Venus in furs.

I bought the guitar for Anna.

Why I was in Hamburg I cannot remember now.

Or rather I bought the guitar to make myself more interesting to Anna.

Anna.

She dyed her hair black when all the other girls were dying their hair blonde.

She hung out with artists.

The guitar was cheap and broken but it was a guitar and I guessed that if I carried a guitar she would assume that I could play it.

I couldn't.

But I could carry it around as if I could.

And I could carry it around as if I could play it better than any-one else could... I was the Hendrix of guitar poseurs.

Anna wore a mink.

Guymond suggested the old man, Guymond could see that my posturing with a broken guitar was getting me no-where, the old man fixed instruments. Violins mostly..

He lived behind the Reeperbahn above a shop. He was a Jew and had lived there through the war but I didn't ask how and he didn't say why.

He just did.

He asked me did I play.

He asked me why then I needed the guitar.

I told him about Anna.

He said: Oh yes Venus in Furs.

He said he'd fix the guitar but that would fix nothing.

The old man was right.

'GREEK' at the Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House.

Greek was Mark-Anthony Turnage’s explosive first opera. His version of the Oedipus story, based on Steven Berkoff’s verse play, burst onto the stage in 1988. Music Theatre Wales brings Michael McCarthy’s blistering production to Covent Garden audiences. It was a triumphant success when it was first seen in 2011 and won the TMA Theatre Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera.

I saw this production last year in Huddersfield and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is very very good contemporary (not modern bollocks) Opera based on the Oedipus story. It is on on the 21st - 26th of this Month... Highly recommended.

Penarth pier.

Steve McQueen. Frog at large.

We found this charming fellow earlier in the year. He was hiding in a pile of rotting leaves at the front of the house. The boys decided to keep him as a pet so he was put in a box from which he escaped three times in as many minutes... Steve McQueen seemed the obvious name choice.

Excremental verse.

She said write me a poem
anything will do
I don't care if it is doggerel

I said I can't I am stuck
and the baby's eaten my paper
she said: Just write the fucker 

on bog roll

I said it'll be crap
tissue can't hold a rhyme

She said its 

super 

soft 

absorbent 

quilted 

pockets 

are just the job for your shit

and I've always wanted to wipe my arse on a poem.

Best joke in the world 2013.

The winner of the best joke of 2013 is the following:

I accidentally put Tipex in my ears instead of Otex... All I can hear is white noise.

Diana and Jade Goody statuette.

This is obviously a spoof. a very good spoof but a spoof non the less:

Yet it seems that a large number of people are taking it at face value!

Hmmmm.

Harp in the Park Lane hotel.

Farmival 2013. Meanwhile Gardens.

9/11 re-enactment proposed for Seoul towers.

This has to be the most thoughtless proposal ever. Dutch Architects MVRDV have unveiled this shocker. what are they thinking? More HERE

Pointless information on education. Reading is good for our kids!

A guest blog from Jan Nieupjur. As usual his views are not necessarily my own.

Jan writes:

I read this on the BBC website:

'A new study by the Institute of Education shows that children who read for pleasure are not only better at English but are also better at maths.

The study's co-author Dr Alice Sullivan explained to the Today programme's Sarah Montague the possible reasons for the results.

"It absolutely makes sense that you would expect reading for pleasure to improve children's vocabularies," she said.

"But I think that that also does improve children's ability to take on new information and new concepts across the curriculum."

She added: "A child who has a narrow vocabulary may constantly be coming across things they don't understand."'

For fucks sake the parents of kids who can't read can't read either and will therefore not read the above and not encourage their kids to read and the only maths needed by kids who can't read is simple addition to work out how much they have stolen from Grans purse.

The best plan is to enforce simplistic pictograms on Macdonalds packaging encouraging the use of condoms.

 

Sainsbury's guilty of environmental crime... String em up! That's what I say.

Sainsbury shit... Perfectly acceptable.


The above eyesore has been sitting outside the house for the past week. It is a trolley belonging to Sainsbury's with an ever changing collection of rubbish within (no different from the stores then). It sits in exactly the same spot where I placed bags of garden waste awaiting collection by RBKC some months ago which occasioned me to be branded an environmental criminal. Story HERE

Garden waste awaiting collection... Environmental crime scene.



It occurs to me that the useless jobsworths of RBKC must be receiving backhanders from the above mentioned grocer in return for turning a blind eye to their criminal acts or they can't work out how to stick one of their notices to a shopping trolley.

come on RBKC. sort your shit out!

And before you blame whomever it was who took the trolley from the store do the maths... Sainsbury's are happy to endorse rip off taxi firms plying their trade at the stores. Surely even they can see the sense of using a trolley which costs only a pound and on top of that you don't have to listen to the inane bollocks of the driver.

Come on sainsbury's... Provide free local taxis for people spending most of their income in your Monopoly store.

Oh. and where is that 98 year old bloke that Sainsbury's is proud to employ on 5 pence per hour to collect the trolleys? can't he walk this far.

Update. 28th September:

It is still here although the contents change daily. How long will RBKC let the rubbish pile up in our streets?

Portobello Film festival 2013 and spencer Hudson's Circles.

The Pop up Cinema on Portobello road is a wonderful, slightly scuzzy little cinema underneath the Westway. It's not a flea pit (fleas cannot afford the area these days) but it ain't the Electric either. Best of all it is free!

Last night saw the screening of the films entered into the film competition (the prizes are bronze trellik towers) and the awards ceremony.

The films as ever were collectively something of a curates egg, some of them not new but there was enough of interest to brave the pissing rain and it was good to see some old faces. I'm not going to bang on about all the films, I'm sure someone else will do that elsewhere, but I will mention two of them: Spencer Hudson's film,'Circles', which won the Local Films category is a delightful, well made and, as often is not the case in such things, well edited short which is well worth a look. The link to the web site is HERE


There is more about spencer and the film at the Source Magazine


The second film of note won the comedy treelike: Voodoo Moustache again was very well made and full of nice touches. Very stylish indeed, beautifully designed and if nothing else should put its creators well on the road to pop videos! Made by students at the National Film and Television School I believe.