Ceramics Class

Class started back on Thursday. There haven't been many finished products this academic year - I'm going to work on that this term. Did start a series of dishes at the end of last term - using mixed clays - the only one that has come through completed so far is a mix of crank (quite gritty and sort of tan coloured) and porcelain. I've put life drawings on them also. Also finally got Hour finished and brought home for a picture. Its a concept. It started from the 10 things in 10 minutes exercises that we did. I set a task for myself of doing 60 things in 60 minutes. It turned into Hour. Each pinch pot too a minute to make. They were of similar size, smooth on the inside and with finger imprints on the outside.

Kew Gardens without Planes

Pops and I went over to Kew. I wanted to look at the bluebells. And we went to check on the sequoa tree planted for my mother. Due to the late spring, the bluebells were not out yet. The usual line of planes coming into land were missing (volcanic ash cloud having grounded them all).

Mythical Beasts and the Building Site

In the Unicorn cafe, which is sort of like the Southwark Council Staff Canteen (due to its proxmity to the building and cheaper than other eating nearby), looking out onto a building site. They're extending the only remaining old building (leaving the front as was and putting on a new build back end). The big steel structure is in place already. On the first floor they have constructed what looks a bit like a false ceiling held up on many uprights that appear to be made of some kind of yellow plastic. Sunlight is dappling through like in a beech tree forest. Yesterday the architects and project managers (6 of them) were walking round in a group pointing at things collectively - men with big bellies, clipboards and hi-viz jackets over suits - clearly not scaffold monkeys used to clambering around. Today a gaggle of workmen - hi-viz jackets, hard hats, utility belts and rolled up sleeves - work in the corner putting up the rest of the yellow structure, one half way up the ladder, one at the bottom, one perched on the 2nd floor steels. In another corner - at the edge of the building two others drape green mesh round the steels and scaffold. The foreman is resting his arms on a steel and 'supervising'. Its like a giant jumgle gym. I'm worried its going to ruin the original building, but its too late to stop now.

Coincidence

I'm reading Falling Man by Don DeLillo. I suddenly came across a passage concerning passport photographs. Strange coincidence. My recently taken passport pictures are tucked into the back of the book, quite by chance.

"I look at the face in the passport photo. Who is that woman?"
"I lift my head from the washbasin," Martin said.
"Who is that man? You think you see yourself in the mirror. But that's not you. That's not what you look like. That's not the literal face, if there is such as thing, ever. That's the composite face. That's the face in transition."
"Don't tell me this."
"What you see is not what we see. What you see is distracted by memory, by being who you are, all this time, for all these years."
"I don't want to hear this," he said.
"What we see is the living truth. The mirror softens the effect by submerging the actual face. Your face is your life. But your face is also submerged in your life. That's why you don't see it. Only other people see it. And the camera of course."

This is how I am feeling about myself. Don't feel the photographs are a true representation of me. But perhaps that is my own perception of what I look like and not what I actually look like. We see ourselves in mirror image always, and potentially don't see ourselves as we are at all but overlaid with a memory of what we think we look like.

Opposite me a boy sits imagining taking photograghs out of the bus window with a little rectangle of card. T-schtick, he says, pressing the imaginary shutter release at a group of people standing at the 41 bus stop at Turnpike lane. T-schtick again. He looks in a different direction. T-schtick.


I have two pens in my bag. A biro with a wooden casing that is larger than a normal pen and a pilot hi-tec. I am searching for a pen, any pen, in my bag and can't find either of them. Rummaging, becoming furious. Felt through all the pockets, patting each pocket, and potential nooks. Finally find the pilot down the lining. Bring it out, use it and when putting it back find the other pen easily like it had been in easy reach all the time.

Beautiful Minds

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was talking about science not being about truth because you can't be sure that one person's truth is the same as another person's truth. Truth  has perspective and so opinionated. Science is an investigation which improves or increases understanding. I liked this. It made sense.

She was remarkably unembittered by the controversial awarding of the 1974 nobel prize to Dr Hewish, her Phd supervisor, (along with Dr Ryle), for his discovery of pulsars, which should have at least been equally hers. His bullshit explanation that the research set up was there already and so the discovery to them rather than to the research student who saw it, raised their conscious to it and then proved the theory by finding more. He could have told the prize givers of the part she played. Dr Bell Burnell didn't seem to mind. She was truely remarkable.

Astrophysicists have a fascinating story to tell - of the creation of the universe, big picture understanding. She made the science understandable. Like Prof Brian Cox on Wonders of the Solar System, she made the big wow stuff make sense. Perhaps its because it relates to us and our world and how it came to be. Perhaps its because they are excited by their subject (always a very attractive quality in a person).

Passport Photograph

What is it with all the rules regarding photos for passports these days? The ears must be visible. How often do you not recognise a person because you can't see their ears? Of all the features on the face that are essential for recognition ears come fairly low down for me. Or maybe immigration needs to make sure they are not letting any aliens into the country - we know from the TV and films that they may look perfectly human apart from having pointy ears or indeed be missing a pinna altogether. (methinks they may be watching too much TV).

From a vanity point of view I am a little upset they won't allow me to wear my glasses in the picture - my whole image is developed around the colour of my glasses and without them I look somewhat devoid of colour, and much too dark-eye-baggy. I'm blaming the unflattering lighting (you'd never be photographed with a full on flash to the front at a photographic studio, at least not without some infill and back lighting and a soft focus lens). It could of course also be blamed on me actually having said eye-bags, but I just don't think they are quite that bad. And, haivng taken a set at the beginning of the week, I have spent the rest of the week sleeping lots, putting cucumbers on my eyes and slathering a variety of creams and oinments on them which have made no decernable differerence to the photos taken at the end of the week. So, I now have 10 years to try to sort that problem out for the next passport renewal.

Figure of Eight

Its the stillest day. Not even a breath of wind. The air is body temperature. There is no feeling it on my bare skin, no tingle of cold or baking heat. My body and the atmosphere coexist in complete equilibrium.

Waiting for the oven cleaner to do its thing, I hestitate to say magic, because contrary to expectation that everything will come off easily with one wipe like it does in the adverts, its never quite like that in real life.


Butterfly watching - two peacocks and one of those black and red ones that I didn't get close enough to identify properly.

Postman rang loudly (new bell, very audible, no matter where you are in or outside the house) with a parcel. Which is good. I've been thinking they don't bother to carry the packages and drop a collection notice automatically rather than try to deliver at least once. Tesco's has gotten me hooked on a hair product (a serum that tames unruly hair prone to frizz - mine all the way) and then has discontinued it. Can't stand that. So now I'm having to order it over the internet. This is ever so slightly too dependent for my liking.

I haven't seen the mice that were living in my neighbours compost bin for a while. Been looking. A hawk of some kind swept down last week and took something small, I was hoping it wasn't a sparrow (I'm feeling like those are my pets - particularly since they are living in my roof), but if its a mouse I'm not too bothered. I tried to feel ok about them as long as they were outside the house, but they are awfully small and could fit through quite tight gaps.

Racing pigeons swoop round in a large figure of eight. This is my mind. Trying to figure out a way to get more time like this - outside, low pressure work, enjoying the daytime rather than staring longing at it from inside the office.

Yummy

Is there anything more annoying than your favourite cafe (favourite incidentally because it is actually the only decent one in the area) being overrun by families and their toddlers, and mothers and their babies in groups, meeting to talk about sleep patterns, eating (what, how often, what consistency), curdled milk, birth, joint bank accounts, mortgages, while parking their monster-buggies in the spaces you need to walk round the tables?

Haringey

Outside the Salisbury Pub a man and a woman have an argument. He seems drunk, and through the window of the bus I read his lips telling her to fuck off. She doesn't.

A man blows one nostril onto the pavement. An electrical shop selling TVs has a display of the fashion channel showing a swimwear catwalk show.

Two kids on the bus play rock paper scissors. They have introduced a new choice into the game - laser (think this word in the voice of Dr Evil). Guess which component beats all others.

Woman in a mobility scooter crosses the street in such a way that a car screeches to a halt, she drives up a pavement lip, does a 180 degree turn and shoots off in the other direction. She drives with her legs crossed.

Goodbyes

Train station embrace, actually more than a snog, with full body to body contact, arms wrapped round for all enveloping stroke. Under the departure boards at Liverpool Street Station. A stationful of rush hour commuters watching for their trains. They pull apart for breath, smiling. They hug. Then both women turn towards the underground.

Early Morning

Its only me and the birds awake. Drizzle falls. They flit around breakfasting noisily. Much calling and song. A collared dove on a highly bending elder branch. Buds developing on the lilac (a self planted specimen from the neighbour's one). I can't sleep anymore. Exhausted last night I sat in bed reading the end of my book for three hours until I couldn't hold off sleep any longer at 11.00pm. We are having what seems like a relentlessly pressurised year at work - going from one intense period to the next. Last year it was Ofsted (twice - once snowed off in February, then the rescheduled in May), the new year has brought auditors (one set threatened in February only to be called off the weekend before they were coming, and now a second lot are here). I had a week off two weeks ago - thinking alot about job satisfaction. If I had the money, didn't need to worry about a salary, what would I do? What line of work might make me feel less like a creative trapped in a monitoring world? I can find no satisfactory answers (something I might like to do which will bring me a salary on which I can live). Despite the fact that I will be 40 this year, I am still trying to decide what I want to do when I grow up. I'm thinking it might be too late already! Two quotes from Joshua Ferris, author, in one of the weekend magazines summed it up quite perfectly for me:

After I left college I thought, very naively, that either you became someone interesting - an artist - or you went into academia. If you ended up in an office you were dull and lacking. And I ended up in an office.

The inanities and absurdities of corporate life are so obvious... I found  a great deal of nobility there - you know, people doing jobs they might not like, doing it for their kids. Which is not to say that I felt those things while I was there... I felt my life was draining away.

Rainy Evening

I like walking in the rain. Cooling. Droplets like diamonds sticking to hair, wool. The pavement wet and reflecting all the lights of the city night. Sparkling. The smell fresh. Clean. Renewed.

A long drink of water straight from the botton. Chilled. Washes away the dryness and dust from the throat. A meandering bus journey delivers me home.

Spring Sunshine

The wintry sun dips in the palest blue sky. The people in the park are not yet feeling the cold. Someone lies on the ground feet in the root system of a large tree, head downhill, staring at the sky. Further along another person lies in the grass. A small group of Indians make a film. Shooting a presenter in turquoise mac against Alexandra Palace. Furthest along, just before the bus takes the sharp turn down towards the bottom of Muswell Hill a group picnic on a rug.

Very british rush to use the sun whenever it appears.

Ladies [and gentlemen] Who Lunch

Cafe Rouge on James Street near Selfriges. Sitting in the sunshine (lovely March sunshine with enough warmth to not have cold hands when ungloved, to feel the benefit on the face and enjoy the brightness on the eyes) drinking cafe mocha waiting for the boyfiend.

Two businessmen take coffee - one has folded his jacket inside out and laid it over his knee and discarded his tie. Positively basking.

Two Russian girls, one eating, one nursing a cafe latte.

Three old posh ladies. Strange assortment of clothing. One in particular must be in from the county. Chain smoking. Drinking claret. Bloated, reddened from weathering. Laughing rauchously and sharing pictures of grandchildren and stories of children's successes (and divorces).

French tourists drinking coffee. Suprisingly un-chic, dressed in jeans and fleece which I always find at odds with their reputation.

The businessmen move onto beer. The other Russian takes a meal while her companian smokes. The three posh ladies study some foxton's propety sheets of a potential purchase that one of them will make. Discuss in some detail the merits of the windows. Chain-smoking lady is on her sixth cigarette. Mostly held aloft betwee thick fingers, elbow on the table. Occassionally dragging on it with a creamy orange lipsticked mouth. Flicking ash off its end into a glass ashtray.

Boyfiend arrives, and I go and pay.

Winter Olympics Closing

I've very much been enjoying the late nights watching lycra-clad sportsmen and women careen down mountains, icy tunnels and half pipes on skis, boards or tiny tea-tray like sleds. I've stopped paying much attention to the ice-dancing which was one of the favs when I was a kid (Curry, Cousins and then Torville & Dean) - now it seems like slightly more awkward come dancing. And anything that is judged just doesn't seem quite like sport anymore. Much keener on sports where there is an out and out winner. Loved the skeleton (dangerous, head first), luge (dangerous, feet first), bob (dangerous in pairs or fours), also the ski-cross and speed skating. Other events appeal to the altnerative in me like snowboarding aerials - athletes look like skateboard stoners, all long hair and outlandish outfits, doing imppossible-seeming tricks. Not that keen on the bowling-on-ice sport of curling. Don't seem to be clear enough about the rules and the tactics. And find it terribly irritating that they don't just toss the stones down as fast as possible rather than gently releasing them to waft gradually to the perfect stopping point. Also all the sweeping - at times its like watching street sweepers standing round having a chat.

In a phrase borrowed from cousin Tania (she'd just crashed her fiance's brand new ford escort who was hopping mad and irritable, she was in the kitchen with all the female relatives saying he was showing himself up in a very bad light) - the Canadians have shown themselves up in a rather bad light being stingy with access to the runs before the games began, which suprises me about them.

Train Presentation

Waiting on the train at Liverpool Street. Dreary wet day. Three of us in the carriage, heads down reading. A train presentation team member creeps through the carriage picking up discarded newspapers and rubbish. Think that team would have used to be called cleaners.

Roots

Is it strange that I think of myself as having grown up in Islington (aged 0-11), and only as living in Haringey (aged 11-present)?

Pink and Purple Don't Go

Not since the 70s when I coveted a pair of plastic clogs of my counsin's plastic clogs have I thought that a pink & purple combo was a good thing. I got a pair of plastic clogs and perhaps then outgrow the colour scheme. A woman at the station was wearing purple shoes, grey sparkly tights and a short bright pink coat. A complete clash of an outfit.

Tattooed Man

Morning train. Man with a full face tattoo. The design reached over his eyelids and spread down his cheeks. Lines ran down his nose from the ridge. Covered completely. Piercings around his mouth and rings hanging from his eyelids that must obscure his vision slightly. Both hands and wrists also completely inked. Impossible to see what he looks like through the mask of images.

Marmalade

I've been trapped at home again this weekend - my friendly electrician is taking down all the 70s chandeliers that ran through the entire downstairs, wall versions, hanging versions. Finally got new lights in the kitchen - there was just one of three spots working before, now light floods onto all the working surfaces. There is light in the hall, and light on the side path to the front door. Its a revelation.

There were seville oranges in the supermarket on Friday. Small, soft, ugly oranges. My mum used to make marmalade. Sharp, thick cut and given away to friends. I didn't like it much. I bought some. One bag. Made 1.5kg worth of oranges into marmalade. The smell of cooking oranges is lovely. Citrus, pungent. Thickened and sticky, poured into hot jars. Lightly toasted a whole-grain multiseed slice of bread and tested it. Its good. Reminds me of her.