The Season (to be jolly)

So, having endured the onslaught since August by turning a blind eye (don't believe in even mentioning it until well after Halloween), my mind has finally turned to christmas with the current freezing weather and plans afoot. I made mincemeat for mince pies last weekend, the fruit for cake is soaking, to be made tomorrow, there will be goose (!?!) for dinner. The last time (and incidentally the only time) I cooked goose was one christmas at Georgia's. They cracked open the sparkly wine before getting the dinner in the oven. As the bottles stacked up someone had to take charge, otherwise we probably wouldn't have had any dinner at all. That time we just bunged it into the oven with all the usual stuff. This time I've been looking up recipes and advice. Apple sauce, or quince compote, and some kind of apple stuffing, it seems may be the thing. (Would you believe I'm a vegetarian? I've been practicing cooking poultry so it doesn't dry out all year - start it sitting on its breast - and I'm not sure if that's necessary with a goose.)

Haven't done any shopping yet though. Did pass through Oxford Street once and hardly dared get off the bus the crowds were so huge.

Social Network

iPhone app - Instagram - social networking through photography. I use my account to post pictures taken on my iphone as I go about. Other people treat it differently - posting only their best ever photos. Linking to others is called following, people who follow you are your followers, theres a link button at the bottom of each picture where you can like it. There's a popular page where the most liked photos appear. To be really popular you need to be doing really good landscape/urban photography, sunsets and sunrises of the dramatic type that we rarely get in the UK and kitten pictures.

Social networking always works the same way - there's a giant love-in for a few people that attract a lot of attention from those who want to become popular - these few grow huge followings, their posts are loved by many and always appear in the popular lists but they are unable to share the love with lesser known meteorites because it takes them so much time dealing with their own huge following. It was like this with blogging (7 years) and is like it with Instagram (10 days). One of the A listers of Instagram was bemoaning that they must be doing something to keep his pictures off the popular page - must be a bit of a dent to his superego (loss of popularity is a concern) but as one of his commentors said in a kind of aside - I'm still waiting for a picture to grace the popular list.

I find its like in reality - I've always been just slightly too left-field to be really popular. As a teenager I wore that as a badge of honor. Must learn to take that attitude to online social networking!

End of Term 1

So another 10 weeks (11 counting half term) has slipped past. We've made glaze, experiments, disasters, pots, failed to finish anything significant, eaten pizza, drank wine and sambucca and are now resting. In the last two weeks I have made some significant progress towards some better work but being as it was the last two weeks it isn't finished yet. There are still some pots with images of nudes on them in relief, a pot that was made in half an hour that is 65cm tall (still drying), and a pot for wooden spoons that looks a bit like a joke pot but hopefully will be less so when glazed. In the meantime the results of all the weeks are a rag tag of glazing and making experiements that have to be squirreled away in hidden corners.



Next term I already have a better plan and clearer idea of what it is I am attempting to make.

Last night we talked about what it is that we get out of attending the class - mixture of development of skill, playing with material, using hands and brain in different more primeaval manner and the results we are looking for - symmetrical and unsymmetrical, perfect and kooky, could only agree on one thing - we like it. What we do it for is completely individual and what we are trying to achieve is also.

On the use of pale green

Passed a launderette while on the bus. Pale green walls. Presumably when designing it pale green is going to feel clean and fresh. Together with bad lighting and steam, hardy plants and industrial washersa nd dryers it ends up dingy and drab, lending a sickly glow to the interior and people within.

Hospitals with high ceiled wards and corridors. Pale green here intended to be a soothing colour to help the sick get better. But too many years between coats means it looses its clean sheen and ends up dirty in the corners.

Lewisham College under the reign of the formidable Ruth Silver used pale green as the institution's colour. Not until I left working there did I appreciate how a single colour scheme and a redecorating schedule that ensured a new coat of paint over the whole college every year, kept the place seeiming orderly, clean and refreshed.

Bags

How can a supermarket run out of plastic bags? I know we are supposed to be cutting down on their use but for the whole store to run out seems like extraordinarily poor stock management. I mean, couldn't they have cab'd some over from the next store over (it's only 10 mins away). They were handing out bin liners instead - flimsy things that wouldn't hold 2 tins of beans without splitting. They wouldn't give out bags for life for free either. Many disgruntled customers.

Ceramics



Its almost the end of the term and I've managed to get not much done again. Done some experiments with glazes, and using shellac. But actual end results minimal.

Violated

I've had my email account hacked. Someone has stolen my password logged in and sent tonnes of people a spam email from me. If you are one of those people I profusely apologise. They also posted onto this blog (now deleted). Ugh. I feel like someone has been in my house rummaging around my papers. Broken in. Hate it. Maybe its more than burglary. Maybe its more like stealing your identify and pretending to be you. Actually this is a bit of an exaggeration but I don't like it all the same.

Remember remember



Didn't actually go to see any fireworks display this evening but looked out when I heard a loud crack to see a couple of colourful sparks sprinkling over the rooftops of my neighbours.

Action

Bus driver says might as well transfer to the bus behind we'll be here a while. 150 passengers file off the bus unsure of their likelihood of a squeeze onto a following bus due to the overcrowding from the tube strike. A militant italian cyclist was trying to get his bike half on the bus to stop the driver absconding while he called the police. A fellow passenger told me he was claiming the bus driver nearly ran him off the road. Believable, yes, but when the cyclist clearly wasn't injured and his bike wasn't damaged wouldn't a more appropriate course of action be to take the driver's shift number and lodge a complaint. Particularly when the tubes were on strike.

Early to Work

Been expected early to work. So having to get up at 6.30. Before the clocks went back it meant I saw the sunrise twice without getting up for it specially. Red and gold and lovely. Quiet time. Leaves have turned. Bright yellow, orange. Sometimes a bright blue sky behind. Leaving the house at 7.30. Emptier on the way to the station. Leaves under foot, not yet slimy. Train station is more crowded, train is more crowded. These are early start people. Suited. Booted. More ferocious in their quest for a seat. Fewer seats available and none of the emptying out of the train at Seven Sisters that there is when you set out an hour or so later. Walk to work from the station faced with more head on pedestrians hot-footing it to catch the train. Look for the cat lady (haven't seen her again since although once saw two cats who must have been remaining after).

Work - whirlwind of organising, deciding, troubleshooting, emailing, question-answering, telephone calls and other distractions. And hot.

Sun sets over the ridge in the west, shining gold evening light into the side of the building. Afterwork, it is dark or darkening. The air is light on the eyes which by now are tired. The quiet and cool of the outside is refreshing. Stand on the platform of the station, high over the surrounding neighbourhood. Navy blue sky. Aeroplane passing. Slouched in a seat, staring. Longer the week goes on (and it is only second day), more tired I become. Can't wait for the weekend.

Cat Lady

Walking past Choumert Road carpark first thing. Sunshine. Leaves on the trees turning golden. At the far side of the carpark an old woman in an electric mobility tricycle is being followed by 3 cats, tails up, excited. As she moved closer to the wall of the houses that back onto the carpark she was joined by another, and another and another cat. Fluffy, tabbies, black and white ones, older, younger. 10 cats. And another and another. Trailed by 20 cats, all their tails held up expectantly. Milling around waiting for the bags to open and the food to come out. Never seen this before despite working near here for 5 years.

Iphone

For some time I have been coveting the iphone, looking on green-eyed (in the jealous sense rather than the literal sense, although I am green eyed) as people on other network providers were able to get one. Kept hassling Tmobile for when they were going to start offering it. Eventually 2 months ago they did give me one. It has been everything I hoped it would be. Arrived in the neatest packaging I have ever had for a mobile phone. I have overcome the urge to constantly be playing with it - all the apps you can get, lovely things that are so useful (scan tool, crop photos) and addictive (angry bird, doodlejump). I have been caught up with an Instagram - which is like flickr but on the phone, constantly updateable. So I find I have neglected the blog. Perhaps this is the next stage that blogging will take, no longer a computer thing instead a mobile thing. Perhaps it has already made that leap.

Ceramics Class



New technique tried - leather hard clay is painted with shellac patterns, wet sponge is wiped over the clay body which removes layers of clay around the shellac design leaving a raised pattern.

Spider

The low autumn sunshine glints across the silky strands of a monster cobweb that is partially formed between the ceiling, shelving and wall. It will, when competed, include several webs interlocked on a plane. Clearly not a lot of dusting gets done here in the office, and the things stacked on the shelves are seldom in demand.

Sunday morning

The smell of fox is strong in the morning. Transported from a city street to a country woodland edging a field. Autumn is in the air - damp earth, yellowed leaves litter the pavement, mist hazy. Trees which started late this spring are having a patchy fall - one side yellow and brown already the other still holding dark green. In the garden a few late summer blooms have been resurrected with the autumn warmth after heavy rain and mingle with autumn colour. Grass is growing fast after spending so long brown and dormant in parched july/august. One winter flowering crocus has emerged under the japanese cherry.

Watching

There's a crowd of oglers by the alley on the side of the post office. A community police officer is saying "there's nothing to see here" attempting to shoo them away as you would a flock of angry geese. Murmmerings in the crowd. If that were you and me we'd be dead! One elderly west Indian to another. A large bottle of evian has splattered on the floor. I follow the gaze up to the roof line. The officer was right, there was nothing to see.

Fog Sandwich

Its been a fog sandwich of a day. Way into work on the train the tops of tallest buildings were obscured by the low hanging cloud and the air had that moist grey feeling of fog (even though the visibility wasn't bad). Middle of the day the sun managed to brighten up the sky, warmth came through. Seemed very much an end of summer day, rather than the autumnal we have started to become accustomed to. By home time the cloud has come down again and in the distance the tall buildings have disappeared once again into the sky.

Late Night, Church Street

3 men lurch along church street. The night is warm for October. Pavements have dried since the last rain.
...he said he was cleaning a strip club...
A strip club?
Yeah, up west, I said, so you're mopping up cum in a strip club!!
Raucus man-laughing.
They pass four tall men standing on the corner having a discussion. Two of them are wearing trilby hats.
Someone shakes a sheet out over their balcony and creeps back into the shadows.
Outside abney road cemetery a man sits on a bench to drink a vanilla smoothy and smoke a joint.
Another man passes me by and says Hi Leoni. I look blank. Hi Leoni, he tries again, does it burn down there? I have no answer. He's got wild hair, no coat and seems confused. I'm not Leoni, I finally say. He passes on by continuing up the road going in and out of pools of street light.

Light

Remarkable light at sunset - one side of the sky had gold shimmmering out from under the clouds, the other thickening black clouds darker than any seen recently. Amazed to get home before any rain fell.

Gloomy Sunday

Some days, when you open the curtains and discover it is grey and threatening more rain after a night of heavy rain, it seems the right thing to do to curl back under the duvet and wait for the next morning of reasonable brightness before getting up.

But, alas, this is seldom an option. The feeling has infected my disposition all day however - overly aware of the oddballs and theives in the neighbourhood. Beggars. Pickpocket on the bus. Drunks. Odd man I've seen before who must live in my neighbourhood who sits too close pressing his leg inappropriately, smelling of beer. It was a relief to get back home and close the door against the outside. And then it rained some more.








Fine and Dandy

He's got a strangely high voice chatting on his mobile phone. Wearing a tan leather suit and shoes. He's telling the caller how he's been out walking about in the pissing rain looking for a feisty woman. When he turns round he also has a big moustache, heavy gold chains and medallion rings on every finger.