Birthday events

Nothing like going to see Black Midi play Wembley, or eating in a Michelin starred restaurant, rather more low key but no less enjoyable - by my reckoning anyway.

Tea and presents at 6:30, featuring very cool grey astrachan slippers - not often in one sentence - cool and slippers, but they are. 

Mini road trip/psychogeographical exercise - looking back at our house (on a hill) from an equally elevated section of forest that we see from our bedroom window; after which, sweet chestnut collecting/dog walk in said very lovely woodland. 

                                                    Our house - somewhere on that hill line.

                            

                                             very old sweet chestnut tree and less old husband

Lunch in a genuine 'le routier' truck stop restaurant - three/four courses, if you can fit cheese in too, for sixteen euros a head. It was recommended by our electrician, and he was right - super friendly service, copious food, too copious - the dog will be happy tomorrow lunchtime.

Back home for a post-lunch snooze, followed by a trip to the dump (whoopee) to take a car load of smashed up ceiling plaster; and a visit to Aspire, one of our amazing local recycling emporiums. Result, two winter coats of an excellent make, CDs inc a limited edition of The Pet Shop boys, grey wool trousers, and a complete 1970s Breton dining table and chairs, delivery of said furniture, all for around a hundred euros.

Hoxton and Jarvis would be proud of us - (main Londonia characters). 

Our lad sent me a hand made birthday card featuring his many mad facial expressions. Love it.

Loads of lovely birthday texts and phone calls. Thank you lovely friends and family. 

Now off to see a film. I might even have an ice cream. Or not. Lunchtime is very much still with me, plus the birthday cake Mark made.

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P.S: we did see the film (One battle after another), and I didn't sleep much after it. Incredible production by Paul Thomas Anderson - he of the brilliant, There will be Blood, and weirdy, creepy, hilarious, Magnolia.

I think Leonardo De C utterly excelled himself as the hyper wound up, booze-infested, bomber with a big heart. The whole cast were amazing, and some of the road shots were just . . . well, that's why I didn't sleep. Hyper adrenalin rush!

Local exploration on a Saturday in early autumn

Our son has recently moved into a small house in a previously unknown to us town in an area not renowned for stuff to do. At first glance the town appeared drab, the surrounding area without great interest but during this past weekend we embarked on lengthy wanderings which proved otherwise - nothing that guide books would rave about, except one magnificent small-scale chateau we came across during the small road trip on Sunday. 

Saturday was a long meander from the door step, though the town, along a road that follows the railway line, then part of the voie vert a newly constructed bike and walkers path made from a disused line, back along the road, and into the hilly section of the town where we could look across the valley to the house where we started out from. 

As ever on these observational walks there was much to note: monumental factory buildings, architectural details, water towers, faded shop signs, characterful passing dogs and front gardens of all categories - gnome-filled, obsessively clean with coloured gravel and little else, overgrown insect paradises . . .

Hmm, new book: front gardens 

Could be a project . . . s'pose it's been done, possibly many times.

Typical haphazard nest building of the coloured dove

The cutest police headquarters, ever

Ex flower shop and imaginative roundabout

The voie verte

my desire

a pretty wild 1950s café floor

a fine 1970s (?) water tower

Resonant documentary on London

By John Rogers.

Not London Bridge, Crown jewels, Buck House, galleries, Oxford Street, or anything else listed on a tourist trail - a study of Nick Papadimitriou's everyday quiet investigations of the overlooked areas of Suburbia and the no-man's land edge of London/start of countryside. Also, added bonus of interviews with will Self, Iain Sinclair and Russell Grant - no women 'deep topographers' however - yet. (I feel another book coming on).

As a urban wanderer I found this touching, fascinating and inspiring.

Taking the time

just to look - and refresh the other senses.
I have a fairly busy morning - post office, emails, phone calls, housework, editing, etc, and I nearly didn't join Mark on a dog walk, but I did, just to the point where I doubled back across the fields and they continued onwards. As a 'psychogeographic' nerd, I love to see familiar objects including people (and dogs) from far away in relation to myself.
So, I stood, or rather, leant into a sturdy cypress hedge out of the brisk northerly wind and waited for them to come into view along the sandy track that leads into the hills. I must have missed them, or they took a different path so I didn't see the figure of Mark and the three varying sizes of dog shapes pacing the path. But I did observe in detail everything else: the sunlight encroaching onto the distant hills, highlighting in green-gold every clump of brave trees that cling to their summits, the swift multi-toned clouds, black dots of birds, a red tractor - stark in contrast to all the autumn yellows and browns, the scent of cold earth and trodden grass, the sounds of nothing other than wind in branches.
It was perhaps only seven minutes or so, but nourishing for my senses that were about to be put back into normal daytime activities.

January London wanderings

 . . . As ever, based vaguely on a 'map' of one of my book character's movements, workplaces and habitation.
On venturing out in the early morning, I considered the fact that I really should spend part of my sacred day going to see some art. London is stuffed with it and magnificent museums, theatres - all aspects of culture, but somehow I felt over-compelled to continue my mission of stalking Hamish's (present main character) London life-map.

          

              Perfect day for a tad of psychogeography . . .

After porridge and tea in the excellent Bloomsbury café situated beneath my favourite home-from-home, the St Athan's hotel, I walked swiftly( at first) in the direction of East Finchley before getting distracted by a thousand or so details of my favourite city that I had never before observed. The Keystone Crescent (previously Caledonian Crescent - better name, methinks) for example.

 

How had I walked about WC1 so many times and overlooked this architectural wonderment: smallest radius of any Crescent in Europe, and unique in having a matching inner and outer circle.
First on my desired locations for Hamish's life was a small, black window-framed book shop and turning into Leigh Street I found it - perfect in every way, from to its teetering piles of books to shadowy small courtyard; perfect, except it's already been used (I discovered later after checking) in a   BBC (dark) comedy series. Damn. But I suppose there's no rule to say I can't mentally move into the shop too . . .



Continued walking to King's Cross and turned into a road that used to house a decrepit building/photographic studio where I often worked as a stylist back in the early 90s, running up and down the metal staircase with props and parking tickets. It had long gone, replaced by a boring dull-bricked hotel called sleep-u-like or some such thing; even worse, the beautiful little Italian deli at the end of the road was sadly empty, possibly waiting a wrecking-ball (sob). The downside of these nostalgic wanderings - missing buildings of my earlier London years, now gaps in the jaws of the city or morphed into uniform sleek edifices of marble and glass.



Continuing up the Caledonian Road, I caught a bus as my feet were complaining and arrived at Archway where I caught another bus to East Finchley, sitting at the top/front enjoying the pigeons'-eye view of scraggy shops, mustard-bricked terraces and hurrying commuters.
A florist shop figures highly in Hamish's life - a series of floral apologies and love messages, and I'd found the ideal establishment: 'Josephine's', established well before the decade the book is set in.



I skulked about a bit and spoke to one of the florists but unfortunately the manager wasn't there; not that I needed to speak to them but I just like to find out a bit of history surrounding my potential locations.
Onto Muswell Hill via Fortis Green road where I chose a house on Western Road that would fit the style I had imagined for my character's flat.

                             

  

A couple of unchanged shop interiors 

Muswell Hill . . . place of my childhood up until thirteen or so; everything is still so familiar, and many places unchanged - the old pet shop, Martyn's, the marvellous old coffee/tea/dry goods shop with its coffee roasting machine still in the window, and the parade of shops on Duke's Avenue where I wish to place 'Lily's' taxidermy establishment. Old chemist chosen, I checked out a few charity shops, caught the 134 back to Russell Square and meandered into the sub-real district of Bond Street with its shop displays of obscenely-expensive shoes and handbags fabricated to carry life's essentials of a single lipstick and a gold American Express card.

  
 smaller than a hedgehog 

 
Mm, comfy



A . . . beige shoe with special powers?

After walking around snarling quietly at such excess, I went into Liberty's, mainly to look at their staircases' carved animal newel posts and the changing rooms on the women' clothing floors.
Hamish experiences a very spontaneous 'act' with his new lady-friend in one of these cubicles which I had imagined as large, spacious and full of William Morris wallpaper; in fact they were smallish, mirror-clad and possibly installed in the late 70s?
A beautiful man with skin like the most perfect cup of coffee (drink, not cup) and an exotic silver necklace informed me that he didn't know the date of the changing rooms and I would have to ask the store designers. There didn't seem to be any about so I had another gawp at shoes that cost 800 pounds plus, and went back outside in search of TEA in an old Italian, formica café, the likes of which of course sadly don't exist now, bulldozed into the past by Starbucks, Neros, et al.



I liked this very much but preferred the idea of paying the electricity bill

The weather had now decided to revert to standard January precipitation so I got on a bus and enjoyed looking out at the blurry traffic lights, headlights, window display lights, bus lights, etc, until I got to Russell square and ran back to the hotel with saturated feet and perused the internet for theatres/cinemas within slopping distance.
Three hours or so later I emerged from Tottenham Court Road Odeon wondering why I had spend 14 quid on seeing LaLa Land - sugar-sweet, silly, zilch story, and the dancing . . . well, maybe better to watch a re-run of Mr Kelly splashing about in the studio rain.



Man in bus shelter who had perhaps just heard on his smartphone who had made it to the Whitehouse



Bus window condensation-art

time and distance

I often stand still when somewhere completely quiet and try to imagine the mayhem of, say, Oxford Street on a day leading up to Christmas. Or inversely stand still on Oxford Street - causing ardent shoppers to push past with a brief look back: mad, obviously - and try to imagine a placid and empty hill in, say, the foothills of the Pyrenees.
It seems almost impossible that these places exist when you're not actually there. Then I start thinking about members of my family and friends - what are they doing at this precise moment when I am standing gawping at a blossom-loaded tree? sorting out the cupboard under the stairs? eating a cheese sandwich? sitting with a cup of coffee and wondering what their family and friends might be doing?
Then I might start thinking about The Big Question, or one of the big questions, - what is Space exactly; what is beyond our solar system and where does it end? But it can't end; what is holding it all in place and is space a series of giant boxes or spheres; a vast set of Russian dolls - probably not best to think about it at all.
Anyway . . . I happened to notice a number of planes passing over our patch of The Earth this morning; more than usual in fact. I stood for quite a long time considering the fact that unlike the Oxford St/Pyrenees thing I could see the plane at such a huge distance, and, people on board, eating peanuts, drinking tea or trying to ignore the child kicking the seat behind them, could look out and see, not me, probably, but certainly our house.
I always spend any flight with nose pressed to the oval window looking out on the passing millions of dwellings wondering if people are looking up and thinking about who might be on board and what they might be reading/eating/ drinking. Air to land psychogeography? or just nosiness on a grand scale. Anyway, again, time to put the kettle on and stop avoiding jobs to be done.