London Structures: High Victorian Taj Mahal

Hyde Park is crowded with deeply flawed Royal Monuments – the Diana Fountain is just the latest. This example is the High Victorian answer to the Taj Mahal; and certainly its grief-stricken genesis is as poignant. It is the future Empress of India’s memorial to her departed consort. The Victorians lavished the finest materials and most expensive talents of their day on its decoration. Unfortunately, they were less concerned about its engineering and we recently had to pay £17m for its renovation.

Ironically, this overgrown Gothic casket stands on the location of Great Britain’s supreme contribution to the history of modern architecture, the Crystal Palace, and commemorates the forward-thinking man who commissioned that vanished edifice.

Victoria’s grief was purest gold – she gilded Albert’s statue from head to foot. Her descendants, embarrassed by her faux pas, had it painted black to prevent German zeppelins navigating over London by the moonbeams glinting off Albert’s head (that’s what their press release said at the time). It remained black for the remainder of the 20th century.

The best thing English Heritage ever did was to regild the statue in direct defiance of the present Royal family’s objections. Tasteless but true to Victoria’s intentions: triumphantly making this what it needs so desperately to be – so bad it’s good.

Osanpo camera

Someone asked me if I was a fan of Osanpo technique. I hadn’t heard of it, but was inspired and rushed out to try it. After looking at the Osanpo Group on flickr however I realized firstly I had misunderstood, and secondly I had been doing classical Osanpo already:

"osanpo" mean is ...

osanpo = お散歩 (o-san-po)
お散歩 = 散歩 (san-po)
散 (san) = free
歩 (po) = walking
So.... osanpo = free walking.
and expanded "osanpo" meaning = "free walking, free riding, free driving"
So... osanpo camera = osanpo with your camera.”

Osanpo is taking your camera around wherever you go and shooting freely, whatever opportunity presents itself. Therefore, I suppose it’s true to say your work can be as ‘finished’ or as ‘rough’ as you like, as long as you are finding the opps on your travels.

Well, I liked it rough. After my chat, I went out and shot as randomly as it is possible to do – click, click, click – didn’t even check the viewfinder.

I learned a few things:

~ cameras can compose on their own
~ their compositions can be wildly original, shattering your ingrained preconceptions: your default settings. It can teach you to see freshly
~ nothing fails. It’s all good. If it’s not good, it’s funny
~ basically, it’s all fun
~ don’t sweat it.

Motto

"I always have secret enemies and more or less expect it. The reason my enemies are secret is because it's well known that my personal motto, tattooed to the inside of my heart, with the blood of the ones I've defeated, is

It's not revenge if they know."

Beautifully written, Alexnder Chee: words which resonate thrillingly with me tonight.

In unrelated news, I have been given an exciting freelance gig! whooo - yay me.

Conversations with a Moron

ring-ring! ring-ring! ring-ring!

Hedgie: Hello, this is Hedgie speaking.

Moron: Can I please speak to your deputy head teacher?

Hedgie: I’m sorry. I imagine you are trying to call G*** M***** Primary School. I’m afraid their number has changed and BT has given me their old number. This is now a private phone number. I actually think G*** M***** Primary School has closed down, as I have been unable to find their new number. Directory enquiries does not have it, although the old number is all over the internet.

Moron: Thank you.

~click~

3 seconds later –

ring-ring! ring-ring! ring-ring!

Hedgie: Hello, Hedgie speaking.

Moron: Is this G*** M***** Primary School?

Hedgie: No. This is a private number.

Moron: ok.

~click~

**%$*!!!?

Contemplating the universe and everything

Crunch time Zippy! The next few months are going to be very exciting.

The Search Goes On

It looks as though my little blog is being picked up by the great God Google, according to my stat counter thingy. Analysis shows my blog is a food blog - just about every search was food related. Incredible - I don't think I write about food that much. The funniest/strangest request was:

"mango puree made by shamans"

Hmmm. Interesting.

And Macaron, it's definitely time to get your own website! Although I don't mind advertising as I think you're great.

Quote London

"We are city boys . . . we always believe that excessive love of nature leads to totalitarianism."

- Gilbert and George

Bread

Baked goods. I really like the textures and colours in this: reminds me of an abstract painting.

The bread is not from Macaron this time - it's from Esca on
Clapham High Street, a deli/cafe/bakery which kick-started the posh
bread movement in these parts. Now we have Esca, Macaron, and a
restaurant on the High Street has a stall with artisanal breads which
spills out onto the pavement at weekends. The Lighthouse Bakery on
Northcote Rd is not too far away. So Claphamites are certainly going to be eating bread, as well as cake, for the foreseeable future.

I usually get Esca's organic white but they had sold out, so I tried
the farmhouse white. It's quite delicious toasted and smeared with my yoga teacher's blackcurrant jam. Yum!

The Queen

Laudatory reviews in the weekend papers; Helen Mirren is a National Treasure; and she won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival: so therefore, a Must See.

Not.

The film has been wildly overpraised. It’s not bad; it’s just that it’s not very good. I think an interesting opportunity has been missed.

Mirren’s performance is a curate’s egg – I didn’t appreciate some of the more over-emphasised physical mannerisms (the walk), but she does deserve credit for imbuing the character with some interior life and complexity, despite the script. Her supporting cast of royals are a bunch of gurning gargoyles: hideous caricatures, the lot of them. Poor Charles fares especially badly.

The script rehearses the well-known events between Diana’s death and her funeral. Nothing new is revealed, it’s just imaginatively dressed up and dramatised.

The high point is the use of television footage intercut with the fictional recreation. In particular, the flashbacks of Diana are stunningly well integrated. Despite being almost a decade dead, her presence completely electrifies the screen whenever she appears. I think this angle could have been pursued more deeply: the mythological scale of her fame; the media hysteria; the New Labour spin machine attempting to engage with Royal presentational traditions. If the film attempted a more serious examination of these themes instead of focussing on the pedestrian televisual dramatisation of events, I think it could have done something quite interesting and profound.

Aspects of what could have been can be seen in Frears’ direction of the car crash sequence, intercut as it is with episodes from Diana’s career as a paparazzi target – totally brilliant – and also the funeral service, skilfully interwoven with the real Earl Spencer’s speech. I also very much enjoyed the sequence where the Queen takes Tony’s call in her Balmoral kitchens (crowds and crowds and crowds of startled flunkeys hastily try to accommodate her) as well as her return to Buckingham Palace to confront the hostile public and their venomous messages on the floral offerings. Totally bathetic is a sequence with the Queen confronting a stag on her Estate. Exactly what was not needed. But I suppose the decision had been taken that this was a Mirren vehicle.

Growth

I'm taking more and more photos. I get out of bed and shoot a few before breakfast, and then at odd moments in the day. I keep a notebook and I jot down ideas. I walk the city; that inspires ideas too. As does looking at other people's work and communicating with others.

If I'm out and I don't have my camera, I see things and kick myself.

Met two photographers recently: one in person and one via email; both conjured up out of the magic of cyberspace. This proved a powerful experience. Suddenly I realized: my camera is not a machine any more - it is beginning to be an instrument.

Confessions of a Famous Photographer

Ok - the headline is premature. And please forgive my boasting, but I am high on recognition as I type.

Less than 3 months on flickr, and one of my photos (above) has been picked up by Londonist. How absolutely cool is that? Huzaar!

Oh yes - it's a photo of a new mural in Southwark Street by Ian Davenport entitled Poured Lines. It had been hidden behind a teasing temporary cover until its official unveiling (due tomorrow 6th September). Turned out, too much of a tease as passing Londoners started ripping the cover off. The rips in the cover interested me, and I headed down to Southwark on Monday evening to photograph it before it finally disappeared forever.

I arrived to find the Council's officials busy removing the cover early, so I shot some snaps.

They told me the mural was being recovered today, so the 'temp' cover would look spiffy and fresh for the official unveiling. This is quite a task - apparently, this mural is longer than the Sistine Chapel Ceiling.

More Chemistry

I am starting to regret my previous belief in our new security regimen.

Mixing up a bomb while on board a plane is not as easy as mixing a Sea Breeze (as we have been carefully led to believe) - it requires time (hours and hours), skill, temperature control (lots of ice), ventilation (noxious fumes): if someone was constructing a 7/7-type bomb in the airplane loos it is likely someone would notice something odd. More hair-raising details for the paranoid here.

Although my sister (a Science graduate) told me this evening it is theoretically possible to make an effective explosive out of a bag of flour and a cigarette lighter.

Anyway, apart from the security beaurocrats (let's face it - the government is never going to turn down an opportunity to grab greater power) - commerce also benefits, as Carol Sarler in today's Observer writes:

"The absurdity that is 'tightened security' at airports is making fortunes for some. Dutifully, we leave our perfume and mascara behind, slither naked through check-in, then gallop to Boots in departures to buy replacements, while Mr Boot and his landlord, BAA, laugh all the way to the bank. The French, mind, must be laughing louder. In their departures lounge at Nice last week, one woman flogged you 50ml of No 5 and then, only yards away at the boarding gate, another confiscated it. The plane home carried such a rich scent of fury and indignation, with an agreeable top-note of xenophobia, that you could have bottled that, instead."

Dan Perjovschi in the Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm

Perjovschi’s international reputation was made when he represented Romania at the 1999 Venice Biennale, chalking over the floor with drawings depicting post-Communist life which visitors erased with their feet as they explored them. As Perchovsky puts it, “We all live in a drawing, and sometimes this drawing is erased.”

In Stockholm, he had drawn all over the museum’s entrance foyer: witty, sharp comments on culture, International and Swedish politics and the museum world. His work raised interesting questions for me regards the status of graffiti art in modern culture. It appears from what I can see Perjovschi operates exclusively within the confines of the modern art establishment. Banksy does too, occasionally, of course, but usually on his own initiative and without requiring an invitation from the Tate, British Museum, or Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example. And while it is not impossible to contemplate, I don’t somehow see Banksy being invited to represent the UK at the Venice Biennale anytime soon.

Zippy and the Big Foot

I first started taking Zippy around with me on my travels in the late 1990s – Paris, Athens, Rome, New York. However, my long-term companion violently disapproved of any Zippy action and Zippy led a half-life, hidden in closets and luggage, waiting for a few stolen moments in hotel rooms, never seeing the outside world.

Since we’ve gone our separate ways, however, Zippy has come out loud and proud. He is looking forward to seeing the world.

And he's off on his next adventure.

Quote London

"London is not romantic, no, London has the violence of a bolt of lightning . . . London is a city where only the fittest survive, the pulse rises fast and plummets as quickly, things get done and undone in a split second. London is a harsh place for many, where the idle rich can ignore the value of money, but where great ideas are born every day. London is a capital that dares."

Agnès Catherine Poirier, Touché: A French Woman’s Take on the English. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006

You know you spend too much time on the internet when . . .

. . . you find out about the latest terrorist outrage on someone else's blog rather than from the mainstream media. Hoo boy. Great catch, as they say on flickr, for the police. It's surprising how much cycnicism there is about this out in the blogosphere - my intuition is that this time it's real. (And this is a high vote of confidence from me: I doubted the Stockwell shooting from the moment I heard of it). Although it is notable our beloved Home Secretary came out of this smelling of roses for his 'firm' handling of the crisis: Tony away on holiday, Gordon up in Scotland on paternal leave, and Prescott deftly sidelined. Excellent timing indeed. Chaos unfolding in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc etc etc. Charming year we are having.

My other issue is that the security forces have been pushing this plastic bag idea at airport security all year, and now it's come into its own. I'm devastated, as I travel with bottles of water (to stave off thrombosis) and all my precious gizmos - powerbook, digital SLR and iPod. What will I do now? I'm definitely not putting the powerbook in the hold. I suppose the Nikon will have to be packed hyper-carefully, because I can't not take it. And if I can't listen to the iPod on the plane, that cuts out 50% of the point of taking it in the first place. Damn those pesky fundamentalists.

I am flying out to Sweden later this week (I think - must check!!) to meet up with my family for a weekend in Stockholm. My first visit to Sweden, so I'm quite excited. The relatives left today - or at least, I hope they did: I haven't yet heard otherwise from them.

I wanted to post this earlier, but lo and behold everytime I tried getting into Blogger it was taking a rest or checking its tubes or something. It has not escaped me that other people have been posting as normal, so I am revising my previous theory, and am coming over all paranoid - Blogger is out to get me! Arrgh!

August is here

Well, charming. My first post in weeks and Blogger decides to blow up and lose everything! Aaaaaaaargh!!!! Where was I? –

Starting again (this time on my laptop and then and copying and pasting into Blogger).

I have been neglectful. It appears to be a pattern that I fall off later in the month – I must improve! This month will be different, I promise.

What have I been up to? Flickr-ing mostly – it’s totally addictive. It seems to be motivating me to get back into photography and to try to improve my skills, which is great. Oh, and yoga. This week I collapsed in class (wimp) – my teacher blamed it on my ongoing and escalating family crisis. Could be – the headaches, the headaches! – Oh, and India is still the no. 1 choice on my iPod. Thank heavens for that.

Well, I haven’t even managed to keep up with reading all my favourite blogs, let alone writing anything myself. But two of my favourites have been really excellent just lately: Diva has been doing his annual survey and cross-comparison of chart hits through the decades; this is terrific fun and educational too. It ends today so hurry and vote. And if anyone hasn’t yet seen seen Joe’s videocast, then scoot over NOW.

Yesterday afternoon Jenny came round for tea and gossip. We tried out Macaron on The Pavement by the Common. It’s a trés chic patisserie which opened this summer. Mixed reviews – my Grand neighbour dissed it; Princess Satine raved (she’s back on carbs as her fitness regime just burns everything away the moment she swallows) – but the window displays alone justified a visit.

We had five cakes between us – oh, the shame. I can fully recommend the hazlenut cream choux ring and the fresh cherry tartlets. Going back for more, for sure.

Yes, I wonder. Back in the early 90s, the art director of the company I worked for banned me from entering the art department as he was convinced my aura crashed his macs. I wonder if my superpowers have grown and morphed and now I am crashing blogger? Ha ha! World domination is within my grasp!

Macaron
22 The Pavement
London SW4 0HY
tel: 020 7498 2636

iTunes Rules

Well, only one actually - Never buy a whole album, just singles - experiments, fillers, whims, etc. I prefer having CDs as a back-up should my poor powerbook have a meltdown. And although I love them I don't really trust Apple.

However, last week I broke the rules for India Arie, and it was worth it. Completely fabulous album which is chilling me out at all times of the day.

French and Saunders

The end of the TV contract? - or diversifying?

Pride in the Navy

vintagemen17
Originally uploaded by justinwstephens.

original caption:
"...handsome, shy sailor he met during World War II. Frank was a gentle soul and a loner. He was awkward around people but loved animals, especially birds.

Every time he got a shore leave in California, he stayed with my uncle. The two had a great relationship and when the war was over, Frank wanted to live with him, tend his huge garden and have lots of pets. Sadly, Frank never made it home from the Navy...

Until his last day on earth, my uncle always kept a birdbath in his garden with a statue of St. Francis on it, for Frank. As little kids in uncle's garden, we always called it St. Franks birdbath."


I'm having a bit of a naval moment. I found the above on Flickr and it choked me up. The pathos of that poor bereaved soul - not able in those days probably even to attend a military funeral for his partner to commemorate his life and sacrifice; having to be content with that private memorial in his garden (but what a beautiful one).

So we can be very proud of how far we have come, as the Royal Navy's contingent at EuroPride demonstrated. Of course, our military still has a way to go (as evidenced by the RAF and Army's behaviour over Pride) but still, the Americans are virtually back in WW2 days in terms of attitudes.

I posted my pic of our proud sailors below, but again on Flickr, Lewishamdreamer took this amazing portrait of a Naval officer at Pride. His photostream is well worth checking out.

Royal Naval Pride
Originally uploaded by lewishamdreamer.