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If you find yourself within striking distance of Holborn tube station this week, you should pop along and see Beauty in the making - reviewed here on the Eye blog. And there you'll find out exactly what Gill had to do with it.
But hurry, it's only on until Friday of this week - and note that you have to pre-book your place with eventbrite.
And while you're down Holborn way, play your cards right and Ben might even invite you to partake of a cup of coffee.
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You know that thing where you glance at something, not paying full attention, and you misread the words in front of you? Or is it just designers that do that?
Well I was making my way through yesterday's paper and caught sight, out of the corner of my eye, of a job advertisement for an optimisation manager - whatever that might be. Except that I misread it: I thought they were looking for an optimism manager.
Wouldn't it be great, though, if every company or organisation was required by law to employ an optimism manager?
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I was just catching up on the local news, and came across this article on the local rag's website. It details what you might think of as being rural joy riding: someone takes a 4x4 and trailer into a butterfly reserve and sets about destroying several skylark nests and loads of cowslip flowers. It's what happens hereabouts - ocassionally.
But here's the thing. The local rag depends upon advertising in order to tell me all about this. But what does Google AdSense throw up? An invitation to discover the joys of the Toyota Family 4x4 Range.
Doh.
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We all know they're coming. But nobody's allowed to mention them - unless they've paid sqillions to become an official sponsor.
But there's more than one way to skin a cat, don't you agree?
And the upside? Yeah, we don't have to look at that logo.
RESULT!
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I'm off to Leicester today to see the exhibition 'Maggie Scott: Negotiations' - it's the last in the series organised by the shape of things, for which I've been lucky enough to have designed all the catalogues. It promises to be very thought provoking, and a very fitting conclusion to a project which has beaten down the path to a fuller understanding of contemporary British cultural identity and artistic expression.
You can read an article about Maggie's exhibition in The Voice. And I urge you to take the time to do that.
And if perhaps you're interested in my contribution, you can see Maggie's catalogue and the rest in the series just here on my Issuu link (unless you're looking at this on an iPhone or iPad, that is).
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Today's price = £1.45 per kg.
Today's price = 68 pence per kg.
Why are bananas less than half the price of potatoes? Where's the logic in that?
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I took these pictures last year during my month off in late summer. I took them thinking that I might blog them, but never quite got round to it. I imagined (though this might be entirely incorrect) that I could fool you into thinking that I'd made a trip to some soviet-era seaside resort: somewhere in Latvia, perhaps.
But such was not the case, for these pictures were taken only some five or six miles from where I grew up, at Weston Shore in Southampton (and beautifully described on 'nothing to see here'). And yet, despite it's proximity during the few years that I lived in Southampton, I can count the number of times that I've been there on the fingers of one hand. This was mainly due to the fact that the only viable way to get there in the 1960s was via a floating bridge over the River Itchen. While my side of the river boasted the Top Rank Suite, and concerts (yes, that's what they were called in the '60s) by, among many others, The Who, The Steampacket (with Rod Stewart), and the best of all - Stevie Wonder. No contest.
But I do remember that I once spent a day there in late spring when I'd bunked off from school. That wasn't my intention, but I arrived at school some ten minutes late (after the five-mile cycle ride from home), and it was much less hassle to throw a sickie than to face up to the prefects on the gate (I wonder what they're doing now?). And so Weston Shore beckoned to me and my bike. And my brother-in-law once lived in one of those towers during a short and, if I recall correctly, unhappy period in his life.
But it's always felt strange to me, that place. Somehow disconnected from it's immediate surroundings. And I've always wondered who lives in those towers. Because every indication (from their forbidding appearance to the desolation of the seashore in front of them) is that it's not by choice. That you live there because you have to. And sooner or later, given luck, you'll find a way to get out.
And the world is full of those places, don't you find? Places that you pass by, either in the car or maybe the train, where you think that 'I couldn't possibly live there'. Places that you glimpse from the elevated motorway as you're driving through or around Birmingham, perhaps. Or those Victorian blocks of flats that look straight out onto Hammersmith flyover. I couldn't possibly live there.
But maybe it's just the way I look at things. I was reminded of this when I recalled a post on Joe Moran's Blog where he recalls a 1961 piece by Dennis Potter (who did, at the time, live in one of those flats), who describes the flyover as ‘a beautiful thing, a cross between a Roman aqueduct and a Hollywood epic, soaring over earth-bound streets in an ecstasy of concrete, cable and sheer bravado’.
So maybe people are even now looking out of those windows at Weston Shore and thinking ‘what a pillock, I love it here’. Though somehow I doubt it.
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