I picked this up in a charity shop in Newbury for about £3 along with a nice selection of arty books. I have no idea of the purpose of this book, assuming it had a purpose in the first place. It’s a lovely chunky hardback containing shedloads of text, some colour photos of Highrise buildings and a mass of intriguing floorplans for aforementioned buildings. None of the text is in latin script apart from the title on the cover and a couple of chapter headings, I’m assuming it’s all in a Chinese dialect. I don’t want to know what any of it means, that would ruin the magic, it’s probably an exceptionally dull text book, but it looks nice. It’s been rubber stamped on the inside cover (again in Chinese), which may be  a library stamp, or a school stamp or may not be. Enjoy the intrigue.

Disclaimer. I may be violating someone’s copyright here. If so, contact me and I shall remove this entry and photos.

Full set on flickr.

Flickr set which also includes a couple of wallpapers. The most important thing is the album itself which you can download for free here: Reincarnationfish – Science Ninja Team Go. It’s a bit of a departure from Reincarnationfish’s usual indietronica, more of an ambient/IDM slant. It’s also awesome. Download it and tell him how good it is, he might make some more.

There was a pleasing selection of art on show. I’d expected nothing but still life and landscapes, not that I have anything against still life or landscapes, it’s just good to see a little diversity. We hung around with Jen and Neil for a bit, bemoaned the timing of the market (too close to Christmas, I’d already spent all my cash), bought a couple of prints then sodded off home. Really enjoyed it and looking forward to the next one.

More that a little pissed off with myself for having not got my shit together enough to have taken part. Another year has gone by where I’ve prioritised other people’s projects over my own and let work get in the way in the most horrific and unacceptable manner. I have been taking steps in the right direction, hopefully I’ll have got myself sorted enough that I might have enough finished material for the next market (May). I have a couple of sketchbooks full of ideas but nothing concrete yet. It was good to see that both Jen and Neil had created a load of really brilliant work alongside their day-jobs, with the right mindset I may get something finished. Had a chat with Scott and Emma today about maybe sharing a pitch at the next one, should give me a bit of motivation.

So, thanks to Boville’s for injecting a bit of art and culture into our otherwise fairly dismal town, and if I fail to get enough material together for a future event I’ll just have to go on an axe wielding rampage through the town instead.

Some links of interest:

• Jen’s art blog
• Neil’s art blog
• Buy Neil and Jen’s art here
• Harriet’s art
• A. Boville Wright
• Art on the Street

More photos here.

Brown Signing: Traveling in one direction until you see a brown traffic tourist sign, then following it to that specific tourist attraction regardless of if you’ve heard of it or it sounds interesting. It doesn’t have to be an official brown sign, just some indication of a touristy type thing.

There’s an excruciatingly dull story behind this, I expect you want to hear it. Being cretinously self-employed I don’t really have such things as holidays or weekends. My darling Lady K who is somewhat challenged when it comes to transport will on occasion ask me to drive her to work related events round the country, not usually that far from home that I couldn’t come back in the interim, but as an attempt to stave off the ever impending work related mental breakdown I’ll take the entire day off rather than come back and work. She get’s transport, I get a day off, everyone wins.

I suck balls at taking days off. I have no idea what to do with myself, I know I should write, draw, photograph and similar but usually end up dragging my arse around the nearest town centre slowing turning into some sort of consumer-zombie. I started trying to research the areas before we set out, but I either can’t find anything that sounds FUN or I leave my list of places to go at home (I am nothing if not a fucking idiot).

After spending an HOUR AND A HALF in Newbury town centre trying to find the public toilets (thanks Newbury council you fucknuts, considered a signpost or two?)  I left. I had planned to spend a while at Donnington Castle, but it was rainy, and pretty dull (comparative to other castle ruins). Bored shitless with no desire to haunt shopping centres or go home I drove in one direction looking for something to do, with the decision to stop at the first tourist attraction regardless of what it was. It was a disused 12th Century Church – St Margaret’s Catmore which is a pretty awesome find.

I have a minor (non-religious) obsession with churches, it was disused and mildly difficult to get to so completely devoid of people (I have  minor dislike of people).  There is no way I would have found this intentionally, the only tourist attractions I found on the web were the usual family friendly over-priced nonsense, this my friends if the power of the BROWN SIGN. Couple of hours poking round a disused (but still fully furnished church) in complete isolation for free was worth the journey. Afterwards a drive back towards Newbury stopping at the first signposted country pub for a very nice lunch in an otherwise empty pub (no idea what it was called or where it was) and set out again.

Next brown-sign find was Snelsmore Common. What’s better than empty churches with no people? Nature reserves with no people! Well very few people. Mostly wild ponies, which was nice. I did have a disturbing moment in the car park. There was a bus of disabled kids alongside me whose teacher was holding up items from the forest for them to name. As I stepped out of the car the teacher presumably held up a leaf as all the kids turned to look at me and chanted ‘Leave, leave, leave’. Good for them, I wouldn’t want some hairy angry web developer stumbling round my  common either.

Then we went home and nearly had three horrific accidents on the way, I am a shit driver. I took many photos, let me bore you with them:

Donnington Castle – (Full Set Here)

St Margaret Catmore (Full set here)

Snelsmore Common (Full set here)

Mostly close-ups of fungus. Mmm… fungus.

Pleasant day all considered, I’m happy I’ve found a way round my usual mental lethargy, hopefully I’ll have another crack soon.

A strange event to go to. The fireworks were cool, although both Tim and Myself seemed to remember them being a little more impressive when were younger, there was a lack of catherine wheels or static display type things (I have no idea of a better way to explain that), just a shitload of rockets. Fifteen minute walk to a field, fifteen minutes of fireworks, fifteen minute walk back to the car and it was all over. Still, a great deal better than sitting in watching fucking X-Factor.

Our intention to go for a meal afterwards was a little misplaced, the entire rest of the world had the same idea and we ended up having to drive into Wycombe to find anywhere without a stupidly long wait for a table.

I took a couple of hundred photos, mostly messing about with long exposures, like a grade a shit-conductor I left my tripod in the car so they were a bit hit and miss. The results were ok for a first go at photographing fireworks, I’d like to give it another go as none of them were very impressive.

Full set of Cookham fireworks photos is here (21 shots).

Here’s some of the better ones:

I took a few photos on the day we did the V&A and Hyde Park, most were a bit too fuzzy. It seems I have old man shaky hands to go with my failing memory. I’m 33 for fucks sake.

Most of the shots I took were for reference (a load of religious bits and pieces and a bucketload of skylines), most will not be uploaded as they are very dull out of context. I’m quite happy with this one:

Why the hell had I never been to the V&A before? It’s possibly the best place in the world ever (this week). Seriously, I can’t start to explain how inspirational that place is. I’m not going to try and review it, I find it hard to string a sentence together as it is without pretending I’m in some way qualified to provide critical evaluation of a subject of which I have minimal knowledge or experience.

We were fortunate to see the Telling Tales exhibition on our first visit which was a thing of disturbing wonder. A dark but beautiful selection of pieces, mostly furniture, arranged in a wonderfully fairly tale arrangement. The sound design was excellent and creepy and the exhibition setting really added to the experience (from the subjective angle of someone who has been to far too few galleries to make a comparison), although one of the sections was a little over-mirrored which freaked me out a little (not a sign of old age, just a sign of not getting out of the house enough). Anyway I loved it and balls to anyone who disagrees. Go to the V&A it’s fun and inspirational.

Oh, the building looks nice as well:

We wandered round Hyde Park for a while on the way to Selfridges. It’s easy to forget there’s so much green space in London. We probably see more nature on a day trip to London than a week of staying in Maidenhead where we live on the other side of the road to the damn moorland.

Hyde Park:

The whole set is here. I need to get some more practice at landscapes.

I nearly had to physically remove Lady K from the Serpentine Gallery. She can just about deal with ‘proper art’ (old paintings) but gets a little angry at anything she deems to be modern art. The gallery had an exhibition of fairly aggressively modern art including a smashed car, piles of newspapers, buckets on a shelf, etc. I wasn’t too fussed, I prefer my art visually interesting (although not necessarily attractive) but I can understand the purpose of more thought provoking works. Karen on the other hand looked ready to kick the nearest artist in the balls and had started mumbling hatred, I daintily removed her from the premises before she spontaneously combusted.

We wandered round a few of the notable London shops; Fortnum and Mason, which was nice but we didn’t buy anything. Liberty, interesting building, there was some cool furniture I will never be able to afford and a nice chocolate department I could afford stuff in. We also visited Selfridges, which I enjoyed less. I may be a middle class twat who sometimes shops in Waitrose and M&S but fuck me, that place is such a temple to consumerist excess I wanted my fucking head to explode and take out as much of the building and it’s yapping fuckhead customers as possible, of course I could have just been in an arse because my feet hurt. Barbie pink Christmas trees can fuck right off along with gold plated mobile phones, jewel encrusted mp3 players and other such shit. Uck. We visited the ‘Wonder Room’ which is so laden with needless luxury it threatens to break reality. On the positive the food court was nice. Mmmmm…. tasty hypocrisy.

We probably went to some other places, but my oldmanhead can’t remember much else.

(Thanks Damon for the biscuit suggestion). Mmmm… biscuits.

Recipe from here.