Facebook

Consider the following face related phrases:

"Cutting off your nose to spite your face"

"saving face"

"cliff face"

"Face from The A-Team"

Faces are clearly important to us humans.. after all.. we all have them! Some of us have books too. And now, as if this wasn't enough, we have Facebook.

It seems I'd only just rolled the badly designed corpse of Myspace off the end of the metaphorical pier of my life, than Facebook sauntered up, smiling, to replace one piece of social networking apparatus with another.

From having barely heard of it six months ago, it's stock has risen quickly, to the point that it impinges more upon my waking life far more than Myspace ever did. I signed up when an ex-housemate invited me to join and I wanted to see what her hairstyle looked like. And simultaneous to me joining, so seemingly did the rest of the population of the UK.

There have been times recently when, freelancing within a company, I've glanced around to see all the computer screens in my line of sight tuned to channel Facebook, like it was some kind of proprietory desktop software; or the company was under siege from a War Games style viral attack. In at least one instance one of the participants was the studio manager.
I read the other day that certain employers are now making pissing about on Facebook a sackable offence, and to be honest, I'm not entirely surprised. I know with some certainty that Facebook's cost to the UK advertising industry in terms of wasted man hours exceeds the GDP of certain small African countries, and compared to which the less addictive evils of alcohol and cocaine binges are as krill to the sperm whale in terms of orders of magnitude.

Everyone's talking about Facebook (including me, now, obviously). Facebook is the biggest 'water-cooler' topic since the invention of water-coolers. In fact, Facebook is itself a kind of giant digital water cooler, around whom people convene to talk about, well, very little actually. Probably Facebook, oh recursive of recursive ironies.

I'm not quite sure why Facebook has managed to beguile everyone to the degree that it has though. What you've got is basically a far less irritating Myspace that doesn't automatically look like a fridge door, but this is in itself contingent on the account holder not plastering it with all the assorted novelty doohickeys available, as many feel compelled to do. Aquarium? Check. Garden? Check. Novelty lunar vista? Check. In fact, once you burrow beneath the veneer of gimcrack concealing Facebook, there's actually precious little left over, and certainly nothing that didn't exist in some other form previously.

As a means of communication I find it irritatingly circuitous. I'm regularly sent an email telling me I have a Facebook message, when the email itself would have done. Especially when the message is usually along the lines of: "Hi! You alright?!" (yes, I'm bored, I was actually hoping you had something interesting to say). I think the main reason people use it so much is the option to write messages in full view of everyone else, wherein communication becomes conspicuous and ritual, and actual content atrophies. It's the digital equivalent of a mutually congratulatory backslap in the middle of a crowded club. When it comes to chat, Facebook is small-talk embodied.

But, wait a minute, it's a social networking site. I'd forgotten.. The problem here is that at least for me, it's usually confined to the handful of genuine friends I have and a wall of faces from my past I'd already mentally consigned to the out-tray.. which is to say I don't necessarily want them gurning out at me every time I log in. Admittedly I joined to re-establish contact with an old pal, but it's yet to result in anything as radical as actually meeting up in person, perish the thought. At best the rekindling of these kind of acquaintances represents a certain sentimental nostalgia for what might have been; at worst it's delusional. Facebook is like Christmas Eve in the pub back home every night, which is not an institution that merits increased frequency, in spite of what Brummie rockers Slade might have to say.

In one case recently, I got added as a friend by an ex-housemate from uni, who was a bit of a loner. Thing is.. I saw him in a club I was DJing in a few years back, and when I went up to talk to him.. he walked off with a drunken sneer. Possibly he hated my music. But now, he wants to reacquaint.. on Facebook.. like, fuck real life, let's do this through the internet, it's so much more now..

As for it being a personal profile space on the internet? Well fine, I suppose, only as with anything on the web (this blog included) people attempt to massage into life these avatars of themselves that are crazy with a capital K – usually by documenting hedonistic nights out in an unflattering photographic journal. And I am all for partying, but I'm also easily bored by bad flash photography of drunk people (especially when I'm one of them). I've heard various cautionary tales recently of prospective employers rejecting potential employees because of ill-advised Facebook press releases, but really I suppose I find it kind of odd that people are so eager to upload these fairly banal representations of themselves for all and sundry to see. Indeed, what are Facebook photo libraries but the modern equivalent of the fabled holiday slideshow of yesteryear, only with a potentially far vaster audience.

Ok so I'm a miserable git.. and probably not sufficiently 'down wiv the kids' enough to get this crap now I've turned thirty. And of course, blogging is itself probably the most emo thing anyone can do second to wearing eyeliner and self-harming. But really, it's the triviality of it all that gets me. Here they all are, the people from your past and present, friends, family members, colleagues, lovers, spouses, exes, crushes, all assembled in one place like some surreal drowning montage and what do they want to do? They want to 'invite you to be a pirate...' (sigh) And it has to be said, there is something fairly unwholesome about squinting at thumbnail pictures of your sundry acquaintances on a glowing screen, even as a substitute in their absence. As bizarrely compelling as it may seem, I struggle to see what value surveilling in this manner adds to a relationship.

No doubt if Jean Baudrillard was still alive he'd be having a field day with this shit.. The neccessity of 'demonstrating' communication with the reultant degradation in content, the re-forging of counterfeit friendships.. hyper-real mate innit. Unfortunately he's dead and you've got me.

I must concede however, in spite of my gripes, Facebook is probably here to stay in my life, at least until some other emergent web-fad sidles up to elbow it out of the way. Some very good friends seem to use it almost exclusively as a mode of contact, and I'm just about pragmatic enough to accept that. And just today, my cousin, who I've not seen since her wedding, eleven years ago, got in touch.. So it it is good for something, though I don't really, in fairness, anticipate seeing her in person anytime soon.

Saturday. Kennedy's

I woke up today and headed out to buy some breakfast.

The interenet has been abuzz recently with news that Kennedys—our local butcher—is shutting so I set out to see if they had shut yet. Seeing it was still open, I headed over in the hope of a) buying some of their reliably decent bacon and b) saying that I was sorry as a customer to hear they were closing.

The thing about Kennedys mind, is they were never exactly steeped in olde worlde charm, indeed, the woman in there ocasionally posessed a stare that would crack granite.. and it was business as usual today. Walking in I saw one single rasher of unsmoked bacon, quivering by itself on its little plastic tray. "Have you run out of bacon then" I enquired.

"Yeah, 'nfortunately" replied the woman in a bored monotone, studiously examining her fingernails and not even deigning to glance in my direction. Words of commiseration died on my lips, as I realised that quite possibly she didn't care either way. With an inward shrug I rotated 90 degrees and stalked out onto the busy main drag of Denmark Hill, perhaps never to return.

After that I popped into Rat Records (another Saturday haunt) where I bought a D'angelo CD.

They have an incredible poster just over the counter. It's about a metre square, and depicts a woman (I think) lying in a room whose walls are made up all this studio equipment, which on closer inspection are actually words. It looks like something you'd find in a seventies prog rock album, but when I asked was told it was a promotional poster released by Ninjatune for their artist Funki Porcini and apparently, that very poster was in Simon Pegg's character's bedroom in Sean of the Dead. Blimey.

Saturday evening. Just had a meal from Silver Lake. I think I'll stay in tonight, as I've some stuff to do, and places to go tomorrow.

Wednesday

And today we have naming of parts..

Work is toe-curlingly dull at the minute, and I'm having to keep reminding myself it winds up at the end of this week, or I'd probably throw myself out of a window.

I'm working on some internal corporate literature just now.. specifically Christmas recruitment guidelines. I've a fairly strong suspicion nobody reads this kind of crap anyway, and it'll just hang around a staff room somewhere until someone doodles a cock on it mid January and it gets swept into the bin.

I'm not dealing with the lack of daytime internet access any better either. I'm seriously considering taking along an itemised phone bill, to 'liven things up' at lunchtime.

Yesterday there were a phalanx of photographers camped outside Arcadia (Top Shop's headquarters) on Berner Street. I hung around for about five minutes, waiting to see if they were lying in wait to pap' everyone's favourite 'sphinx-like' super model Kate Moss emerging. No dice, and all I witnessed was a particularly tyre-necked paparazzo berating a motorcycle courier for getting in the way.

Today I walked past the Lazarides Gallery on Greek street, and there was a qeueue going round the block in the direction of Foyles. I later found out off the website it was for a run of Anthony Micalleff prints. Pictures On Walls also just sold out out of one print edition of 1000 of his, which were going for £300 a pop. £300,000? Not bad going really, though their website reassures us he was 'doing it for the kids.'

Anyway. The end of this week can't come quickly enough, which is a shame really, as I don't want to wish life away like this. I'd also quite like it if Summer finally vacated the premises and Autumn showed up. Contrary to what some might think, I actually believe we are experiencing an 'Indian Summer'.. it just so happens it's much the same as the rest of this year was.. grey and sweaty.

Thirty

Hmm. I turn thirty.. *glances at clock* today. Not that I'm neurotic about it or anything..

I'm working in-house on a major mens' high street clothing brand. It has to be said, I'm not a huge fan of their product. The other day one of the other designers wandered over and told me that they were giving away samples in the other room, so I followed the studio manager through and had a nose around.

There was basically a huge ball of assorted clothes taking up most of a small office, with assorted marketing types picking through them. There were some alright sweaters in there, but all of them, upon closer inspection, had had huge square swatches cut out of them, and looked like they'd been attacked by giant robot moths. Eventually a 'utility style' jacket was pressed into my mitts, which I accepted rather than look like a complete snob. Don't think I'll be wearing it much, all the same.

Work's fairly dull. Point of sale and flyers. Yawn. Can't use the internet, which I find really annoying. In truth there's enough to keep me busy, but not being able to get at my email at lunch is quite frustrating really. There's a single apple mac in the canteen which I could use at lunch, but given that this caters for the entire corporation, I suspect it's probably mobbed.

In other news, a Paul Insect print I bought using a sizeable chunk of a tax rebate from last year arrived this week from the Lazarides gallery on Greek Street. About time.. it only took a month and a half. Still, some gorgeous metallic inks going on there.

I just finished watching the film 'Ghosts' on Channel Four, about the cockle pickers who drowned in Morcombe Bay.. which was brilliant if exceedingly harrowing. I bitch about my work a fair old bit (see above) but I suppose we all should, in the words of William DeVaughn "Be Thankful for What You've Got" – there's inevitably always someone far worse off than you.

Right.. I'm off to bed, to read the last of my Edward Bunker novel.

Silver Lake

I've always really enjoyed Chinese food. Always seen it as something of a treat, ever since I was a child. But until relatively recently, went on something of a hiatus from eating it regularly. Why? It's can actually be quite hard to find decent Chinese food.

The reason as I see it is that many people in this country simply don't have very high expectations with regard to what we eat (though this trend does seem to be changing) and nowhere is this more evident than in your average high street takeaway, most of which – in fairness – exist to cater for a consensus of what is deemed acceptable. For this reason. there is probably little incentive for a business to strive for excellence, and standards remain consistently low.

This isn't just Chinese food of course. When trying a curry from Camberwell's 'Thai Fusion' (in its second but last incarnation) I got into a conversation with the manageress, who remarked with a shrug that the same menu was 'very popular' at her other restaurant in Surrey. For me, the food was remarkable only in its blandness. Thai food has been in vogue in Britain for a while now of course, but I still find it somewhat odd that there is a supposed national index of taste that exists independent of quality. Odd and slightly insulting, but then I suppose no-one can overestimate the taste of the Great British public.

High street Chinese usually tastes hugely insipid to me – typically appearing as some soggy veg and meat interred in a starchy gravy. It's usually massively over seasoned with salt, and this combined with the monosodium glutamate it's often steeped in can give you a food hangover that feels more like waking from a general anaesthetic. Chinese food doesn't usually benefit from hanging around too long (though leftover Chinese from the fridge is divine) which it often has done for reasons of expediency.

The exception which proves this rule for me is the Silver Lake on Camberwell Curch street, which I think is one of the most consistently excellent takeaways I've ever had the luck to live near. I've eaten there pretty much every week for the last year and a half, and have only felt slightly disappointed on one occasion (and everyone's allowed an off day, right?). I think it would be safe to say, it re-ignited my delight in oriental food, and reaffirmed my faith in Chinese cooking.

Because it is cooking as opposed to pouring ingredients in a pan or work, then heating and reheating. Somehow, the chef Sue and her small cadre of assistants manage, in spite of doing a brisk trade, to cook with a love and attention to detail that is all the more remarkable for its consistency.
What I find most satisfactory is that (as with most good cooking) the food is cooked with exactly the right amount of finesse to let the quality of the ingredients sing through.. and that's what you feel you're getting: Quality. And although a meal from the Silver Lake usually looks more than appetising, as a takeaway, they don't have the option of resorting to presentation to bolster their reputation, as a restaurant might. Nonetheless, I would easily rank their food on par with some of the better Chinese restaurants I've eaten at.
They're pan asian, which is I suppose a base-covering tactic to broaden their appeal, but although most of what they do is very decent, it's the Chinese I always go for.
I must confess, I know very little about authentic 'native' Chinese cooking, but here they represent a topography of flavours that seems worthy of such a large country, with a flavour suited for every taste and season. They do an amazing duck based dish, with plum sauce and soft fluffy chunks of potato that is just the thing on a cold autumn evening; fantastic piquante Szechuan prawns that are almost tempura-like, and their crispy shredded chilli chicken is my idea of what 'fast' food should be like: a tasty uncomplicated joy.
So why am I singing this hymn now? Because I'm getting withdrawal symptoms. They've shut for their annual holiday and like Dusty Springfield, I just don't know what to do with myself. I think they reopen today, thank god, but for the past couple of weeks I've been wandering round Camberwell, bleating piteously in my quest for decent salt and pepper ribs (Lamoon are pretty good, mind).
So if you live in the area, or not, and you haven't tried them – give them a go. Kenneth Branagh was a fan and so should you be. They're friendly and considering what they do, alarmingly good value for money.

Tales From Earthsea

I went and saw 'Tales From Earthsea' today at the Peckham Rye multiplex. I'd been meaning to catch it for a bit, but it doesn't seem to have got a very wide release, even by the relatively obscure standards of Japanese anime.

The screening time was slightly misconceived too – eleven in the morning only – from which I infer that the people responsible for programming at this cinema still see animation as the sole province of schoolkids and their bored, honour-bound guardians (which given the film's reasonably violent content, leads me to suspect that someone actually hasn't bothered to watch it).

It was damn cheap though, and at £2.99 (£2.99!) probably represents hands-down the best value I've ever got for my money in London, full stop. This might be the result of lower overheads. Walking through the multiplex felt a bit like going to watch a film on a ferry (in terms of decor at least) or the slightly threadbare local cinema of my childhood – the Savoy – which is probably as I write being panel-beaten into service as a block of 'luxury one and two bedroom flats'.

For those not in the know, this is an adaptation of bits of The Earthsea trilogy written in the late 60s and early 70s by science fiction author Ursula LeGuin. Briefly, it follows the adventures of a young wizard from his childhood as a goat farmer through to his role as Archmage of the school of wizardry, in the world of Earthsea.

I never really 'got' Harry Potter. Read a book and half and then was all like "yeahwhatever". This might be just because it is a franchise that inspires mania, and contrary-type-dude that I am, the minute people start unzipping their flys en-masse, I tend to lose interest. Besides which, it all seemed to be largely about public school life (albeit lightly garnished with the kind of sorcerous hokum The Great Soprendo would have been embarassed to fuck with) and public schools scare me more than nuclear war (what's that? a school, you LIVE in? no thanks). No, when it comes to books about apprentice wizards there's only one for me.

So, on paper an interpretation of her trilogy by Studio Ghibli sounds like just about the best thing ever. Leaving aside for one moment the fact that animation in Japan is not purely relegated to the status of 'kids' stuff', Studio Ghibli's output has in the past managed to encapsulate paradoxes such as being visually stylish without becoming anodyne, and communicating ideas without resorting to oversimplification. Children are more often not the central characters, frequently battling adversity, but the films themselves do not shy away from moral complexity by painting things in black and white.

So anyway.. the film itself? Is (drumroll)... pretty good. I'd already read some fairly mixed reviews of it which gave an indication it wasn't the masterpiece I might have hoped for.

Visually it's predictably gorgeous, with beautifully painted backdrops brilliantly evoking agricultural landscapes and crumbling cityscapes reminiscent of Laputa Castle in the Sky. I could get lost staring at these for hours, google eyed and dribbling. The animation is also up to scratch, if not quite as breathtaking as say, Spirited Away.

What lets it down however is the plot, however, which is loosely based around the last of the Earthsea books, The Farthest Shore, with bits cribbed from the subsequent, fourth book Tehanu, including it's titular character. It also borrows a major idea (the 'gebbeth') from the first book, but clumsily staples it to a different character.*

The problem is that it spends too much time identifying interesting motifs from the books, and too little time organising them into any properly coherent structure: and the result makes little sense either as an homage to the Earthsea story cycle or as a standalone entity. I could sense the confusion of the people I'd gone to see the film with regarding the use of 'true names', and the dragons seem to feature almost as a big scaly afterthought. Moreover, in spite of the wizard Cob looking impressively camp and evil (think Marilyn Manson crossed with Saruman) it never satisfactorily explains just what it is he's doing, and why the world is degenerating in response.

Something else which bothered me was that the creators seemed to have identified characters who'd fit into familiar Studio Ghibli style archetypes and implemented them accordingly, without necessarily paying homage to their true spirit in the stories. In this sense, it was the first time a Ghibli film felt overtly formulaic to me.

This all seems slightly odd, given Ghibli boss Hayao Miyazaki's eagerness to create a film about the books, but then, he was apparently busy on Howl's Moving Castle at the time approval came through from the initially reluctant Ursula LeGuin, and responsibility for the screenplay ultimately landed at the feet of his inexperienced son Gorō Miyazaki.** One can't help but wonder what it might have resembled had Hayao been in control, though In fairness, he has set the bar pretty high.

So, quite disappointing, but for all that, i'd still far prefer to watch this than any amount of formulaic computer animation about farm/circus/woodland animals on some tedious adventure. There are still some interesting ideas going on in there, and it represents something of a shift in tone for Ghibli in terms of tone, this being noticably darker than previous outings. Indeed, as limbs were severed and sorcerers immolated, I pitied the poor saps who'd brought their little cherubs along for some 'cartoon fun'.

*Which bearing in mind they use another visual cue from the book – Sparrowhawk's scarred face – all but amounts to an error in continuity. Only to geeks like me though, I suspect.

**Which according to Wikipedia, led in turn to a rift between the two.

Badgers and rats

Hmm, I do like a good badge.
































These arrived yesterday. Set of badges by Peter Blake from an edition of 2000, which isn't exactly low, but I like 'em. They look almost too nice to wear, but I think I probably will. They'd look great on the lapels of a drab-olive USMC field jacket.

On a less pleasant note, while I was boiling the kettle in my kitchen at around one o'clock this morning, a rat the size of a plimsoll scampered over my feet and scrabbled into a hole in the corner of the skirting below the sink.

I stood there stunned for thirty seconds breathing the word "fuck" over and over again. In truth this wasn't totally unexpected (the same rodent stuck its head round my bedroom door a few nights before) but it's pretty goddamn unpleasant.

From this you'd maybe surmise we like in some kind of dickensian slum round here, but it's actually just kind of seventies and threadbare. We do seem to have had quite a pest problem this year, and I'm not sure whether it's anything to do with the takeaway downstairs. Previously it was mice. This would seem to suggest they've been the victims of some kind of takeover by their bigger rodent cousins (unless what I saw was in fact a James Herbert-style mutant mouse).

This kind of cements my vague feeling that a move might be no bad thing in the new year. In the interim we need a cat really – a tough-yet-cute feline with a killer instinct. Aside from the fact that cats tend to pretty much wander where they want to anyway, a rent-a-cat style company could (quite literally in some cases) make a killing.

Bank Holiday

Well we got some sun for the Bank Holiday.

On Friday I went boozing at the Hermits with G-Unit. Saturday, got up and sat in Burgess Park reading. Saturday night was Jess's 30th birthday do, which was at LVPO on dean street. The V in the name is actually a U, as it's meant to be in the same style as Trajan style Roman inscriptions, and means 'wolf'. The bar's sign shows Rome's Founders, Romulus and Remus suckling at the belly of the wolf that raised them (don't know her name).

From this I wasn't sure what to expect. At best I hoped that drinks would actually be dispensed through the teats of a giant she-wolf suspended above the dancefloor; at the very least I expected some vaguely gothic motifs. Actually: none of the above. It was kind of tame, in a nice enough kind of way.

We got in around two and I rabitted on at Jess about 'relationships' while slurping down noodles.

Sunday was much the same as Saturday. Sat in Burgess Park again, and took some pictures of the squirrels and pigeons that gambol across every available surface there. Sunday Evening went to Ed's and sat on his roof for a bit, before retiring to watch the Grand Prix, and the fairly godawful Vinnie Jones remake of Mean Machine in his living room.

Today me and Ed caught the bus up to town. We caught the number 12, and someone with a very close resemblance to 'Mad' Frankie Fraser got on a few stops down on the Walwarth Road. If it was him it was the second celebrity spotting this week after Miquita Oliver off T4 who I saw in Soho during the week, walking through the arcade of smutty theatres by the market.

We disembarked at Parliament Square, before wandering through Hyde Park and up Park Lane, which I always remember represented almost certain bankruptcy on the Monopoly board, should a rival land there if you had hotels down. The Park Lane Hilton didn't disapoint in this respect: there were three Lambourghinis parked out front with Arabic number plates, so maybe a trio of Saudi princes was having their own pared-down version of the Gumball race.

From here we headed up to Notting Hill, so Ed could experience the crush. It was predictably busy. Even by London's standards Notting Hill Carnival is foolishly packed. Maybe it's just my personal standards, but I suspect Notting Hill is easier to tolerate if you have some form of rocket fuel, and as I'd opted not to drink today, my patience for it all was somewhat limited. Once you're in it's much harder to escape of course, as the movement of the floats necessarily inhibits the flow of human traffic. The police were out in force too, and it didn't feel particularly rude, as it has done in the past.

From here we mooched over to Little Venice, then down the canal to Paddington, thence catching the 436 back to Camberwell.

For tea I had a really underwehlming Chinese takeaway, from the place on Denmark Hill which isn't Lamoon or the one nearest the hospital. It was just bland, really. Under-seasoned Salt and Pepper Ribs, and Szechuan king prawns which didn't taste very interesting. Most disappointing.

No work this week. Other stuff to do, including compiling a list my top ten fiction and non-fiction books from the last six months for a website. Should prove interesting..

Printing

Best thing about this summer? No hosepipe ban.

Worst thing about this summer? I don't own a hosepipe.

I went and did some screenprinting today. It was in West London near Notting Hill (soon to be carnival land) and I noted that anodized aluminium fencing had already been erected around many of the flats – presumably to repel opportunists seeking a crafty corner to skin up or relieve themselves in (or on), mid fiesta. I suppose they're a temporary human equivalent of those spikes placed on the lintels of public buildings and monuments to keep pigeons off. God I'm glad I don't live in Notting Hill during the August bank holiday.

The print studio itself was on the Harrow road, which after the dizzying aura of satisfied wealth projected by Notting Hill's portfolio of cyclopean Georgian mansions, is pretty damn unassuming. Its range of businesses seeming to comprise for the most part of newsagents, halal butchers, solicitors and 'caffs', with nary a yummy-mummy style boutique in sight.

I went and bought a soup bowl of coffee and a salmon and cream cheese baguette in one of the latter, and read The Sun whilst waiting for my appointment. Apparently Sienna Miller might be seeing Rhys Ifans, and some (allegedly) venal referee once laid a patio for a football manager.

As for the printing session? I got an OK image out of it, but it was more of an excercise to reacquaint myself with the process. I've also got ink on my arms like smudgy prison tatts, which I feel pretty good about.

Back on some artworking gig tomorrow, which I'm less excited about, but it's only for three days.

Anthony Wilson, The Dulwich Horror, Flock

While nosing through the Observer on Saturday I read the obituaries section and did a double take when I read that Factory Records supremo Tony Wilson had passed away.

Growing up in Manchester Tony Wilson was someone who always seemed to be lurking in the wings on programmes like Granada Tonight, and even before I properly understood his part in the modern (read the) Mancunian music scene, he was a person who you were inevitably aware of.

My personal experience of the guy ran to when an ex-housemate was running the Manchester chapter of the now defunct NoWax night (a housemate who later, Ironically, turned out to have a very Anthony Wilson-like opacity with regards to all things debt related). The night had taken over a bar in Liverpool for an evening during an electronic music conference, of which Wilson was an attendee. Me and my brother were in the DJ booth dropping 90s boom-bap, when who should appear at our elbows but the man himself, clutching an iPod preloaded with what I can't quite remember, but was probably Factory related.

He was certainly an idiosyncratic character, and coming from a city where any affectations outside of the basic templates of plastic gangster/real gangster/working class hero could catch you lumps upside the head, certainly had his detractors. The casting of a prattish Steve Coogan as him in 24 Hour Party People seemed a masterstroke, but was, for all Wilson's flamboyance not the whole story. Manchester certainly owes him a debt of gratitude for making it a more interesting place, and helping put it on the musical map .

Art

Also in the Guardian in the listings was a paragraph on an exhibition at Space Station Sixty Five Gallery in Dulwich called 'The Dulwich Horror – H.P. Lovecraft and the crisis in British Housing'.

The name of the exhibition is a play on the title of one of Lovecraft's stories – 'The Dunwich Horror' and on paper this sounded almost too good to be true. Ever since my teens I've been mildly obsessed with the writer, so an exhibition welding his bizarre pantheon of alien gods to the current rampant housing market certainly demanded investigation. So I jumped on the 40 and headed off.

Unfortunately, it was all distinctly underwhelming. The gallery itself was shut and the exhibition merely consisted of a few posters tacked in the windows, showing the artwork itself in situ. The art itself consists of a few paintings of Deities from Lovecraft's Cthulu myth cycle (Cthulu himself, Azathoth etc) which had been attached to estate agent's 'For Sale' signs.

The posters and photography were a bit naff, the paintings so-so, but beyond that, for all it's cuteness, I couldn't quite see what the marriage of the current British housing shortage to the writings of a 19th century horror writer was trying to articulate, and nor could I quite kick the suspicion that the starting point for the whole endevour was the wobbly titualar pun.

I actually went and checked out one of the paintings close up, where it is attached to a sign outside a pet shop on Camberwell Road. It's of the cephalopod-visaged lord Cthulu, and it hasn't weathered the elements very well, having warped and cracked. Anyway. Quite charming, hardly essential.

I also went and scoped the new exhibition at Camberwell's Great Expectations gallery. Entitled Flock, it's worth investigating, as it represents something of a departure for the venue.

Great Expectations usually deal in more traditionally representational art and prints, and I have in the past found the portfolio of artists they represent slightly patchy; veering as it seems to between the engaging and/or contemporary, and the chocolate-box-insipid. This is I suppose an inveitable result of the identity crisis between the actual gallery out back, and the one-stop frame-and-card shop up front.

By contrast this show has a decidedly conceptual thrust, with an eclectic profile of young, hip artists. Helene Kazan's almost vorticistic architectural meditations are fascinating, Richard Cramp's hallucinatory vignettes humorous and unsettling, and James Lee's bling black and gold vinyl halftones make for slick eye-candy. There's some other interesting stuff in there too.

I'm working out east this week in Shoreditch. Looks to be quite a patchy one. All quiet today, then potentially stacked out tomorrow. Time will tell.

Somerfield

I hate Somerfield. Somerfield is just wrong. Unholy, even. It shouldn't exist, but it does.

Everything about Somerfield seems calculated to offend, in some measure. To make buying groceries just that little bit more troublesome than it should be. Less choice. Greater expense. More insult. More injury. If shopping is a modern drug, then what the FUCK is Somerfield? Aversion therapy?

Whisper to yourself the words "Somerfield" and the word evokes a bucolic pastoral watercolour: golden fields rippling with corn, sun dappled streams where otters frolic and fat trout dance forever, green rolling fields studded with thatched cottages, the smack of leather on willow etcetera etcetera.

The reality could hardly be more different, as Somerfield represents a uniquely bleak facet of modernity: the high street shop that no-one likes. Wheras the general populace emoted the faintest pang of nostalgia for the passing of C&A, the demise of Somerfield would not cause the merest ripple in the dark waters of its demise, so utterly charmless is the franchise.

Somerfield are so unremarkable, they can't even make a virtue of being unexceptional. Everything about Somerfield is so woefully half-arsed it's a small miracle (or rather more significant curse) that they still exist. Tesco might mercilessly promote its own bleak corporate hegemony, but it does at least exhibit a certain brutal style as it stalks the land, crushing all local shopkeepers before it like the tanks in Terminator 1.

Style of course, is somethething Somerfield just doesn't do, the Somerfield brand being itself ugly enough to give the London 2012 Olympic logo a run for its money. Seriously, they'd have probably got a better job done if they'd handed a paintbrush to an elephant. Picked out in a hideously contrasting aquamarine and custard colour scheme, seeing the Somerfield logo is a bit like someone spashing an eggcup full of sick directly onto the surface of each eye: it stinks and burns simultaneously. In fact, it's a bit like the beginning of the Bunuel/Dali collabo, Un Chien Andalou where the eye gets razored apart, only it actually happening to both your eyes simultaneously.

I suspect the rationale (if indeed there was one) in making the brand look so self-consciously dowdy and unlovely, was to promote the notion of thrift. "Shit logo equals value" runs the reasoning (and sings the sign) though this is a fallacy: Somerfield is about as good value as coke in the West End, and "Shit logo equals shit everything else" might be a more truthful maxim.

For Somerfield aint cheap. About the same as Sainsburys, in fact, only massively less pleasant to frequent. In spite of this however, as someone observed to me, it's all but impossible to spend over fifteen quid in there, as there's absolutely nothing worth buying, whatsoever. Their selection is terrible, and what they do stock they don't carry enough of. Visiting the store some evenings is like wandering through a trading outpost in the grip of a withering nuclear winter. The frightened shoppers outnumber the actual produce, and eye each other fearfully.

Some strange counter-intuition seems to govern the system of buying at Somerfield, wherby they whittle down their lines according to merit and desirability. Simply put, anything you might want to buy, Somerfield probably won't want to sell, and if they do stock it, they'll probably stop quite soon. They seem hell-bent on a mission to vend only the most hum-drum of wares at a fairly substantial markup. England is renowned internationally for having crap food, and though I was kind of hoping this notion had been reversed what with having Fat Tongue and Ramsay as our culinary ambassadors, having the likes of Somerfield on our team is surely the PR equivalent of fatal friendly fire. One can only hope that if a tourist actually wandered into a branch of Somerfield they might mistakenly assume they'd chanced upon a wormhole that had deposited them back in Communist Russia during the cold war.

For whosoever it is that ultimately pilots the good ship Somerfield seems to regard anything above the benchmark of the pre-roasted chicken counter as faintly bourgeoise. If I was to envisage the Somerfield of a bleak, Ballard-esque concrete dystopia years hence, it would contain five things: A skip full of chicken scraps, a hopper full of white onions, an aluminium silo dispensing milk, shelves and shelves of white bread, and enough lager to sink the Bismarck. And everything would cost around fifty quid.

You might have gathered I hate this franchise. True enough. The manifestation of a Somerfield in your vicinity is like the appearance of a cracked paving-stone or some visually cumbersome public art. A canker on the civic backside to be afforded as wide a wide berth as possible. Sometimes that just isn't possible, however. Especially if, like my local branch, they employ the invasive tactic of stuffing flyers daily through your front door at a virtually exponential rate: brutally ugly propoganda extolling the supposed value of their 'megadeals'. I did for a while consider collecting all these leaflets, assembling them into a papier-mache reconstruction of the store, then burning it in protest, but I then thought about my 'carbon footprint', and how a much more expedient solution might be to torch the shop itself (that's a joke, by the way).

I think what bothers me the most is that it is so bad on almost every level, and they make absolutely no effort to sort any of it out. Understaffed, understocked, poor selection, poor quality, poor store layout, overpriced.. I could go on.

Ok so all supermarkets are pretty evil and are all at this moment probably queueing up to whack the devil off, but at least they have the decency to attempt some sleight of hand to convice you otherwise – even if it is just paying Bob Hoskins 50 grand to say "Every little helps" in his warm but gravelly voice whilst they mercilessly crush farmers into the eroding topsoil.

Somerfield can't even be bothered doing this, for apart from their execrable direct mail I have yet to witness any Somerfield advertising. No, Somerfield's gameplan is the tried and tested tactic of bum-rushing an area: plonking a store down and hoping for the best, or, to put it another way 'if it gets enough people's way someone will eventually go inside and spend something'.

This is either brutally honest, really stupid, pretty damn insulting, or the last two. if I was to render Somerfield's hapless doctrine as a tagline, it might run thus.

"We're shit, you're shit, we're all shit, so let's eat shit and pay loads for it"

I'd like to say in light of all this that that I exercised freedom of choice and gave Somerfield a wide berth, but the worst thing about it is that I do still use my local branch, as it's the only supermarket in the vicinity and Sainsburys is a good mile or so away over a hill. I do try to avoid it though.

There is much talk these days of private equity buying out (or attempting to buy out) large firms such as Boots, and bringing all their merciless financial acumen to bear in turning the corporation in question into a cash-cow with distended knockers – milking it for all it's worth for a quick buck. Much that has been said is critical of these corporate reivers, but for the lame duck that is Somerfield their intervention cannot come soon enough. Will someone please tell these idiots how to have a piss up in a brewery, or could they hurry up and go into liquidation.

The Journey Home

Back in England then.

I was awoken on Sunday by the insistent shriek of my mobile phone alarm clock. Awoken from a worrying dream where Jimmy Saville – armed with a sub-machine gun, and trademark cigar champed between his teeth - was rounding up the contestants of this years Big Brother in a courtyard for summary execution. I haven't even watched it this year, so I don't know what all that was about.

I'd had about three hours sleep, having been in a poky Barcelona soul bar until half three, dancing cheek to jowel with the beautifull people, drinking Estrella and smoking Spanish bonded Marlborough Lights. I felt shit.

Catching the packed shuttle bus I bought a single to the airport ("Ida, por favor") and stood hunched in the aisle feeling like a crayola sketch. The tune playing as I disembarked at the airport was "who can it be" by Men at Work.

The airport was a pain in the ass. Have you ever hear the philosophical paradox which says:

"A rock is thrown at a tree. If the distance between the thrower can be halved, then halved again, then halved again, and so on and so for infinity, how does the rock ever reach the tree?"

Barcelona's Terminal 1 felt like a lazy experiment to work this out*. Qeueue after qeueue after qeueue, which seemed to diminish in magnitude after the initial check in, but still make boarding the plane seem an ever more remote prospect. When one of the Easyjet check in desks abrubtly closed, there was even a qeueue to join a cue, as people from the now defunct qeueue tried to assimilate themselves into the next qeueue up. I thought there was going to be a riot.

The final qeueue was pehaps the most agonising; standing in line with the other grockles waiting to be spirited across the runway to the plane itself. In front of me a family was having a loud screechy argument in cockney accents, which was at least some consolation for missing the Eastenders omnibus.

The flight was only two hours, though this being Easyjet there wasn't even a free mint when my eardrums felt like they were going to implode on descent. A bacon butty cost 8 Euros, and I only had three left.

Stanstead felt like Barcelona airport in reverse, though this being England, the qeueues were better organised. I caught the shuttle train from Stanstead to Liverpool street. One stop in it halted and the driver announced over the tannoy that the train was terminating because there was no driver. That's when I was really sure I was back in England. The train we switched to was stopping at every station in Essex, so two clicks down everyone swarmed across to the adjacent platform to get back on the Stanstead Express, in the hope of arriving before nightfall.

From Liverpool Street I caught the 35 back to Camberwell, where it disgorged me on the pavement outside MacDonalds where that guy got stabbed the other year. Walking down the Church Street nothing seemed to have changed. Assorted waifs and strays drinking white cider, a guy in a Dolce and Gabbana shirt and Tupac Style bandana asking for change, the Thai Fusion shut for refurbishment again. As I fumbled for a key to my front door, a chinese guy stood there smiled at me. Thinking he knew the people from the takeaway downstairs I bid him hello, wheupon he produced a bag of DVDs for my perusal. Stumbling in I slammed the door after me. Whoever referred to the best bit about travelling being arriving home was surely referring to the relief one feels when it's all over.

No work this week, so I'm busying myself with personal projects. Was due to meet up with some old uni friends, but it didn't actually happen in the end. In a minute I'm going to put my phone on silent and go to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream, though hopefully not about gun wielding ex Top of The Pops presenters.

*It obviously does hit the tree though, as I'm writing this. And the rock always does hit the tree.

?uestlove. Casa Battlo.

I went and saw ?uestlove from The Roots last night, at the Apollo in Barcelona.

It was pretty good. He was certainly the best DJ I've seen whilst abroad, though given that the roll call here only includes him and baseball-cap-toting hard-house-gorgonzola merchant Dave Pearce at Kavos in 2005, it's perhaps not the accolade it might at first seem.

Today I went and saw the Gaudi designed Casa Battló townhouse. If I was to say 'someone had a nice house there, then' that would be something of an understatement, understatement not being something Gaudi excelled at, and nor the people who scripted the audio guide by the sounds of it, where they refer to the house itself as:

"The most emblematic work of the most universal genius of all time"

and a fireplace on floor one as:

"The most original fireplace ever built"

Shortly after which I stopped using the plastic speaking shoehorn given me in the foyer which dispensed these bold claims, and instead explored the house on my own terms.

To be fair, it is pretty damn impressive, and looks kind of like where the Snorks would live if they read Wallpaper and could afford it, with a kind of bio-mechanical marine feel to the fittings throughout. If HR Giger did a loft conversion it might look vaguely similar (albeit kinkier).

Annoyingly, on the main floor they had these huge floor-to-ceiling grey vinyl banners in each room, that succeeded in obscuring about twelve square metres of the actual architecture without actually adding anything to the exhibition. That and the sub-ambient 'muzak of the spheres' being piped from somewhere could quite easily have been dispensed with. Otherwise, it was great. Better than a walk round Ikea anyway.

I might go and watch a film on a hill his evening. It'll be in Catalan though if I drink enough this probably won't matter so much.

And the weather here is..

Scorchio. Blazio, whatever. In fact, I went out and bought some factor 30 yesterday to stop my skin's four colour breakdown including 100% magenta.

The tops of my forearms are now a nice brown colour.. still a little white below. I remember as a kid on holiday holding my arms up parallel with my eyes and imagining they were small sharks, with a dark topside and pale underbelly.

There are clouds around mind. This place is temperate by Spanish standards. I saw a weather forecast the other day, and literally everywhere in Spain had a blazing sun icon, apart from here near the Pyrennese, where it was mixed up with the odd cloud.

Been seeing the sights. Barcelona is one charming city; beautiful in bits though it does smell. The standard of design in branding and advertising lags quite significantly behind that of the UK, but if people here are too busy worrying about wholesome things like food, family, and not having to work in the afternoon, who am I to point out that an 80% distort on some headline type is ugly as sin.

They're a proud old bunch round here though.. don't actually like speaking Spanish that much at all. When I lamely said "no hablo Espanol" to a guy in a shop the other day, he responded rather forcefully with "you mean you don't speak Catalan!". Oops.

Went and tried to catch sunset over the city last night and missed it, though did get to walk past the old Olympic stadium, where they were holding some 15th anniversary type event. My personnal memories extend to sitting watching it in Matt's room with Matt and Jim the cat in the summer of 1992 while the sun shone outside. That and the Freddy Mercury tune of course.

On the way back down dropped in to a gallery sponsered by a Spanish bank (Caixa Catalunya?)It was open late and completely free, and they had an exhibition of paintings and engravings by Hogarth.. most of which I've seen in textbooks and slideshows, but never up close. Excellent stuff. 'Gin Lane' and 'Beer Street' (the first public health information posters?) were there in print form, along with a series called 'The Four Stages of Cruelty', and 'Marriage a la Mode' as etchings and paintings. 'The Rake's Progress' also featured, though not the paintings, which I presume are still under lock, key, and panel in the John Soames house in Holborn.

Off to the beach later. After cofee and a croissant somewhere.

Barcelona

I'm in Barcelona.

I got here around half nine yesterday, after a three o'clock start (I had to catch a train from Liverpool Street at half four).

Jamie Oliver was mooching round the departure lounge at Stanstead Airport, with posse in tow. No idea where he was going, but it looked family orientated.

Spain seemed depressingly overcast when I touched down,and at first I feared I'd brought the weather with me, but today it's blue skies with the odd cloud in the distance.

I'm typing this on Dunc's laptop, having just sat out on his balcony reading a couple of Michael Moorcock articles in a battered paperback for an hour or so. I might go to the beach shortly. I could really go for a coffee as well.

Still feeling puffy-eyed and generally quite sleepy. Don't intend to do a
huge deal this holiday other than read, lie about, eat, drink, and swim. And take some photographs.

Smell

Smell is the most evocative of all the senses, I think. The one most likely to conure up a particular memory, a sensation of time, of place.

The place I used to work in Manchester was on Richmond Street, parallel to Canal Street. A few doors up from us there was the back of a restaurant called Velvet, and from a fan here issued cooking fumes from the kitchen. It always smelt like barbecued meat, and it was odd how when walking past, even in the depths of winter, I'd be transported, momentarily, to my mum and dad's patio in some unspecified summer.

A similar thing happened today. As I walked up Camberwell Church Street, the sun peeked fleetingly from between the clouds, and just then, I caught a whiff of chips cooking from the open doors of The Hermits Cave. For a moment, I was walking down the street in Kavos with Ade and Dunc in 2005, where the aroma of fried breakfast vied for your attention with the roar of mopeds, piloted by lobster-red lads with buzz-cuts.

It's been happening quite a lot recently. The merest thing sets it off. The faint pong of seafood at the Chinese Supermarket, the smell of cigarette smoke chiming with a spoon's clink on a cup, and I'm elsewhere – usually it must be said, somewhere sunnier and drier. Recently I've been feeling very nostalgic for other times and places, and feeling pretty restless in general of late. Another week in work, then I have a weeks holiday in Barcelona. I can't wait. After that? who knows. I think I need to shake up my life. Do some different things. Change is important I feel.

It's been a quiet weekend. Went for a meeting on Saturday morning about some design work for a charity festival. Unpaid gig, though I'll probably get tickets for the events, and fingers crossed, some creative fulfillment. I wandered across town afterwards, over to the city, where a road was closed to film a car chase sequence for National Treasure 2.

Last night was pretty quiet. Went for a few drinks with Ade at the Sun and Doves, to be joined later by Rachael. The Sun and Doves is one of the few bars I've ever been to that manage to curate art exhibitions effectively (most places don't seem to have a clue) and they've had some excellent paintings by an artist Called Jo Lewis for the last month (though I see the exhibition ends today).

















They're watercolours, washed by the ebb and flow of the Thames to introduce an element of chaos: spinning drips of paint into bruise-like nebulae of colour. The combination of errant stuttery line and soft clouds of colour reminded me of Gerald Scarfe and Futura 2000 in equal measure. Excellent.

Work tomorrow. Yawn. I know I'm going on about it a bit but this weather sucks hard.. right now if feels like all of London is trapped beneath a wet duvet.. all warm and stale.

Here's hoping Barcelona keeps warm and dry for me.

Card Art

Hey, does anyone like my installation?

It's called 'Fucking Waste of Cardboard' (2007) and it's currently on show in my living room for the next twenty minutes or so, until I chuck the lot in some black bin liners and leave it by the front door. The swirly blue 70s carpet is a comment on the vagaries of hyper-accelerative consumer culture. And rented accomodation.

It actually doesn't look as bad as it did, now I've spent the duration of The Love Movement ripping it up into manageable bits then rolling them up. Before it was several acres of cardboard – the flat-plan of two tardis-like boxes containing picture frames I ordered a while back.

This wasn't the worst of it either, as both came wadded with a duvet sized bolt of supersized bubble wrap straight off the set of Land of The Giants. Each was the size of a pastie (or pattie, whichever your preference) and rather than proving vaguely soothing, when popped, sounded like a gun shot. I spent one saturday morning slicing them open, so as not to get the police round.

The irony is, the glass in both frames turned up hopelessly shattered anyway, making the whole shebang an even more ludicrous waste of packaging. Ordering A1 sheets of glass in the post (even by special delivery) is not something I'm going to be doing in the future.

Addiction

I sometimes notice homeless people on the streets seem to have their individual outfits which (for quite obvious reasons) they wear again and again. There's the grizzled old red faced man, who sits swilling super strength cider from a can, on the steps of the solicitors opposit Camberwell Green. He's always wearing his trademark filthy Bench beanie hat.

By bringing this up I'm not trying to pen a Vice fashion article. I just think there's something quite poignant about this, these clothes that the homeless quite literally live in. Sometimes I'll see an old gent, wearing a suit shiney with filth, augmented with a palimpsest of burns, tears and stains, and wonder: Is that the last thing you put on before things fell, utterly, apart? The last suit in your wardrobe you put on the day your landord changed the locks on you; the suit you were wearing the day you parked your car up by the sea and kept on walking. Perhaps not. But it sometimes seems to me that as a second skin, each rip is a scar that marks successive bumps down the crooked staircase to hell.

Last weekend I went out in the morning to buy some bread from Sophocles Bakers. On my way back I spied two girls and a man outside Paul's Olive Shop. I say girls – they were in their late 20s or early 30s. They were gobbling water melon and spraying pips at the ground, alternately swigging at glasses of rose wine. At first I took them for people wallowing in the aftermath of a nights clubbing, but there was something really odd about the tableaux.. as I turned to watch them stumble across the road in the direction of The Flying Fish I realised that they were obscenely drunk, completely shitfaced, slurring, bumping into one another in a kind of spastic dance. In terms of dress they were quite presentable however, and I couldn't quite work out whether they were just hardcore boozers, or people toasting a deeper troth with alcohol, taking the first tentative steps on a path infinitely longer and more folorn than that to the off-license.

I found this thought unsettling. You see the same faces on the streets drinking away the pain, but once they've slipped off the bottom rung it seems hard to track orders of magnitude in the arc of their terminal decline, as all niceties, nuances and graces are ground away by the bitter friction of the street, to be discarded like old cans. As someone moderately obsessed with appearances, this reflexive slump seems like the ultimate gesture of despair, and to see someone swaying at the crossroads leading there is not a happy sight.

Alcoholism seems like a ruinous disease, which is hard to pick out in the fuzzy penumbra of our boozy national culture, but then many addictions, left unchecked, are witheringly degrading. Yesterday a smack-head (I suppose) came into the carriage I was in on a train begging. She was truly a pitiful sight: face a map of scabs, arms visible beneath tracksuit sleeves garlanded with trackmarks. She looked somewhere between 18 and 40. She came as a supplicant, tremulous voice wavering for cash. "sorry love" I said, uncomfortably. The business-man opposite me sat watching, blanky. She swiftly moved to repeat her pitch in the next carriage, but after a short pursuit was apprehended by the ticket inspector, and bounced off at the next stop into the not-so-welcoming arms of the British Transport Police.

I read on t'internet the other day that Heroin is, in itself, not that harmful to the human body. Far more damaging is the shit it's cut with, or sharing needles, or simply the fact that when you're into Heroin, you're not into very much else.. such as eating, washing yourself etc. There's a bit I remember from The Naked Luch, where William Burroughs talks about being off his face on smack, content to stare in rapture at the end of his foot for hours. Heroin it would seem, is not a thing to do if you want to do things; lest they be things related to the feverish topping up of your pay as you go contract with the brown stuff.

Against this yardstick many addictions seem relatively benign. My personal fetish for 12 inch circles of black plastic has waned somewhat recently, but even so only caused mild structural damage to the floors of my parents house in its sheer vinyl tonnage. Having said that I read that the hip hop producer Marco Polo goes digging for records wearing a surgical mask, in case a crate should be booby-trapped with asbestos, but that seems more an occupational hazard than anything else.

'Summer'

So, nice June we had there eh? Quite often I've awoken recently, and peeked out the window to see a crystal clear blue sky, only for it vanish a couple of hours later, obsucred behind uniform shapeless grey clouds, clogging the horizon like discarded carrier bags.

I hate this weather. Coming from Manchester I'm used to most things wet and inclement, but I think I'd choose just about anything over grey and muggy: rain, wind, cold, storms, snow, hail, giant radioactive crayfish strafing London with lazers from their eyes..

It feels like such 'pregnant' weather to me; an anticipation of something else. Everything feels so close and tense. I find myself itching for something to happen that might dissipate the charge in the air, even if it's just some rain. There is the odd window in the clouds, reminding you there's a sun up there, and when its rays get through, everything seems glorious for about five minutes, until the next bank of cloud shuffles along to park up the space.

I read in the paper yesterday that this is the weather predicted for most of summer as well, so better get used to it I suppose. How dismal.

Sainsburys

I went to West Hampstead last night, to Will and Sam's, along with Ade and Rachael, where we ate Jewish food (chicken, bagels, chicken liver pate, pickled cucumbers) drank (red wine, beer) and stood smoking on Will's Balcony staring at the rainswept glory of London at night below us; the London Eye in the distance picked out in the red and blue colourways of BA, trains shunting through Kilburn aglow.

Crossing the river to north London was a quest of epic proportions however.. a bit like Escape From New York minus eyepatches. Having encountered complete gridlock, we eventually gave up trying to drive at Victoria and ditched the car, plumping instead for the tube, which was itself fit to bursting. Perhaps inevitably, the Victoria Line was down, which entailed jumping on the District Line to Sloane Square, thence north on the Picadilly to the Jubilee at Green Park. All in all a journey that should have taken forty-five minutes probably took the best part of two hours.

The journey back was much less frought however, and we managed it in something around an hour. Disembarking the tube at Green Park, and walking past Buckingham Palace to the car. I got in, read, and went to sleep.

Today I went to consumer paradise.

Today I went to Sainsburys in Dulwich. More out of curiosity than anything else.. I was walking past and thought I'd have a look in.

It was a revelation. Wheras the Somerfield(s) of Camberwell are some of the bleakest places in the UK outside Hull, the Dulwich Somerfield is almost utopian in its allure. Vast and suffused with light, it resembles how I imagine the hangar of an Ian M Banks starship might look, and I could, upon entry, all but pick out angels with strollers cavorting at the extent of my vision, in the aisles untold miles away.

Taking a walk round Dulwich feels a bit like walking round the interior of an 80gb iPod, everything is so pristine and aspirational. Sometimes in the Somerfield in Camberwell in the evenings, you're lucky if you can locate a single potato and some cheap, bloodshot chicken goujons to fight over with knives. Here all matter of wonders were on display. Want Oak Veneer CD cases?: Check. Want glass and chrome finish soap dispensers?: you got it.

I wandered agog, not knowing where to look, in the midst of this grocery porn. The meat counter was futuristic, a fog bank of super chilled air rolling across the morsels on display like dry ice. Further along, I paused in front of a rack of Jamie Oliver's own brand merchandise, noting the sparing design, left aligned sans-serif typeface* and bright optimistic pantone swatches that denote a socially ambitious brand.

Across the way: A wall of Pasta, imported from Italy. But no ordinary pasta, for it was so hugely outsized each individual pasta shell resembled a Claes Oldenburg sculpture.. they were like giant clams, and probably cost enough to warrant the inclusion of individual pearls, but no matter, the spectacle itself sated certain appetites I had long forgotten.

I bought relatively little.. some yoghurt, fruit juice, corn-fed chicken and some Laksa Paste by Ruben Solomon, which I never see anywhere, and consequently revere. The checkouts were like runways, moving walkways for food.. the transaction itself painless. I stumbled out onto Dog Kennel hill feeling like I'd participated in a promotional tour of a shopping centre in Rivendell. It even has a Starbucks ferchrissakes.

I'll be going back at some point, I should think. For all its self-conciously dowdy personna, Somerfield is brutally expensive, so there's little to choose between them there. It's a little further away, true, but then so is heaven, and here Sainsburys has the advantage of actually existing. The gates of this consumer paradise are open to all who can afford it, and it looks reassuringly expensive.

*Lubalin Graph, I think.