Return of the Mac

Last weekend was pretty good. Hiked up to the Design Museum on Saturday to meet Sam, where we checked out the Alan Aldridge exhibition there, which was ace. I have to say, I always find the Design Museum quite succinct in terms of its exhibition space, so my tip would be – Get there late on Saturday – with about an hour left they only charge a fiver, which seems like a reasonable amount of time to wander round any given exhibition.

After that stopped in the shop to buy a copy of his book, then sat out on the embankment while Sam drank a coffee (I couldn't, any more that day and I'd have got the shakes).

That evening headed up to Cargo in Shoreditch for Need2Soul with Al. I was pretty hungover and tired from the night before though, so it was quite hard work at times – the music was really good though, Benji B and Glenn Underground especially, who delivered a payload of vocal US house bombs.

Sunday night I set up my new iMac, and after many moons typing on a battered old 1st generation Powerbook which now looks like something from the Millenium Falcon, I'm quite frankly loving the huuge screen on it. I must also admit, I've whiled away a few hours playing assorted arcade classics on a coin-op emulator I've got for it – such as R-Type, Commando etc. I have actually bought CS4 for it though, so working in Photoshop and Illustrator is going to be a pleasure.

Now debating the allure of an iPhone... never really been gadget-mad, but I'm thinking of going contract, and I'm a bit sick of being the hand-me-down phone kid. If my old powerbook looks like part of the MF, the busted old Nokia Ade gave me two years ago looks like something the Jawas would probably have slung into a sand dune. We'll see. A bit more costly, but I could put it down as a 'business expense'.

Oh, and I need glasses. I went for a free eye test courtesy of a voucher in the Marks & Spencer magazine at D&A in Peckham, where I learned I am 'astigmatic'; the analogy the tester used being that the corneas of my eyes are more rugby ball shaped than round. Anyway. I got my prescription, but thought all the frames in D&A looked pretty much all the same. Me being me, I'm thinking about something a bit more more like Michael Caine in The Ipcress Files.

Every Roleplaying character I've ever played 3

Orgon Twinswords

This dude was a merchant sea-captain from the Island of the Purple Towns, in Moorcock's Young Kingdoms, in a game curated by my old buddy Matt (who I haven't actually seen in about five years).

Anyway he was armed with two swords (hence the name) one of which was a legitimately rolled-for sorcerous magical heirloom (clue: it's the one that's glowing). I got his name from a mini-digest of names in Chaosium's Elric! rulebook – which was cue for Matt to crack many jokes about 'Organ's Organ' ha ha etc.

I played this guy in the Stormbringer! trans-dimensional campaign Rogue Mistress which was a typically picaresque ramble through the multiverse, acompanied by Will's character in this period – an Victorian English gentleman armed with an elephant gun, whom it transpired, was somewhat ill-equipped for close-hand combat against the assorted demons the game launched at us, once his large shooting iron had run out of shells.

My character, I'm glad to report, was a sort of two-sworded whirling dervish of destruction. Which was nice.

'Credit Crunch'

As I go about my daily affairs, it's been nigh impossible to avoid the sense of fermenting financial doom, simmering just below the surface of, well, everything (at least in London – Greece didn't seem to care as much, at least the resort I was in a month ago).

Scarcely a day goes by when I don't open the paper to read some hyperbolic sqwawk about the parlous state of the world economy. "Black Friday!" boomed the reassuringly pessimistic London Evening Standard, the Friday last but one.

I'm getting a little bored by all this. The fact that we've entered a period of relative financial insecurity has actually penetrated my cranium by now, aided by soundbytes such as 'The Credit Crunch', and abetted by Brass Eye style graphics of plummeting line graphs, typographical ligatures involving resolutely downward facing arrows, and photographs of worried looking Wall Street Traders.

But it seems to me, the big story that everyone I know is talking about, bar the actual papers themselves, is the role of the media itself in this debacle, the spectre of which looms large in the wings, excitedly wringing its hands. Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but the relentless pessimism of the news regarding the global economy is surely guilty of inculcating the sense of doom, that is all pervasive at the minute (of course, I suppose a headline such as "Story-hungry Media excites mass global panic!" might just be a tad too recursive – a little too close to the truth, if truth be known). This was proven to be the case when the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, asserted that head of RBoS, Barclays and Lloyds had gone, a beggin' to Alistair Darling for some beads, which promptly wiped £10 billion off the value of the Royal Bank of Scotland alone. Oops.

And there is, oddly, a faint sense of inevitability about all this – the long predicted chickens have finally come 'home to roost' as it were. I remember last year, reading in the broadsheets last year muttered hints that: "This can't go on forever" which it patently could not; but in some ways the paranoia now seems to be a case of prophecy fullfilment.

I've never know much about the dark arts of economics, and at least one thing that's arisen from recent events is a slightly clearer understanding of the greed, naivety and sordid practices that led to all this. It's been a little like training a torch on the underside of a long undisturbed rock, to witness a host of unlovely, armani-clad beetles scurrying away from the questing light – though perhaps it was a lack of scrutiny that led to this debacle in the first place. A couple of things that have only really become apparent to me for is the fact that very little of this money actually exists (i.e. if everyone wanted it back, not everyone could have it) and for all their perceived, grotesque wealth, banks actually operate with a thin skin of capital – the rest being all speculative cash in motion – and in some way it all seems to be linked to some index of confidence, which at the minute, is severely diminished, and shaken yet further by the press's frenzied speculation. To use an analogy in physics I might compare it to the Oberver effect, wherein in the very act of witnessing and recording an experiment ultimately effects its outcome.

For this reason it almost feels like the best thing that could happen, would be for the media to find something else to yap about about for a few weeks, and the eventual trickle-down effect might be people discarding the siege mentality that seems to be the defining zeitgeist of the moment. Ever since Orson Welle's radio play on Well's War of the Worlds it's been pretty clear that the media has the power to precipitate mass panic, if used recklessly, and this is hardly an exception. So why not, I dunno, talk about Madonna divorcing guy Ritchie or something, and everyone can slip back into their normal everyday coma, before emerging blinking, from the bunker, into our brave, new, credit-less world.

In the meanwhile, I'm going to brace myself for an even-more-consumerist-than-usual rendition of Christmas 2008, as all and sundry attempt to claw back some of their collapsing profit margins. I saw my first Christmas advertisement on ITV yesterday; DFS, I hate you.

"These aren't the plates you're looking for..."

My housemate has developed this 'Jedi mind trick', where if she ever doesn't feel like she can be bothered to do her washing up, she just sticks the offending plates on top of the freezer – thereby marking them as 'on hold', and emphasising the fact that it's 'different' from normal dirty crockery, and doesn't count – she's just really busy, yeah?

Personally I find it mildly annoying, as it just spreads filth more evenly round the kitchen, rather than quarantining it to by the sink (I'd prefer it if she just spent two minutes washing up, though).

It also means if I want to dip into the freezer, I have to to move the offending articles (typically bespattered in congealed baked bean slime) before I can access my frozen treats.

Just thought I'd share that with you. I guess this is like ultimate passive/aggressive 'house note' So passive/aggressive in fact, they don't even see it.

Booger-Loo

At the risk of sounding overly worldy, I've worked in a few places in my time. Running the whole gamut of everything from grim sausage factories up north, to quote unquote 'funky' design groups, to top ten advertising agencies.

Obviously this comprises a fair bit of variety in terms of type of employee, workplace culture, size, location etc, but in every place I've worked in, every place I tell thee the walls of the men's toilets are always encrusted with snot, where someone's carefully wiped it mid-slash.

I walked into the gents today, and felt like Steve MxQueen in The Blob.
What is this? Some kind of atavisim? society dictates 'mucous-guy' can't waz against the wall to mark his territory, so he instead flicks a Taj Mahal sized booger as a biological remider of his passing.

It's better than racist graffitti, I suppose, but still, fairly damn rank.

Sort it out lads.

Seizure

Having gone for milk this morning I returned to find two old ladies at my front door, one just having located and pressed the buzzer.

"Can I help you?" I enquired.

"Ah hello" one said "We just called today to discuss how we as individuals in the world can get closer to Jesus"

It was then I noticed the glassy expression characteristic of the 'religion addict' on both their faces.

"Sorry, no time" I said, sidling past them through my front door, and closing it after me.

I wonder how much luck they had with the 'discussing Jesus thing?' Presumably they do it with the ulitmate aim of coaxing people into the fold, as it were, but I can only imagine people who were already followers to be interested in chatting about the big J. Indeed, it was they way they proceeded from the assumption that said individual exists as a divine entity, when I don't believe he does, which really put me off – we'd have needed to get past that little debate before they could start inviting me to church, and I wasn't in the for theological debate, at least prior to my Special K.

This afternoon I went to Seizure – Roger Hiorn's installation in a condemmed low-rise near the Elephant. To paraphrase: It's the interior of a flat coated in really blue crystals, but actually, it's pretty damn cool, albeit less strange than you might expect it to be. Last time I went it was on a Sunday, and there were large queues, but this time, hardly anyone – which is at least one good reason not to work on a wet Tuesday at the end of September. Like much art, I find, half the fun is the venue, and the ritual of going and wandering around looking at stuff with your head tilted at 'the art angle' – and this was no exception. It kind of felt like one of those block viewings estate agents introduced at the height of the property-buying insanity last year, only obviously less ludicrous, and more enjoyable. You also have to swop your shoes for wellies, for the duration of the viewing. Great stuff, anyway.

I was thinking of buying Adobe Creative Suite 3 today, but CS4 is out next month, so I guess I might just hold tight until then. That's probably the best idea, isn't it?

Paxos

So, I went to Greece last week with moms and pap dukes, more specifically, the little Ionian Island of Paxos, just off the southern tip of Corfu. Indeed, the island was visible from our apartment in Kavos when me Ade and Dunc went way back in 2005, and in truth, it represents a sort of anithesis to Kavos (or Chavos) as I sniggeringly referred to it): sedate in the extreme compared to the nero-esque orgy of raw-alcohol doctored booze, consumed by rampaging British grockles, that Kavos represents.

Paxos seems to exist in stasis, pretty much, cheerfully insular and indifferent to a wider world seemingly entering into a hyperbolic media meltdown over investment banking. In truth this has some historical, nay, mythical precedent, as legend has it that the Island was created when Poseidon smote it from the Southern tip of Corfu, to create a sort of shag-pad for him and a Nereid (sort of a mermaid, I guess) he was kicking it with at the time. And it has to be said, it would be a pretty amazing place to vanish to for a week if you were in some loved-up relationship (the most interest I got on holiday was the unwanted attention of a Greek, vaguely Benny Hill-esque omi-poloni on a moped. Sigh).

So how was it? Um... yeah it was good. The weather... not so good. When I touched down on Friday the weather was gorgeous, though it was a little like arriving just in time to see the curtains close on Summer, as the next four days ranged from being merely torpid and grey, to out-and-out sub-tropical thunderstorms, replete with driving 45 degree rain, rolling thunder, and jagged bolts of forked lightning (which actually redeemed itself by virtue of drama, to some extent).

By Tuesday however, my iPod had run out of batteries, I was down to the last third of my final book, and pacing from room to room of my apartment like a bored bear in a zoo, wistfully thinking about computers (me, not the bear of my tortured analogy).

After that, the weather picked up and there was lots of Sun, but it still felt a little like drinking in the last chance saloon, as the evenings were drawing in, the nights chilly, and fellow tourists noticable by their decreasing numbers.

Still, it was good to get a break, and hang with my folks. Greek food's pretty damn good too – generally robust and delicious – and the sofrito and calamari in particular were exemplary. It was also a chance to chill and take photos too. Which I'll bore you with after this writing.

Got back on Friday, and last night was my birthday do, which I had at the Princess Louise in Holborn, which is a funky-assed gin-palace-resembling joint, with mirrors, booths, and tiles aplenty. A good turnout, and I must have had a good time, as the large bruise on my right arm attests.

Work tomorrow, of the pretty basic bread-and-butter kind, which I can't pretend I'm all that eagerly anticipating, but hey, that stuff pays for holidays, software, Macs and mocassins, so can't complain, I guess.

Holiday

I fly to Greece in about eight hours time. Can't wait. Means I'm doing the night shift at Gatwick Airport, wandering round til checking in time like Tom Hanks in whatever that film was.

Weather permitting, I'll mostly be lying on a pebbly beach reading crime novels (Derek Raymond and Edward Bunker are 'in effect') and I'll probably have the odd beer, and take some photos.

Take care now.

Thursday

Another day, another grimey buck tucked in the freelancer's pocket, in this modern day babylon. Still, not all bad. A project I worked on a few months back, which I thought had been quietly forgotten about, might actually seen the light of day, in a still recognisable form. Which is nice.

Someone stuck on my Arthur Russell CD today, which lasted about three tracks before someone said "this is wierd". Which it is, I suppose (that's why I like it).

Its kind of strange going back somewhere I work frequently, to discover lots of people have moved on, as has happened recently. Ade suggested it was a bit like Narnia, only of course, proceedings aren't being lorded over by an intelligent christ-like lion, so not all that like Narnia at all.

Went to see Will this evening in Shepherd's Bush, on the penultimate day of his working there. No tube, so got off at White CIty one stop up, and walked down past the BBC. I reminded me of one of the first nights out I had in London when I moved down almost four (fuckk...) years ago and I caught the 148 up for post work drinks, so this evening felt curiously epigrammatic somehow. Went for a pint and a chat, which was good. Will got half a pint of Tim Taylor, and it came in the rinkyest half pint tankard I've ever seen, which the people behind me at the bar were gasping at.

Caught the bus back, which took ages. Cooked fishcakes when I got in. Tired now. Listening to the Starship Sofa podcast, and observing that science fiction poetry is possibly the cheesiest thing ever. Almost Vogon-like in stature, in terms of badness, in fact.

Film tomorrow evening. Hoo-ha.

Every Roleplaying character I've ever played 2

Sun Cleric

I think this dude might have been about the only cleric I ever played. After all, let's face it, clerics are sort of lame... even in a world where gods actually exist! And what's with just using non-edged weaponry? I wonder if this might have been inspired by the church banning crossbows on Mediaeval battlefields because they were 'too barbaric' but I could be wrong (begin caveat) I remember reading that somewhere anywhere (end caveat).

Anyway, I only played him about twice, but typically got reet into designing his outfit, which I envisaged as being ornate, full gothic plate. I also originally drew his shield with the sun's cantons extruding as huge flanges. Will (for he was GM in this solo game) said "Y'know, they'd get hacked right off in a fight". "What, even if they were made out of metal? no way!" I answered, defensively. I think he might have been right though, and have hence changed that.

Oh, yeah, sun shield, sun armour, who did he worship? A sun god, of course. I think once of the conceipts I came up for this character was that he actually worshipped the sun, by lying in the sun, until his skin was nearly black (sunbathing, essentially), I think I got that from seeing 'The Holiday Programme' on the Beeb in around 1990, when they described holidayers visiting hotter climes as 'sun-worshippers'. I quite liked the concept. I think Will laughed.

Anyway, a two handed war hammer is obviously going to present problems when also using a shield, but I'm sort of envisaging this guy as some kind of Soulcaliber style combatant, with an outrageous, kinetic fighting style.

Victoria

I'm back in Victoria. for the second week, and the third time I've worked here in total. Victoria is weird though. Busy and bustling, yet ultimately hard to attribute any kind of personality to.

Victoria represents a kind of architectural pile-up. If you suffered from acute tunnel vision, and were dropped, blindfolded, in the middle of this no-man's-land and told to orient yourself in time and space, depending on where your gaze alighted, you could probably infer yourself to have arrived in any decade out of the last twenty or so, which I guess is true of much of London, just much more acute here, where each and every building seems to be participating in an 'every-edifice-for-itself' slug-fest with its neighbours.

Victoria is dominated by the huge train station in the centre of course, and the more out-flung coach station round the corner, and these two seem to dictate much of the 'personality' of Victoria such as it is, with the exterior of the train staion having much of the flavour on the inside, with the same phalanx of anodyne coffee shops and sandwich bars clone-tooled up and down the length of its bustling pavements. And in truth, it does sometimes feel that there is very little to do in Victoria, other than go and buy a sandwich. Victoria is full of people, but in keeping with its nature as a mass-transit hub, most seem intent on heading somewhere else.

"Why did the chicken go to Victoria" one might ask. "to get to the other side" would be the only possible answer, surely.

That's possibly not the entire story. If musicals are your thing there's Billy Elliot – the musical, and Wicked, but they do almost seem incidental to the area. Bizarrely, the one club I can think of in the area is the London venue of glam Ibiza club Pacha, plonked incongruously in the grey environs of the the bus station. Other than that, you're left with an array of regular-less boozers, where the clientele imbibe liquids between modes of transport in a sticky-tabled purgatory, and the odd Pizza Express, frequented by tourists.

Step off, into the hinterland of side streets and there are some moderately interesting buildings, but even here there seems precious little incentive to linger, rather than press on. Victoria is so impersonal it feels almost incidental to itself, and you'd probably have to head to a motorway flyover, to find a place less conducive to the pleasant passage of time. Ultimately, so long as I'm working, I feel justified in being here, but not a moment longer.

No matter though. Lunchtime approacheth, and with it the big decision of the day, in effect: what sandwich to eat.

Every Roleplaying character I've ever played

Roleplaying. If you say the word to your average man on the street, they're probably going to think of some excruciating exercise on a corporate training day, where you take on the part of an employee attempting to placate an aggrieved customer. But what I'm talking about here is the species of dice-based games, poularised to some extent by Dungeons & Dragons, and popular with adolescent (and not so adolescent) boys, and yeah, maybe even the odd girl.

Basically, you'd take on the role of a hero, in some world of the imagination, wandering through dungeons, dispatching orcs, getting drunk in taverns or whatever was appropriate, really – after all, there were a variety of systems and worlds to situate the games in, such as the realm of Michael Moorcock's Young Kingdoms, or the more familiar, yet still perilous, parallel world of 30s New England which was the setting for the Lovecraft themed 'Call of Cthulu'.

Of course all this stuff actually had quite a lot of stigma attached. Going round to your mates of a weekend to sequester yourself in a room to roll dice and attempt to defeat, say, an imaginary wizard, is probably never going to appear as conventionally 'cool' as hanging out in the park, drinking cider and smoking Benson & Hedges, which some people at school were doing at that point (that came later, for me), and I think it bemused my parents, who used to call it 'gnome wrangling' (sigh).

Of course, with the advent of things like Second Life and World of Warcraft, it perhaps suddenly doesn't seem all that odd really. Indeed, the internet provides such manifold opportunities for all and sundry to massage into life bizarre fictionalised avatars, that really, it all seems perhaps a little sweet, not to mention pioneering, eh? At least we actually went and hung out together when pretending to be people we weren't, rather than squinting at a screen in an ill-lit room somewhere.

And it was all pretty cerebral, if not actually intellectual, and the beauty of it was that it could be totally non-linear. If you wanted to do completely random stuff for the hell of it, you could, though of course it was very easy to derail entire games by doing that. Its beauty lay in that it was creative, and improvisational – and escapist. For a few hours you could take on the part of a muscle-bound axe-wielding dwarf (though that example possibly isn't selling it in that well, I suspect).

Many of the characters I played I got quite attached to, some less so, depending on how long I played them for. I can't really remember what happened to most of them, but I think most of the games just trailed off, rather than them actually dying. So who knows? maybe they battle on still in some parallel universe, or are frozen for eternity, waiting for me to resume control of their destiny, a little like the end of every episode of early 90s TV kids show, Knightmare ("Warning Team").

Anyway. In an attempt to lay these spectres to rest, I'm going to ressurect, over the next couple of weeks, EVERY ROLEPLAYING CHARACTER I"VE EVER PLAYED (or at least the ones I can remember). You lucky people. Some off it's going to be a little vague I fear, some of their names I don't even remember – and I'm going to excercise some creative license in their appearance – so if you're concerned as to whether they were clad in full or half-plate armour, take it from me I probably don't remember anyway (some of this ocurred the best part of two decades ago, ferrchrissakes). Some of them are so sketchy in my memory I'm not even going to bother with – such as the 'warrior' I played on a Saturday morning club at a school in Reddish, who was erased from existence when a passing truck ploughed through a puddle on the way home, deluging me, and reducing his 'character sheet' (a page of statistics relating to said chap) to pulpy, inky ruin. Suffice to say though, if you imagine Arnie in Conan the barbarian, he was probably something like that. After I've drawn them all, and written about them, I'll probably combine them all in Photoshop, print them out, then hope any girls in the real world still want to speak to me.

Anyway, I'll start of with a lesser character.

Mishak

I actually got the name for this guy from hearing the 'Round The Horne' tapes my dad used to play in the car, which had a sketch with Kenneth Williams just saying all this random stuff in his outrageously croaky, camp voice (though I don't think it was the Julian and Sandy sketch where they chatted away in Polari).

Anyway, it was a reference to the biblical figures of Shadrach, Meshach and Abendigo, and I kind of liked the name, so nicked it for this guy.

Basically, he was a sorceror, and I didn't play him for very long, so he never got very advanced in terms of his spellcasting. Hence probably the most combat-effective incantation he posessed was 'Magic Missile', which he's shown casting here. This was a solo game I played with my friend Will.

Other things about this guy were that I designed a symbol for him (on his brooch here) which was a open palm with a star in the centre.

Anyway, here he is.



More to come soon (bet you're excited!)

BT Bill

When is an itemised phone bill, not an itemised phone bill? When it's a BT itemised phone bill, where roughly half the calls show up as 'non-itemised'.

The irony of this is not lost on me, now the sole user of the landline, and faintly concerned I didn't make them – or indeed as to what the hell numbers they were that doubled my average spend. Despite promising otherwise, my flatmate whose name the bill was in, failed to get a breakdown of calls, and apparently, now a month has elapsed, the trail has gone cold forever. It's entirely possible that it was Lord Lucan ringing Elvis from Shergar's back, while we were all at work, but I guess I'll never know now.

I could, I suppose, try my luck ringing someone in Mumbai, but I don't think I can be bothered shovelling yet more cash at a telecoms provider for the BT's intercontinental version of the bland call centre apology, which will inevitably only ever tell me what I already know.

West Hampstead

This afternoon I hiked up to West Hampstead, to say hi to my friends Will and Sam, and their wee bairn Zac, who is small, cute, and generally baby-ish. I even held him, with the aid of an odd cushion that sort of resembles half a life ring – especially as it's engineered to sit around your midriff. It was good to hear Will's got off to a good start with the lad's education, by reading him science fiction (James Tiptree Junior) and watching horror films with him (Rosemary's Baby).

But West Hampstead: I forget about West Hampstead, though actually quite like it, in spite of its slightly prim, moneyed demeanour. And why not. In spite of my Southside blogging credentials, many things aspirational appeal to me, so a place as peppered with delis and the like as West Hampstead is right up my street.

And of course, before I'd even moved to London, many, many moons ago (10 years worth of moons, in fact) I used to visit West Hampstead a lot, as that was where Will and Sam lived, in a tiny flat between 'Wampstead's' main drag, and the bustling environs of the Finchley road.

For this reason it always evokes a faintly cosy sense of nostalgia, as I wander alongside those gentrified mansions, especially as West Hampstead is, for London anyway, fairly non-threatening – or as Douglas Adams might have it 'mostly harmless'. Yet it did serve to illustrate how living anywhere redically changes your perception of it – or to put it another way, the closer you get to something, the more it seems to disappear.

I think there are many examples that point to this slightly sombre truth, but an example that springs to mind was given by a lecturer at university at Bristol, who described the analogy of two lovers running to meet one another across a field, who at the moment prior to embracing discover they are separated utterly by an invisible barrier, which they detect when their breath condenses upon it. Either that or by clobbering themselves unconcious, one presumes.

My early memories of London were of its utter cyclopean vastness – huge avenues yawning off into the theoretical distance. But as you live somewhere, you gradually piece together the composite parts into a tapestry of sorts – that promptly shrinks in the wash. That vast, fobidding London is gone for me now, to be replaced by something smaller, more prosaic, though still exciting, challenging (and really, still impressively vast).

But I catch glimpses of that other London still – in a shaft of sunlight outside Selectadisc on Soho's Berwick Street, pushing through a mass of bodies at Notting Hill or crossing Waterloo Bridge in the evening. Perhaps no more than in West Hampstead though, where I sometimes feel a nostalic affinity for the ghost of of my younger self, out and about in London, and this sudden shift in perspective is like glimpsing a street you know well, from the window of a swiftly moving train – fleet and momentary, to be relished while it lasts.

From such sub-philosophical rambling I returned earthward to my flat, to discover my housemate huffing, puffing and generally martyring herself because she's doing her chores after a stint at the pub she works at. Working in Victoria tomorrow, more on that then, no doubt.

Too much Posse Pocket

Got this fishing vest in the post today. I ordered it off Yoox in their sale, thinking it was just from Woolrich's main line, and was pleasantly surprised to find it was from their 'Woolen Mills' collection, designed by workwear obsessive Daiko Suzuki (also the man behind Engineered Garments).

I've got a bit of a thing for workwear and utilitarian garments, and furthermore, I do like a pocket or two. This guy here has 17 of the things! including a huge one on the back, to carry, um, fish or something.

Weather was pretty repulsive today. Staggered around feeling hot and irritated. Bought the New Order Republic album, with art direction on the cover art by Peter Saville, from about the time he discovered layer masks in Photoshop. People often turn their noses up at this period of his work, but I still think it looks great though (I love his 'wave paintings' from this era).

Saville's got an undeniable confidence and lightness of touch with most things he designs, and it's precisely because Photoshop filters are such a cliche that his use of them is somehow commendably bold, I feel, and sets off the plastic-looking photo-library images he sourced for this with to deliciously ironic effect. In fact, one of my favourite covers ever is that from the World single, which blends stock imagery of a mountain range and cityscape at night to haunting effect. I get shivvers just thinking about it.

The weather's done its Summer 08 thing, and the clouds fucked off at around half five. Quite nice now. Off to Peckham shortly, for beer and barbequed food (I never learn) then off up to London Bridge (maybe) for a soul night.

This Week

I watched a dispatches special on Monday, whilst waiting for Dragons Den. It was on 'sandwiches', and helpfully told me that the very one I'd eaten that day contained more fat than TWO DOUBLE MACDONALDS CHEESEBURGERS.

Granted that unlike the last time I freaked a bit about stealth fat I could have seent his one coming more, as the sarnie in question was a 'Oakham Chicken Ceasar Sandwich' which contained chicken, bacon, and lashings of some kind of Caesar-Mayo-Dressing-ting.

Still, I did do a bit of a double take, as I generally don't rank the humble sandwich as a fatty snack, though this is of course contingent upon what goes into it. Marks and Sparks (for it was one of their butties) rather archly responded to the report with a statement that the sandwich in question was 'an indulgent treat' which many customers enjoyed.

Yeah, sure I enjoyed it too, until I realised it was an indulgent treat... who wants to eat an 'indulgent treat' at their desk at work while filling out timesheets? I don't (I want to save that til the evening, when I retire to the pub to sink crisp pints of european lager). Anyway. Won't be getting that again.

Last night I got fined for not paying on the baking cattle truck that is the Number 12 'bendy' bus. It was 'one of those things'. I generally always pay on, but in this case was in a mad scramble for a seat, as riding the 12 back to Camberwell without one in this heat is like a scaled-down version of hell. Two stops down I heard "can I see your tickets and passes please" and remembered I hadn't swiped. Busted.

Went for a barbie at a friends house last night, which was nice, but drank too much Kronenbourg 1664. I wasn't even very drunk really, but I've a bizarrely disasterous hangover. I'm tired. My head is throbbing. My skin itches. There seems to be a grey film over everything I look at (including the hi-res mobile phone handsets I'm retouching today). I feel awful.

Roll on 6 o'clock...

Ewoks theme

Which one was the best though?





ps: I Know.

Blisters on my Fingers

On Friday I bounced out of work half an hour early to hurry over to the 'Blisters on my Fingers' print show at MC Motors in Dalston. My original scheme was to get the tube over to Old Street, which I realised was probably misconcieved when I got through the gates at Tottenham Court Road to remember that it's on a different branch of the Northern Line from my destination. Like, duh. I battled over to Bank station to find the platform Northbound resembling the final scene of Crocodile Dundee, but I managed to squeeze onto about the fourth train.

From Old Street I walked to the bottom of Kingsland Road, then caught the bus up to Dalston Junction, from where the Studios in question were but a short trot. As predicted there were 'bare heads' in attendance, nervously clutching umbrellas and Google Maps printouts, or at least I was. Guestlisted up, I was waved on in.

The exhibition's remit was: Thirty Five Artists, Thirty Five Prints, Thirty Five pounds, and given that that is a very low print run, £35 pounds seems almost absurdly affordable, especially when one considers that Lazarides gallery was knocking out Anthony Micalleff prints from an edition of 1000 at three hundred a go. Interestingly perhaps, the two most well known 'street artists' exhibiting (Eine and Pure Evil) had sold out within the hour, before I'd even arrived, and in some ways I thought their work was some of the less interesting on display. But then, I often find 'Street Art' a triumph of branding through repetition rather that any necessarily dazzling display of skill.

I'd also gone to see what Si Scott had on display. I'm a big fan of Si's work, or at least his typographic excercises. He and Non-Format pretty much wrote the rulebook on the deconstructivist, Illustrative typography that populates advertising and magazines these days. He basically does one thing, very well indeed. I'm less of a fan of his personal illustrations of creatures, examples of which can be found at Cosh gallery in Soho, and such a one was on display today, with a drawing of a swan's head, which though undeniably pretty, seemed slightly underwhelming to my tastes. I've seen calligraphic etchings from the 1800s where the subject is rendered in a series of 'Spencerian flourishes' by the artists hand, and these examples of Scott's work seem to fall into this tradition. Up close though, this one seemed a little fidgety and have something of the blotter pad about it, but whether that owed something to the process of digitally rendering it, or the gauge of the screen, who knows.

I bought a print by Steve Wilson, (like Scott, on the books at Breed London) and who does lots of stuff for an impressive range of musical and corporate clients. He perhaps falls into the body of slick 'digital' illustrators, of whom Jasper Goodall was an obvious, early exponent. What I do really like about Steve's work is his variation in style – he's managed to carve a niche for himself where his motifs are at least reasonably recognisable, yet still manages to experiment with what he does. I don't like everything he does, but some of it I like a lot, and moreover he reinvigorates his work regularly, which keeps it interesting. His print here was some straight-up Magic Eye-style eye-candy. More than that though, I thought it was among the most ambitious on display, considering the amount of colours used. Having dabbled with screenprinting myself I know aligning all those different screens can be a bit of a pain, and although the registration here wasn't bang on, his use of overprinting to achieve extra colours made a virtue of the process's shortcomings, by lending it a certain optical vibrancy where the inks hadn't trapped quite right.




























I was going to take some photos, but perhaps inevitably my camera ran out after one, pretty duff shot. There are some here on Flickr...

Anyway, having bought a print and mooched around with an Efes beer, I departed into the the tepid rain, to catch a train from Dalston central, over to Hackney Central, and thence to meet my friend Sam over near Broadway Market, where we went for a bite to Eat at The Dove, and a pint and pep-talk at the Cat and Mutton.

Awoke on Saturday morning, and headed out to get a parcel from the post office. Opened my front door to find blue Police tape, and the pavement at my feet caked with purplish, clotting blood where someone had been bottled the night before. Nice neighbourhood I'm living in.

Saturday evening went out to Wahaca, a Mexican retaurant in Covent Garden, which was good, though the service was a little patchy. Based on 'Market Food', my favourite bit of the meal was from the 'sharing' bit of the menu, which we had for starters. It was quite Tapas-y, and made my main – a steak burrito – seem a little leaden and brick-like in comparison.

After this we went to the John Snow, and then caught the tube to Elephant and Castle, where there was a Drum and Bass/Dubstep night on at Corsica studios – neither of which I'm a huge fan of, but they did have a metal detector on the door, which was reassuring.

Sunday, all quiet really. Made some Laksa for dinner, then got a bit panicky that the paste had been hanging about for a bit and might give me food poisoning. Seem alright now though. Back to work tomorrow. Musn't grumble.

Friday

Late Friday afternoon and I'm sat waiting for an Account Handler to forward me some images do drop into a document. After that. I can piss off.

Then off to Dalston, to the Blisters on my Fingers print show. I anticpate some kind of hipster bunfight as assorted trendoids (me included) queue to buy limited edition prints.

Can't pretend I don't want one mind...

Yay! just got the all clear – I'm outta here!

'Summer' part II

As mountains of Walls Soleros lie unmolested in chiller cabinets across the land, and mountains of knocked-off Kanye West style slatted shades dawdle on the racks on Oxford Street, I feel it's time to make a clean breast of it and just say it: "the weather this Summer sucks. Again."

Yes, friends, it's the annual weather whinge; but I promise I'll just get it off my chest and revert to traditional British stiff-upper-lipped stoicism.

But seriously, it does suck. Or blow. one of the two. My mate Ed was in town over the weekend, and whilst here had bought an Umbrella from the posh shop on New Oxford Street. He was very pleased, and I was slightly bemused, but the truth has started to dawn on me that he in fact now posesses the ultimate accessory for the drizzly English Summertime (though not so much the gusty British Winters, when the winds tend to decimate umrellas like chaff before the storm of some vengeful old testament god). How d'you like that?

It's possible I suppose, just possible, that we could be due an 'Indian Summer' but we're already over a week into July and it's still looking like Atlantis out there. In short, I don't think I'll be running to William Hill anytime soon.

SIGH