Discovering New Worlds

Today I went for a trip to London. ("Hang on a second, doesn't he work in London") Yes, I do but I decided that I wanted to see one or two exhibitions as well as do something I've been meaning to do for a while.

Starting in Camden
I've wanted to visit a Morrocan Tea shop which is situated in the Stables, a sort of shopping area just to the north of the Lock. I had mint tea and sat and read something appropriate:



The tea was really nice, a bit like spearmint chewing gum, although it becomes an aquired taste if it's allowed to stew. I then walked along Regents Canal and through the park:



As you can see, there are some rather nice houses down by the canal.

I had some more tea at the Royal Institute of British Architects in Portland Place. It has a rather nice cafe and an exceptional bookshop. Even the tea pots look art deco:



I also managed to take a picture of that icon the Post Office Tower, which I remember visiting as a boy when you could go inside:



Out of this World
On the advise of Matt, I went to the Out of this World exhibition at the British Library, and what a fantastic exhibit it is:



I saw a lot of rare and first editions, as you would expect, talked to an AI who explained to me how it worked and listened to both H.G. Wells and J.G. Ballard being interviewed. It's really good and I highly recommend it. Not only that, but the book that accompanies it is fantastic as well.

The Vorticists
Tate Britain currently has an exhibition about the Vorticists movement of early 20th century (doesn't it still feel weird saying that). They were a British modern art movement, roughly analogous to the Futurists in Italy at about the same time, but without the Facist leanings. They also didn't last long and fragmented pretty quickly. The artwork was very abstract, but it did produce artists that went on to do great things, such as Jacob Epstein and T.S. Eliot. The exhibition even commisioned a repoduction of Epstein's famous Rock Drill sculpture.

I hit 47, and 47 hits back

It's my birthday again, same time every year. This time it's 47. Wouldn't it be nice if it's random every year. 65 and I could retire, 16 and I could go and watch Apocolypse Now! at the cinema. There's something similar in Philip Dick's novel "Counter-clock World".



Also Happy Birthday to Barry Bonds, same age as me, but with a better career.

25st Century Foss

Growing up back in the 1970's, you got an occasional glimpse of the future thanks to Chris Foss, whose illustrations of disintegrating starships and alien landscapes coloured our imaginations. Now there's a new book published by Titan:

G'wan. You know you want to. My treat.

News International and the Cult of Celebrity

It's not often I take an interest in the news as it's a distraction from what's really going on but, for once, the media itself is under the spotlight and that might be no bad thing.
I don't want to comment on the actual story coming out as many people will no doubt be doing that, but there has been a trend over the past twenty years or so within politics and the media. This is that celebrity gossip columns have come to dominate newspapers and the other media over news journalism. A few months ago, I watched a documentary called "Starsuckers" which demonstrated that the people who had started out running the gossip columns of newspapers and other media had gradually replaced news journalists as editors and executives. Some have, like Andy Coulson, become advisers to politicians, knowing next to nothing about politics, but a lot about celebrity. Remember, this is the person who has the ear of the Prime Minister.
That this phone hacking scandal has come about is no real surprise. What has been a surprise is the extent of it and that it was covered up for more than five years by the politicians, specifically Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, and the police. Also worth thinking about is if this is what News International have been up to, what else have they been doing and what have the other media organisations been doing?

Another Budgie

Being the summer time, my sister has left her budgie with me while she and the brother-in-law are off on holiday. She calls him Faure, but what he calls himself who knows. My budgies treat him as they would any other and ignore him, beat him up and generally accept him as one of their own. A sort of idiot cousin from Benfleet.

He's a pleasant little fellow, though, and warbles a lot.

Rhythms of the World 2011

Another summer and another RotW. As a change from previous years, John and I were asked by Gill to go and work on the gate, taking tickets and attaching wristbands. The pace was different, more frantic and static at the same time, sort of mechanical. At six o'clock, the heavens opened and it lashed it down for half an hour, clearing away the crowds, so much so that I decided to go back to litter picking for about an hour. After our shift ended, we went for a walk to get our free meal and saw the Selector, for the first time in I don't know when.

Doctor Who

I've recently been watching a lot of old Doctor Who DVD's, in particular The Talons of Weng-Chiang and Planet of Evil.

In the former, there's an old documentary from the 1970's called Who's Doctor Who, all about the series, which had been going for about twelve years at that point. Talk about a step back in time!