WE BUY GOLD: part one

WE BUY GOLD: part one
Originally uploaded by Catfunt.

On the way home last night from the opening of Machismo, walking through the estate I came across my favourite sign of all time, "WE BUY GOLD".

The Renoir: Brunswick Square

The Renoir: Brunswick Square
Originally uploaded by Catfunt.

We went to see The Beat That My Heart Skipped at the Renoir on Tuesday. It's a pretty good film and even if it weren't it would be worth seeing for the heart-warming array of rotten teeth and chain-smoking on display. I think it's obligatory in modern French cinema for the hero at a point of particular tension in teh story to tear the filter off his cigarette before lighting it. It telegraphs to the dumber members of the audience that things are 'getting serious' and that Jean-Paul or Phillipe needs an extra nicotine hit to get through them. A much better film than either Matchpoint or The Constant Gardener (in case you were thinking of going to see either of them).

Diane Arbus at the V&A

Finally after months of talking about it we made it to the Diane Arbus show at the V&A. It's a really well thought out show with all the famous pieces as well as much of the early magazine work from magazines like Harper's that I much prefer. Like Sylvia Plath, as a result of Arbus's suicide, there's a real temptation to see an overwhelming darkness in the pictures that I don't think is actually there. She wouldn't have been very pleased with this blurry one I can tell you. There's a nice bit in one of her diaries where she talks about the group of students that she's teaching and how almost all the work they produce bores her and she's worried if she spends too much time around them she'll catch their crapiness.

The house where I want to live...

The white one with the flat room. If it's yours write to me.

Camber Beach: a thing of beauty

And here's a thing that isn't. I recently set up sitemeter on this blog (because I don't have enough to do already) and I was looking through the referers (ie how people got to your site) and what search terms they put into Google to find your site. This one's my favourite Google search. You'll notice that my site comes second.

Christmas Deux

Yol: I feel really sick after that mince pie.
Me: How was it?
Yol: Delicious.

'All the books...'

'All the books in all the world don’t make me a better man than you': Thomas Jefferson.

Well, I got loads of books for Christmas so there goes the little hope for self-improvement I had left. Time to start thinking about possible new year's resolutions.

Only two drinking days to Christmas left...

Only two drinking days to Christmas left...
Originally uploaded by Catfunt.

...and that pretty much says it all. I like the fact that although there's only tonight and tomorrow I've managed to fit two more 'let's meet for a drink' drinks in before Turkey Day.

For my art...

Jesus, stop me if you've seen these before. Talk about overkill but I didn't have pictures of the new work to supply so these got dragged out again. Anyway, I'd figured out what happens next (which is the tough thing for anyone) and just needed a few more packs of cards to work with. Pretty much the same thing I'd used already but the pack of cards I had previously came from a tourist souvenir shop in Bayswater about 15 years ago. This is pretty standard 70s soft-core Playboy type stuff I figured, I'll be able to pick it up anywhere around town. Anyway, the Soho Bookshop, Lovejoys on Charing Cross Road and Harmony (I guess the name relates back to the days of shops selling "Marital Aids") all have nudie playing cards. Sadly they're all themed and called things like 'Cum Sluts'; 'Teenage Cum Sluts' and 'Shaven Teenage Cum Sluts' (and these are just the ones of men) and not really what I was after at all. I don't suppose people go down to the basement of Lovejoys and ask for something 'a little bit milder and less hardcore'.
Personally, I blame the internet for ruining pornography.

Sometimes...

...I look out the window and I thank god I live in Hackney. Admittedly this is a rare occurence and depends on the alignment of the sun shining on a clear day across some place of architectural interest.

One of the things I hate about Hackney is the lack of the collective sense that public space belongs to everyone. At one extreme it manifests itself in a feeling of insecurity in public spaces which lots of people seem to associate with the area, and at the other, people chucking their rubbish all over the street or letting their dogs dump in the middle of the pavement where kids walk.

As I get older it upsets me more and more to see these feckless thickos throwing their sweetie wrappers on the ground while they wait for the bus when there's a rubbish bin next to them. What is it with these people? Were they born stupid? There was a particularly nasty guy at the 25 bus stop outside Whitechapel tube station on Monday. He had a piercing through one eyebrow and he was eating a Twix (all the chocolate off first) before chucking the wrapper on the floor.

I remember another time on the bus to Shoreditch from town, a young trendy looking woman was eating a chicken supper out of a cardboard box on the bus. When she finished she put it on the empty seat next to her. When a middle-aged guy got on the bus and went to sit there he asked her if it was hers and she said 'No' and gave him a filthy look. He just picked it up and put it on the floor.

Anyway, I should start photographing these people and posting them on Flickr in a dirty bastard group.