Amelie Trailer

Just my favourite film....

Back down to earth

So here we are again, back down to earth, in the saddle, and feeling like I'm coming back for a rest. The outfit was a raving success, judged by the level of panic in peoples eyes as I approached them.

Of course I couldn't possibly comment on any aspects of the party on Saturday night, about being caught in a compromising position by both my sister in laws dressed as the Gemini Twins (if you don't know them then that is your homework), touching base with a fellow school mate, the only other male in fancy dress dressed as Blowfeldt (spelling!), complete with cuddly persian cat and cigarette holder, and looking suspiciously like Mimimee in Goldmember, which led to some very good photography between ourselves.

Neither can I comment from the fact that the dog went for the drummer in the brass band in mid performance, sending musicians, music and music stands flying, and the threat of strike action by the whole band, nor that the police had to be called due to the excessive noise, nor of the purloining of wheelchairs of the more elderly party goers for joy riding down the lane, nor of the rampant gambling.

But the difficult thing managing different people's expectations. One person will hold that their way of making a Pimm's is sacrosanct, just as much as another person holds that theirs is. So when you are doing it your way, and two other people want it done their way, I do get tempted to tell them to shove the strawberry and the straw where the sun won't ever shine again.

Parties should be about fun, and friendship, about swearing undying love to a poor bugger you have never set eyes on, and playing football, or draughts, or more intimate games with those that you swore the same thing with last time. Life is far to short to worry about how to make Pimm's. There are far more exciting things to make anyway!

The big downside is that the pictures got deleted off the camera. Though they are saved on my sisters laptop, it will be a few days before they surface, if she ever lets me ever have them....

Man In Space -- Billy Collins

The revolving building

The video of the circle of the building rotating is real, not a computer image, I have no idea how he did it, except he must have had a great wheel inside the building! and it cost £450,000, which is a lot of rice pudding.

The image above is of a small installation I helped the artist with, where a doorway slid back and forth through a room...Good night!

News depths of depravity

I didn't think my sense of depravity could get any worse, but it has.

This weekend, my sister is having a big James Bond theme party. You know the sort of thing, used to show off to everyone that shows off o you. Its meant to be very sophisticated; pretend casinos et.c. Unfortunately I mentioned it to the work experience lad here, and just said in passing how great it would be to go as Austin Powers, and he chirps up "Oh my mum made me a suit, why don't you try it on..." So there I am this morning, prancing around in a blue velvet jacket, ruff, and hair plastered to my head saying "Yeah baby!" to no one in particular. There are blue velvet trousers too, but my modesty prevented me trying them on just yet. All I need now are the false teeth and the glasses, and I'm on my way..Grrrreeaatt!

All I need now is P***y Galore....where has she got to...?

P.S. Wendy you are too right, we don't the great unwashed googling certain words and ending up here. This is a civilised blog, full of tea drinking soft chatter and bingo. Long may it last!

Upon administering a pill to Monty

I haven't got a cat, though would love one, so i dedicate this excerpt to Monty, in the hopes that she never has to do this to you....us lads have to keep our dignity you know!

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Instructions for giving your cat a pill

1) Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.

2) Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process.

3) Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away.

4) Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of ten.

5) Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call friend.

6) Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, hold front and rear paws. Ignore low growls emitted by cat. Get friend to hold head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth. Drop pill down, remove ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously.

7) Retrieve cat from curtain rail, get another pill from foil wrap. Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains. Carefully sweep shattered Doulton figures from hearth and set to one side for glueing later.

8) Wrap cat in large towel and get friend to lie on cat with head just visible from below armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force cat's mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.

9) Check label to make sure pill is not harmful to humans, drink glass of water to take taste away. Apply band-aid to friend's forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.

10) Retrieve cat from neighbour's shed. Get another pill. Place cat in cupboard and close door onto neck to leave head showing. Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with elastic band.

11) Fetch screwdriver from garage and put cupboard door back on hinges. Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot. Throw Tee-shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.

12) Ring fire brigade to retrieve cat from tree across the road. Apologise to neighbour who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat. Take last pill from foil-wrap.

13) Tie cat's front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table, find heavy duty pruning gloves from shed, hold cat's mouth open with small spanner. Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of fillet of steak. Hold head vertically and pour pint of water down throat to wash pill down.

14) Get friend to drive you to the emergency room, sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye. Call furniture shop on way home to order new table.

15) Arrange for RSPCA to collect cat. Ring local pet shop to see if they have any hamsters.

A New Day

Shhhhh, I'm resting today, after one of the busiest weekends on record. Hot and cold running food, parents staying, amidst constant games of Red Indians, and a particularly nasty game called Safari Park. Each person chooses a room, one person gets to visit each room , and has to guess what kind of heinous monster dwells inside from the gnawing and snarlings that are emanating from the enclosure. The most inventive one was enacting out the windscreen wipers having been pulled off in the monkey enclosure, that one gets my vote of homour.
My parents were in the garden and confirmed that the whole house resembled a rabid menagerie and weren't surprised if the neighbours hadn't called the RSPCA

That was the Saturday. The Sunday was no better. The swimming party involved enforced head stands underwater, and a combined game of water volley ball and being ducked by two particularly merciless 6 year olds, one impersonating one of The Incredibles, the other acting out quite effectively Spiderwoman

The house did not escape the attentions of our dear mites, with furniture scattered as if by a raging twister, and the boot rack looking as if a centipede had shed its load of footwear in a very haphazard manner.
So tonight its returning to the fray, starting to temporarily fill the holes in the outside walls and making an inventory for the Insurance claim that will inevitably follow in the days to come.

I suppose the Insurance Man will try and argue that birthday parties are an act of God. Feels more like the other place to me, and he should jolly well know!

Hustle and bustle

Everything is happening in the Blue household over the next few days. IT is Little Miss Blue's birthday this weekend, so the night before last we manhandled the tent into place, blowing and cursing, pumped the air beds up, bundled duvets, pillows, arm loads of furry bears, dogs, cats and rabbits, positioned the green bucket, the potty and the toilet roll, and left the children tucked up in the evening's obscurity on a most still and poised evening.

And when you leave the intimacy of the enclosure, the cosy womb of the tent, with giggles and torchlight flickering, when you leave it, the silence is deafening, and the landscape is so so still; poised, taut as a violin string. And far away, across the flood plain, the mist hangs luminous like a shroud, sandwiched between the obscurity of the forefield, and the hills. A thin brush stroke of blurred light traced in the darkness.

And along the skyline the three still trees punctuate the horizon. One like a man dancing, one a person with a a large load on their back, and there in front, do you see? the small dog leaps ahead tracing their steps back home

Come into my parlour....

Come here,a nd lend me your shell like.....between you, me and the gatepost, I'm a bit excited this week (when isn't he, I hear you ask....).

You see, we've managed to do something this week, that I've dreamed of doing for years. Its legal, and doesn't involve trifle, cream or rice pudding, before anyone asks.

Its seemed madness that we can be so close, you and me in this cosey place, and you cant see the full reality of what we design. Yes you can see the drawings, or pretty photos, or clever renders of the computer, but you can't move around, experience what it would really be like.

We are a step closer. Ok its not perfect,but the project that this is linked to is in very inital design stage, nowhere near planning, yet allows the client, in their office to envisage wha their space could be like. Its a simple image I grant you, but the implications are huge and very exciting.

Whats so good about this technology, is that the movie loads so quickly, and so can have much higher definition.

Click here and see the possibilities...

I know some of you won't like it, will prefer pencil and paper. But hey, I want both!

Test

file:///Users/admin/Desktop/Waddow_internal.mov

Turning the place over

Having worked with Richard Wilson on a previous project, I was delighted to see his latest installation is now up and running and on display in Liverpool. I didn't think I was going to wax lyrical about Architecture here, but his work beautifully bridges the divide between Architecture and Art, and personally I find it fascinating. Nothing more to say here, the video says it all so Ill just let you enjoy it....

The Bottom Drawer

You know sometimes, you have a day, and you think to yourself "You know, if I was a writer, this would make a really great short story"? Well one of those days came back to me today, and I'm going to share it with you, so sit down, get a cocoa, and lend me your ears, dears....

She was Sonya, a porcelain figurine straight out of an Edith Sitwell portrait. Fine brittle and translucent, and as sharp and as cold as an English Aristocrat could get. She had an enviable reputation before her; stories of girls having been skewered in the most indelicate of places as she dragged them across the boarding house floor dumping them out of the room unceremoniously. Her home life was not a passionate affair, it can hardly be when your best friend is a rabbit, and you are trained to kiss your mother and father like alabaster statues.
She found the perfect vocation, following in mummy and daddy's footsteps in the medical field, she chose pathology, where she could feel at home with the alabaster complexions and the damp cool skin of the cadavres. I often imagined her floating round the laboratory as her porcelain translucency matching the bowls holding her clients most prized possessions.

I was entranced when the invitation came. The wedding was to be at their house, a vast over sized Georgian Rectory with the small Victorian church just adjacent. He was a surveyor, whom she never said how she met; it couldn't have been at work, and we surmised she had descended to using one of the dating agencies designed for the discerning professional. And I was entranced, because I was to meet the rest of her family, a delight I had been relishing for some years....(to continue and to be edited)

A Satisfied Customer

You know, it almost felt like summer yesterday. luckily I was going out for a small drink with The Organic Nursey Man, and we sat outside in the evening light, watching the swifts wheel and scream overhead and savour the sound of the occasional motorbike tear through the village like rampant demon, discussed Satish Kumar (the editor of Resurgence), the flagrant abuse of organic farmers by the hotel industry, and how soon his gourds would be ready for plucking.

He's a quiet man, brought up in Africa on an estate farm where his father was a manager, he speaks with his eyes, and dreams of wide open spaces, and times other than these; he is a man buffeted by the rigours of the modern world , and whose face increasingly resembles the land which he works, and whom I am dearly fond of.

Circles form in this pub. We designed the refurbishment of the building, the landlady is a good friend and The Organic Nursery Man supplies greens and groceries to the restaurant. It feels good, as sense of community and wholeness, the circle completed and wholeness once again inhabits the world, and to cap it all, I was wearing my favourite green hat with the small feather in the side (you haven't seen that yet, have you....?)

So today's outpouring is a simple offering; of companionship, simplicity and gentleness to a small group of people who have a special place in my life, and deserve to know it (that's you, that is......).