door to his star.

Ceramics Class

Finally the frill pot came out of the glaze firing. White crackle (nice smmooth) with red under glaze tips.