I was intending to do a bit of almost-live blogging about this breaking news yesterday, but unfortunately my broadband went down about 5.30pm and has only just returned, albeit in a rather unreliable state (expect a rant about Virgin Media shortly). So, 21 hours late…
High drama in East Dulwich this yesterday afternoon, as a suspect device was discovered at the police station on Lordship Lane. The ‘Lane was closed at about 4.30pm from the Bishop pub up to the police station as specialist officers prodded it with sticks carried out a detailed examination. (more…)
I was sorry to hear that Beryl Cook had passed away today, at the age of 81. I really do think people will look back and recognise her as one of the great British artists of the 20th century. I loved her affection for her subjects, her mischievousness and the joie de vivre that was so apparent in her paintings of ordinary people doing ordinary things.
Quite why so many in the art establishment dismissed her work and placed her in the same category as Jack Vettriano is beyond me; Vettriano’s work is soul-less and clinically commercial, whereas Beryl Cook’s work was quite the opposite. And I say that as someone with a Fine Art education who frequently stands stroking his chin at ‘pretentious’ exhibitions. Rest in peace Beryl.
I found myself strolling up Whitehall on Saturday, and couldn’t help but admire the National Monument to the Women of World War II. I don’t recall noticing it before - mind you, you could probably count the number of times I’ve walked along Whitehall since its dedication in 2005 on the fingers of a hand that’s been involved in a horrible farm machinery accident. (One thing I will say in favour of illegal and immoral wars - the protest marches provide one with a great opportunity to take in London’s streets and architecture, in between shuffling along, shouting “Down with this sort of thing!”).
Anyway, the monument is a 22 feet high, 16 feet long bronze sculpture, designed to commemorate the role women played during the Second World War. 17 individual sets of clothing and uniforms - including those of farm and factory workers, the armed forces, hospital staff and the emergency services - ‘hanging up’ around the sides represent the hundreds of different jobs women undertook in the war and later gave back for the homecoming men. It struck me as a wonderfully effective bit of work and a great tribute.
The monument was created by sculptor John W Mills, whose other work includes the National Firefighters Memorial, and several anniversary coins for the Royal Mint.
I had an unexpected email yesterday, from someone at the Evening Standard who’d read my take on the best british sitcoms (written in 2004) and wondered if I’d be interested in writing a few words on Gavin and Stacey winning a BAFTA and the state of sitcoms in general. Despite not exactly being an avid Standard reader, I am a fan of Gavin and Stacey, so I quickly tapped out a few paragraphs and emailed it over. I didn’t think what I wrote was particularly good (certainly less potentially libellous than my original) - writing hundreds of words is so much harder than writing thousands - but it was kind of fun seeing it in the paper today.
I know it’s best to best to cater to your audience, but sadly the short nature of the piece meant I wasn’t able to include any references to Ken Livingstone funding illegal immigrants bent on evil terrorism. Still, probably goes without saying to the average Standard reader. Anyway, thanks to Josh at the paper for including this URL in it.
On to more interesting things…. In between meetings today I managed to pop in to the British Museum to see The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock exhibition, and very good it was too. With about 150 prints covering a wide range of styles and subject matter, I thought the exhibition did an excellent job of examining American artists’ responses to the changing culture and politics in the first half of the 20th century.
Many of the images in the intervening period explore the changing urban landscape of New York, the onset of the Depression, the romanticised visions of the American heartlands by the Regionalists, the response to the rise of Fascism in Europe and America’s entry into the Second World War.
It’s on until September and admission’s free, so highly recommended if you’re in central London with a bit of time to kill.
It’s been a very, very long time since I last felt inspired to post anything here, but after going to see Russell Maliphant and French ballerina Sylvie Guillem performing Maliphant’s PUSH at the London Coliseum on Saturday night, I felt I had to write something.
Now I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure what I’d make of it; although I’d heard of both dancers (so they must be pretty darn good!), my appreciation of ballet doesn’t really extend far beyond Miss Piggy dancing with Rudolf Nureyev on the Muppet Show, and watching the Royal Ballet’s Tales of Beatrix Potteron the telly at Christmas. My knowledge of contemporary dance is even more non-existent (think “pretending to be a tree at infants school”-level).
So when I took my seat for PUSH, which comprises of three solos and one duet - Solo (Guillem), Shift (Maliphant), Two (Guillem), and Push (Guillem & Maliphant) - I had no idea what to expect.
Solo, performed to the Spanish guitar of Carlos Montoya, is a beautiful contemporary piece, with hints of flamenco and more classical ballet (well, to my uneducated eye at least). Guillem - bathed in wonderful light - is truly incredible; astoundingly flexible, her movements are both graceful and quick. I could certainly see why she’s been described as the greatest ballerina of her generation.
Although a solo piece, Shift sees Maliphant accompanied on stage by his own shadow. Michael Hulls’s incredible lighting really transforms the slow, graceful yoga/tai chi-like movements into something rather special. Narrow beams of light from the front of the stage create six panels on the backdrop, forming large silhouettes of Maliphant. The different angles of the lights mean that at times there are up to four Maliphants on stage, each slightly different in appearance. Moving and thoughtful, not to mention very clever.
Two was my favourite piece of the evening. Guillem is trapped in a box of light, which she begins exploring with her arms and head. Her movements become faster and more intense as Andy Cowton’s score increases in intensity. By the end she’s swirling about furiously, optical illusion making her movements almost strobe-like, her hands and feet taking on the appearance of flames as they break the edges of the box. Utterly, utterly mesmerising.
As the lights came on at the interval, it took me a moment to come back to reality, such was its spellbinding nature. The video below will give you an idea of what I’m trying to describe, but it can’t quite capture the impact of sitting in the dark experiencing it live (as one of the commenters points out, the video’s camera angles aren’t great).
The final piece, Push, is an intimate, sensual duet between Maliphant and Guillem. It begins with Guillem kneeling on Maliphant’s shoulders as he walks on stage, and for much of the 30 minute piece she barely touches the floor, snaking and twisting around his body. Gorgeous stuff, full of balance and counter-balance, strength and grace. Maliphant is clearly a great choreographer, and both he and Guillem are incredible to watch.
In her review in the Telegraph, Sarah Crompton describes PUSH as “dance you want to watch for ever”, and that it “lingers in the mind long after the curtain has fallen.” Very true - I was totally blown away, and left the Coliseum feeling that my eyes (and mind) had been opened to a whole new art form.
This evening of dances choreographed by Russell Maliphant for himself and Sylvie Guillem comes about as close to perfection as dance can.
I may not know much about dance, but I can’t imagine it gets any better than PUSH either.
I think this is the first time I’ve actually typed an entry from the comfort of my bed; I’m not doing so because it’s late (although it is), but because it’s bloody freezing here. The builders arrived here on Monday to begin some rather major work on the place, and as a result there’s currently no heating or hot water. There’s no kitchen either, and what’s left of the bathroom is lying in a skip. But most importantly, I still have broadband!
It’s actually quite cosy - one of my cats likes to sleep on my bed, which is as good as having a hot water bottle, even if she invariably somehow manages to take up most of the room, leaving me to fit in around her. Oh dear, I’m suddenly reminded of the TV commercial that’s on at the moment in which a woman says (using what must be some terribly filthy euphamism), “I can’t get up without my furry alarm clock”; perhaps I just can’t go to bed without my furry hot water bottle. Besides the cat, the iBook on my lap generates a reasonable amount of heat too (I know, we’re not meant to, but having watched An Inconvenient Truth a few days ago, I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever want kids anyway).
By the way, today marks the the fifth anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees at Guantánamo Bay. There are still 385 prisoners there (including ten British residents), not to mention the other 13,600 ghost prisoners being held/tortured in secret US detention centres around the world. As Clive Stafford Smith says, today represents the anniversary of too many shameful acts..
Thought I’d better post something here in case Microsoft has any laptops left to give away as bribes review machines.
I had such good intentions for the Christmas holiday, including finishing the new design for this site. In the end I had a thoroughly lazy, unproductive time, and only managed to catch up on a few of the things on my to-do list. Definitely felt like a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ week - to be honest I think I really needed a break from worky stuff. Still, now I see that Celebrity Big Brother has started on Channel 4, I’d say there’s a good chance I’ll get that new design in place shortly.
I suppose I should write a belated-but-still obligatory World of Badger review of 2006. <scratches head /> I guess the highlight of my year would have to be the Sultan’s Elephant in London back in May. What else? Album of the year? Um, I have to admit that, as a result of converting a lot of my CD collection to MP3s, I spent a large part of 2006 getting back into a lot of albums from the late 80s to mid-90s. That said, there were some really good albums released in the last 12 months, and my favourites would include:
(I would have linked to Spillers Records in Cardiff, the oldest record shop in the world, which is threated with closure by developer scumbags, but I can’t link directly to the albums on their site, so I’ve used Boomkat - another independent music shop - rather than Amazon. Spillers is a great little shop, and I used to get all my albums and gig tickets there when I lived in Wales; please sign the petition to save it.)
OK, admittedly not the most comprehensive review of 2006, but it’s the best I could come up with at this late hour.
Responsibility for the formation of civil security policy and strategy have been given to the European Association of Aerospace and Defence Industries, a lobby group, and Thales, the European military giant.
So, no conflict of interest there then…
They have used their power to recommended giving themselves €1bn of subsidies, in addition to existing arms subsidies, to fund a raft of research projects for monitoring and controlling civil populations.
…
But it had no representation from the EU parliament or Commission, and no ethical or civil representatives.
Hard to disagree with the report’s author when he says The EU is basically funding the diversification of the ‘military-industrial complex’ into the highly profitable internal security field. The militarisation of policing and border controls will not prevent crime or terrorism, it does nothing to address ‘root causes’ while posing a massive threat to civil liberties.
Wednesday will mark the twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Photographer Robert Knoth and reporter Antionette de Jong have documented the impact of radiation from the nuclear industry in the former Soviet Union: Nuclear Nightmares. The photos are a grim and upsetting reminder that nuclear power is not the panacea that Blair would have us believe.
I’ve got time to write a little something before getting into my New Years Eve glad rags. Firstly, I want to thank everyone who’s continued visiting despite the updates being few and far between, especially those who’ve taken the time to post comments. Normally I consider it only polite to respond to comments, but due to the amount of work I’ve had on these last six months, I’ve not always managed to do so (I see a new year’s resolution forming here…). So a belated apology for any unitentional rudeness.
In particular I want to thank Rachel from North London for taking the trouble to check her referrers and post a thank you for linking to her site back in November. If you’re not familiar with Rachel’s blog, I highly recommend checking it out; in it Rachel writes, among other things, about her experiences as a survivor of the July 7th bombings, and shares her thoughts on the government’s anti-terror legislation. Articulate, intelligent, funny and moving — definitely my blog of the year.
I also want to thank ‘Duff’ Gallagher, keyboard player with the Flaming Doo Dits for his comment on my Glastonbury post. Glastonbury was definitely the highlight of my year, and watching Lucifire and the Flaming Doo Dits’s zombie pirate swing in the Chapel of Love & Loathing was the high point of Glastonbury. (You can listen to some sample Flaming Doo Dits tracks here).
Right, time to get ready to party like it’s 1999. Chin chin!
Hanni’s treated herself to an iBook, and has posted some observations after a few weeks of using it. I can’t believe I’ve been using mine for so long without knowing the key combo for #. Terribly embarrassing. Right, I’m off to type lots of CSS IDs, HTML entities and PHP comments with new-found efficiency…
Blunkett’s resigned, again, having proved he’s still not quite got the hang of that not-mixing-business-with-pleasure thing. Now not wanting to sound smug, but I like to think my Blunkett Voodoo Doll played a small part in this. Again. Of course I’ll be keeping the doll around for the day when Blair inevitably gives Blunkett a job as an EU Commissioner.
Rob and I popped along to the Mac Expo at Olympia today, hoping to tinker with some shiny new gadgets and software. You know, expensive toys that we could convince ourselves would change our lives for the better. Unfortunately we left disappointed by the show; half the stands seemed to be selling iPod covers and other related tat, and after about an hour we’d pretty much run out of things to look at. At the MacUser stand we were given a carrier containing a free copy of a magazine - great, we thought, until we opened the bag on the tube only to discover that the magazine was an issue of “Poker Room”. Rather summed up the whole event.
Adobe were doing some demos on their stand, but unfortunately there was no sign of Macromedia’s new releases. Apple were also showing off Aperture, which has a great interface and looks like it could be pretty useful.
I did finally get my hands on an iPod nano, but it didn’t do anything to allay my concerns about the scratching issue; after a day and half on display, the nanos on the Apple stand seemed pretty badly scratched. I think I’ll wait for the second generation nano instead.
For us, the highlight of the show was definitely the Solio - a solar powered charger and battery for iPods, mobile phones and PDAs, which the inventor’s charming sister demonstrated for us. It’s such a great bit of design, with 3 solar panels that fan out when needed, and it’s made from recycled and recyclable materials. Would have been perfect for Glastonbury this year.
On the way back through Victoria we were sad to see the last of the Routemasters running on the 38 route. After today, the only remaining Routemasters will be on the 159 run, and they’ll be stopping on the 9th of December. Seems such a shame that a solution couldn’t be found to their accessibility problems.
