new year sales

It's time for the New Year sales and we can all go shopping for clothes - maybe a smart new suit. Make sure you've got enough credit tho'.

The Coasters - Shoppin' For Clothes

Happy New Year and happy shopping.

it's a goal

So, we lost the race to host the 2018 World Cup. Not that it matters much to me as I'm finding football is becoming more and more disappointing. It did remind me tho' of this great track about a football match. It features (from around 2'45) an introduction to all the players followed by a commentary on the match. Love it.

The Real Sounds - Tornados vs Dynamos

From the Rough Guide to the Music of Zimbabwe available here

rooftops

Was listening to a BBC programme today about the Blue Nile's album A Walk Across The Rooftops. Full of great songs. What a track for a first try at uploading music onto my blog.

A Walk Across The Rooftops

Hope it works (it starts very quietly!), and thanks to dustysevens for the pointer to Box.

junk

Didn't get out much during the recent trip to Brittany. It fell at a difficult time and I had to take work with me. Checked the post one morning and these thirteen!! booklets were waiting for me offering a whole range of cheap food, cheap furniture, cheap tools, cheap toys, cheap bathroom and kitchen fittings, cheap wine and cheap clothes. It's not unusual for this amount of rubbish to appear through the letterbox. I pity the poor postal men and women who have to carry it all and mourn the trees that have given their lives in vain.

victoria letters

Recently came across these great hoardings in Victoria Street, London. Designed by Hat-trick Design, each letter relates to a short story about the area researched and written by Nick Asbury. For example: W – Westminster Abbey "Technically, Westminster Abbey no longer exists. Its real name is the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, Westminster. It continues to be known as Westminster Abbey even though no monks have lived there since the 16th century". You can see more photos here.

Some more picture of our day out in Aldeburgh. We always enjoy walking up and down the sea front and the high street, ice cream and fish and chips, people watching, the breeze off the sea and the strange way it subdues the sounds along the beach. Looking forward already to next year.

plenderleiths

The annual pilgrimage to Aldeburgh took place on Sunday. We go to visit our good friends the Plenderleiths who exhibit their wonderful jewellery collection there for a month or so each summer. They'll be at the Darfield Gallery on Wentworth Road until 4th September. If you can't make it then visit their website here.

snape

Picked up this great little booklet in Aldeburgh yesterday for the Snape proms. The front cover caught my eye in a shop window. Checked out the designers and found them to be Silk Pearce who, as well as producing concert season brochures for Snape for the past 10 years, have done lots of other interesting work. Worth a look.

sign 1

I liked this road sign from just outside Pont Croix. Nice bendy arrow, nice soft cast concrete, nice shadows. All very gentle.

altercola

It's difficult to buy Coke or Pepsi in the local supermarket at Pont Croix. They like to offer Breizh Cola instead. The 'cola of Brittany', as it's called, is the local alternative. It is one of many types of alternate cola, or 'altercola', competing with the more established and widespread brands. These colas are currently produced in small volumes and are generally readily available in local markets only. I like their smaller glass bottles and I must say that it tastes good (if you like cola, that is).

quick trip

So to Brittany again recently. What fun!
Ryanair couldn't land at Brest because it was raining so they diverted to Dinard. S was due to collect me at the airport and, as this had also happened to friends last week and it took them hours to get back to Brest, she decided to drive to Dinard. After two hours sitting in the plane on the runway at Dinard we were informed that the staff there were not prepared to accept us so we would be flying off to Nantes. Quick call to S who was almost at Dinard by now. She said it would take just as long to go back to Brest as it would to follow me to Nantes so she would drive on and pick me up. An hour and a half after landing at Nantes S arrived with a very sick car. Just outside the airport we stopped and discovered there was no water in the engine. Several calls to the insurance company, a tow by a very nice man to his Citroen garage, a wait in the bus shelter outside his garage, a taxi back to the airport, a hire car to get us the 270kms to Pont Croix and we were back by 1.00 in the morning - a total journey time of only 16 hours.
Back to work now for a rest.

singapore mosque

It's been some time since the last posting. Have been sorting lots of stuff for Dad (maybe more of this later).
I happened to be looking on his book shelf and found an album of old postcards that I have not seen before. This one caught my eye because a friend has a love of Ovaltine images. Odd to see this sign beside a mosque in Singapore.

tomb with a view

A view from the churchyard at Barrowden in Rutland.

dan and dan

These two are clever.

Indulge us this brief 'experiment'... This sketch is a palindrome - i.e., it's the same backwards as it is forwards. It's arguably not the funniest sketch on Youtube, but it's almost certainly one of the only ones that was written using a spreadsheet. This is something we had to get out of our system. Normal service will resume shortly.

When you've watched this see some more of them here. (Sorry about the ads.)

blackout

Found this strange object in my Dad's loft the other day. Apparently it was developed during the second world war and is called a blackout bulb. It's remarkable property is that when turned on, it emits only darkness.

You can imagine how important this device could be, useful for concealing virtually anything in darkness.

The first picture below shows it when it's turned off.

The second picture was taken by a high-speed camera in the split-second before it is fully deluminated.

The third picture is a photograph of the bulb when it is working.





Thanks to Robert for the information.

ordered 3

Modern life is an ever-accelerating barrage of people, buildings, vehicles, creatures, and things. How much can a curious mind take in? And what can it do with all the data? Gregory L. Blackstock, a retired Seattle pot washer, draws order out of all the chaos with a pencil, a black marker, and some crayons.

Blackstock is autistic and an artistic savant. He creates visual lists of everything from wasps to hats to emergency vehicles to noisemakers. In the spirit of the Outsider art of Henry Darger and Howard Finster, Blackstock makes art that is stirring in its profusion and detail and inspiring in its simple beauty. He has never received formal artistic training, yet his renderings clearly and beguilingly show subtle differences and similarities — enabling the viewer to see, for example, the distinctive features of a dolly varden, a Pacific Coast steelhead cutthroat, and fourteen other types of trout.

Each collection is lovingly captioned in Blackstock's unique hand with texts that reflect facts from his research as well as his passions and preferences. Blackstock's Collections contains over 100 extraordinary examples of his splendidly original taxonomy, offering a unique look inside the mind of a man making sense of life through art.

Check out his book here, and more about him here.

ordered 2

A group of German matchbox labels from the 70s and 80s on flickr - along with more from India, Russia, Japan and Czechoslovakia. Some nice labels on show but also the grouped thumbnails look great! Thanks Shailesh Chavda.

ordered 1

There's a bit of me that likes organising. It's not universal. Some things have to be arranged others can be left to their own devices. I do like things that are visually organised - collected, grouped, arranged, ordered.

A collection a day is a blog project showing different grouped objects every day for a year. What's the point of that? you might ask. This is for those of you who don't need to ask.

shed 2

Some more sheds for Sue. From an American company called Modern Shed based, I think, in Seattle. Sharp, modern styling but a bit pricey. They make larger ones as spare rooms or offices and even multi-sheds as community buildings.

dark events

Ana Maria Pacheco is a sculptor, painter and printmaker. She was born in Brazil in 1943. After obtaining degrees in both art and music and teaching for several years in Goias, she came to England in 1973 to study at the Slade and has lived and worked here ever since. She makes wonderful prints.

snow 3

Had more snow on Thursday afternoon and evening although it started to melt pretty quickly in the morning sun on Friday. It was the really soft, sticky stuff, ideal for snowballs. It's frozen again tonight though - so not a good time to be out and about.

puddle

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking,"This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"

This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to watch out for.

- Douglas Adams -

tree house

Sue has decided that we have to live in a tree house, especially if it's one like these. Designed and built by Baumraum in Germany they are quite stunning and look to be incredibly well built. More pics can be seen on the slide show here.

valentine 2

Henri Cartier Bresson: View from the Cathedrale Notre-Dame, 1952

For Sue too.

stuck up

A nice little ad from Spain.

valentine

1892 - Spooning by the sea at Yarmouth, England

Happy Valentine's day Sue.

robin hood tax

Nearly 50 organisations, including charities such as Oxfam, unions and green lobby groups, have joined forces to urge the government to push for what it calls a Robin Hood Tax. They argue that a tax of just 0.05 per cent on global transactions between financial institutions - five pence for every £1,000 traded - would be enough to raise hundreds of billions of pounds to help fight poverty, protect public services and tackle climate change.

Although it might leave 0.05 per cent less for bonus payments!

schools kill creativity

Have been meaning for some time to pass this short film on for more people to see. We currently seem to be more obsessed with league tables, exam results and getting more and more people to university than we we are with giving children an education. See what you think.

You can find out more about Ken Robinson here.

There's some great stuff on the TED site.

ipad

All this hype surrounding the new iPad, whatever happened to the 1983 Apple iPad?

shed 1

One for Sue. I know how much she loves sheds. This is a log house on wheels in Holland built as an office for music-entertainer Hans Liberg, designed by Piet Hein Eek.

stockholm

Odd how sometimes strange connections appear from completely different directions. A week ago I stumbled upon the band First Aid Kit - from Stockholm - via a blog link. A few days later Fever Ray - from Stockholm - via culture critic, and today an old photograph - In the Old Town of Stockholm, February, 1924. The spirit of ABBA must be in the air (Benny was also born in Stockholm!)

what type are you?

A great little viral from Pentagram. Make sure your speakers are turned on and remember your password is 'character'.

first aid kit

Just found this quirky music video. Thought it would be a good one to use to learn how to upload video onto my blog. I know nothing about First Aid Kit (they appear to be sisters from Stockholm and describe themselves as what Gary Numan would sound like if he made folk music) but you can listen to more here and via the little up arrow bottom right on the YouTube window.

(Added 24 jan) Found something about them here. I think this is a duo we might hear more of soon.

pont croix 1

The tower of the Church of Notre-Dame de Roscudon in Pont Croix, Finistere. Love the moss growing on the stonework. The tower is also loved by the many choucas that can always be seen flying around the centre of the town.