Cannes Do - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Delivering keynote at MIPDoc on pushing the boundaries of multiplatform

Jogging to the marina at the east end of the Croisette at Cannes early this morning

Reading Philip Roth's Nemesis on the plage Carlton in the late afternoon beside a woman with a New York/Noo Joisey accent

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

My generously proportioned hotel room at the Carlton, Cannes - my first stay here since the Melrose years c1996 with MindGym

Dinner with Anna Higgs of Film4 at Gordon Ramsay's Plane Food at LHR T5

Talking about NEDs in Old Queen St

Starspots special #14: Starmeets

26/3/12
Ian Hislop (and wife)
Outside the National Theatre
First time since Not Forgotten launch at Imperial War Museum in 2008

27/3/12
Gary Kemp
In Heddon Street where Ziggy Stardust was born

Starspots #67

Jon Snow
Outside The Guardian, York Way
24/3/12 on the way home from Olympic volunteer training

Henri Cartier-Bresson

"There is nothing in the world that does not have a decisive moment"

(on Behind the Gare St Lazare 1932)

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Having cleaned up the ground behind the Mond Monument

Watching a war movie with U & N (Spike Lee's Miracle of St Anna)

A bitter shandy in one of those old dimpled pint glasses (sharing a little with N) - The Adam & Eve, Mill Hill Ridgeway

Joan Baez (Festival Hall) 17/3/12

1 God on our Side
2 Swing Low Sweet Chariot
3 Joe Hill
4 House of the Rising Sun
5 Suzanne
6 Diamonds & Rust

7 Blowin' in the Wind
8 The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
9 Imagine

with Una

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Watching Rob Kearney and the Irish team play in the 6 Nations Rugby against Scotland

Reading 'Six Days' in the back garden sunshine

Having a Saturday afternoon wander down the High Street

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Women's 3m Springboard diving at the 2012 Olympic Aquatics Centre

Morning run in the sun

Watching Homeland on Channel 4

Life Drawing - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Last life drawing class of the season (Zoe 2)

Drink of Symonds cider after with Andy, Zoe and co. To celebrate Steve's birthday

Reading Tomorrow over vegetable gyoza soup

Words I Hate

Killing Time
Maggot
Bloods

Creative Accounting #617

Little White Lies (Les Petits Mouchoirs) / French = The Big Chill / American

with Liam Neeson (Gilles Lellouche), Dustin Hoffman (Francois Cluzet), Sean Penn (Benoit Magimel) look-a-likes
Ludo = Alex, Marie = Chloe, Max = Harold, etc.

Creative Accounting #616

Homeland = The Manchurian Candidate + 24

Creative Accounting #615

Juno & The Paycock = Jerusalem + The Weir

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Reading Tomorrow by Graham Swift (signed edition from Brighton, set in Brighton)

Lunch with Mark Sheldon as he heads off

Dinner with N in Muswell Hill

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Lunch and chat with Will Gompertz al fresco near Broadcasting House

Evening coffee with Roddy Gibson outside Bar Italia in the Absolute Beginners streets of Soho

Launch of Cern People with Roger Graef at Google - with Andy Charalambous

Starspot #633

20/2/12 Charlie Brooker - outside Channel 4

9/2/12 MacKenzie Crook - leaving East Finchley tube

Feb 12 Jimmy Carr - entering Channel 4

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Taste of a tangerine up on Chanctonbury Ring

Watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off on my day off in the afternoon with the Enfants Terribles

Jogging east of the Marina to the chat of Mayo & Kermode

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Churchill's amateur enthusiasm for painting as read in his studio at Chartwell

Going to the movies with the Enfants Terribles and Alfie (Man on a Ledge)

Hitting town (Brighton) for a traditional Shakeaway

Thursday's (9th Feb) Happiness Experiment entry

Salome silent film with live music with U at Purcell Room - greeted with the exotic scent of incense

Meeting up with a bunch of YouTubers from New Year Revolution including Hanna and Lex

Lunchtime pilates

What the Dickens - Tuesday's (7th Feb) Happiness Experiment entry

Warren W brewed up Charles Dickens' punch recipe (rum and brandy), set it on fire and served it up to old pals

Reading Big Sur (Jack Kerouac) begun at Big Sur in 2004

Talking telly with JHunt and colleagues over breakfast

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Going to see Juno and the Paycock with Ma (at the National like good old times)

Bumping into Nicky Byre for the first time since Hendon Prep - on Hampstead Heath at Kenwood

The snowy fields around Kenwood in the low winter sun

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Drawing class with Andy - focusing on tone

Finishing Gun Before Butter (Nicholas Freeling) - on my shelf since Van der Valk was on telly in my teens

Being largely out of sync with the rest on RTS Single Drama jury, a good bunch including Hilary Bevan Jones and Giles Coren - strangely coinciding with the anniversary of the Munich Air Crash (subject of United)

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Jack Kerouac's fluent writing in Big Sur (started in Aug 2004 in Big Sur)

Also resurrected: The Buzzcocks, Love Bites

Celebrating Dicken's 200th bithday with school pals

The Mystery of Appearance

Haunch of Venison 3/2/12

Hockney
Bacon
Freud
Auerbach
Kossoff
Patrick Caulfield
Richard Hamilton
Michael Andrews
Euan Uglow
Coldstream

Auerbach
Gerda Boehm 71/3
Something Oriental about it, in the colouring

Andrews
The Thames at low tide 94/5
Bare canvas for exposed beach
River beachcoming with D

Kossoff
Willesden Junction Summer No. 1
66
Stylistic relation to Auerbach - friends
Monet's London images - Impressionists' railways

Auerbach
Primrose Hill, Winter Sunshine 62/4
Colour palette, subtle

Kossoff
Seated Woman 2
59
Massively thick paint, sculptural, subtleties of colour

Bacon
Pope 1 - study after pope innocent X by Velazquez 51
Vortex of foreground (curtain?) v box

Hockney
Man in a Museum 62
Artifice of art - bare canvas - brushstrokes on shelf period

Kossoff
Nude autumn morning 71
Simplicity within myriad details/drips

Freud
Girl on a Turkish sofa 66
Bacon-like flesh (feet)

Auerbach
Reclining figure 72 *
So few strokes to capture the figure

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Being approached about a stunning job

Pilates class at lunchtime

Seeing N's Classics exercise book with its very positive feedback

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

D's warmth on saying bye as I head for Finland

Listening to Jim and The Doors for the first time for ages

Reading about South of Beersheva (Oz)

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Life drawing - Margot from Maine in Stokie

Reading the wizard that is Oz

Doing online admin long overdue

Star spot #255

MacKenzie Crook - East Finchley tube (a couple of weeks after the closing of Jerusalem, looking way cooler than in the past)

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Finding the North-West passage through Coldfall Woods into the cemetery

Reading my third Amos Oz (Don't Call It Night)

Watching N run on the rugby field vs Wasps with U

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Reading my childhood copy of a Ladybird history book with D (to help make history more fun through the pictures)

Listening to Movin’ Down the Line by Raphael Saadiq and watching the vid

Work Christmas lunch in mid-January at a Pimlico restaurant est. 1964

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry - Tales from the Homeland

Taking photos in St Pancras & Islington cemetery in low winter light with a frost (with U along for a walk)

Doing stuff with U on the couch in the backroom like reading, listening to music and watching Drive - a domestic Saturday afternoon

Reading a play - Christopher Hampton's Tales from Hollywood

Creative Accounting #614

Drive = Taxi Driver + The Getaway(?)

Creative Accounting #613

Ryan Gosling = Christoph Waltz + Ben Miller

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Watching Inbetweeners clips with the Enfants Terribles

Listening to Rose Miller and her friends singing

Doing Christmassy errands along East Finchley high street

Trouble on the Estates

The 1st Estate:
Child abuse rife in the Catholic church in Ireland and beyond

The 2nd Estate:
Lords taking cash in brown envelopes (and largely getting away with it); Prince Andrew's network of dodgy connections; Prince Charles' marital infidelity

The 3rd Estate:
MPs fiddling their expenses on a grand scale

The 4th Estate:
Phone-hacking a widespread practice in the tabloid press

The Police: (neighbouring the Fourth Estate)
Selling stories to the tabloids

The Judiciary: (neighbouring the Fourth Estate)
Supressing the truth by enabling super-injunctions

The City: (neighbouring the Third Estate)
Gambling Other People's Money, then taking public money as a bail-out; speculating at everybody else's expense; creaming off unmerited bonuses regardless of preformance

No wonder the estates are rioting...

Quotation on advice/collaboration

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all I can borrow.

— Woodrow Wilson

Things That Are No More #3: The Word magazine free podcast

So I was out for a run round the St Pancras and Islington cemetery this morning, listening to The Word podcast as is my wont (I was introduced to it a few years ago by Steve Moore and hold it in as great affection as he does). Nile Rodgers was the special guest and just after he explained how having his guitar retuned by his mother's latest boyfriend was a revelation to him and launched him into a frenzy of Beatles playing there was a bong and the podcast was cut off in its prime - a voice explained that now only magazine subscribers get the full Monty. I understand why David Hepworth and pals feel they need to do that but somehow sad nonetheless. The sad way of the world... [cf #1: the generosity of Shadbolt's]

Things That Are No More #2: Osman's

This, together with the next entry, is what inspired this series.

I was walking up Wardour Street yesterday evening and noticed after many years the stationers Osman on the corner of Broadwick Street has disappeared. Become a choclatier. I was an occasional customer back in my Solus days (1987-89). It was a Soho landmark and I feel its passing should be marked.

{Photo courtesy of Mark Hillary}

Things That Are No More #1: Veneer of the Week

Veneer of the Week on the front of Shadbolt's factory, formerly one of the few highlights on the North Circular

Can still be found on their website but that's no substitute

This week it is: Crown Cut American Black Walnut - now that would lift any journey on the NSR

Here's a good observation from the DHM blog:
"But the sign felt generous, like Shadbolts were decent and cared about their product, and when companies make a bit of extra effort like that, it’s always repaid in good will."

And here's a remark which accords with my memories - the exotic dimension - from the Bite blog:
"Some veneers carried the mystery of far-off places: Crown Cut Lebanon Cedar. (Others less so: Curly Birch.) "

Projects

My Movie Mashup
Germ
Human Footprint
Every Picture Tells A Story (2004)
PIXnMIX (2004)
TexTips 4Lovers, 4Karma, 4Mates, Islamic Inspiration, 4Change etc.
Chancers
Ideasfactory
Omagh
Origination Insite
Lost Generation
Digital Africa
Time Team Big Dig
" Big Roman Dig (2005)
Jsd
New Shoots
Famelab
Rolling Stock
My Shakespeare (rada)
X (2005)
BtN
Make Tracks
Webit
Ia xmas cd
The Unteachables
121 (2006)
The Play's The Thing
CV:
EIGF Advisory Board (2004)
Council for Industry and Higher Ed
Melt
AHRB
Creative Licence Archive Group (2005)
ICA The Club

Monkeying around - Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

The monkey I introduced into Cash and Burn made its first appearance in Broadcast

Became Facebook friends with Roddy Doyle

First meeting at Cafe Kick, Shoreditch with Steven the Wasted man

Lisa Hannigan at Shepherd's Bush Empire 30/11/11

Passenger tour

Passenger
1 Home (Burned your letters)
2 Venn Diagram (your life?)
3 Ocean and a Rock
Lille? - [What'll I Do] ((Eh oh??)) [checked to here]
4 O Sleep - with John Smith
A Sail
5 Little Bird
6 Nowhere to Go ((Never))
7 Paper House
8 Pistachio - [Knots?] ((I???))
9 Teeth (You???)
10 I Don't Know (back in bottle)
What I'll Do
+++
{unknown}
11 Safe Travels
12 Knots

With Nigel

Sinead O'Connor at St. John's at Hackney church 27/11/11

1 Come Closer to Me (?)
2 Baby
3 Emperor's New Clothes
4 (North African)
5 Wolf
6 Someone Like Me (?) *
7 Stretched on grave
8 Ball/Animal
9 (Pink Dress)
10 Out of Africa(?) reggae
11 Nothing Compares to You
12 The Last Day
+++
13 VIP
14 Old Lady
15 monk's prayer

with Adie Dunbar
Early outing for Feb2012 album

Quotation on child/adult

Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

Margaret Atwood

I've always felt like this, even more after having children.

The Cure

Reflections
Albert Hall
15/11/11

3 Imaginary Boys:

10:15 on a Saturday Night
Fire in Cairo
3 Imaginary Boys
***

17 Seconds:
A Forest
17 Seconds
***

Faith:*
Primary
Other Voices
All Cats Are Grey*
Faith *
***
encore

1 World War
2 ?
3 Plastic Passion
4 Boys Don't Cry
5 Killing an Arab
6 ?
***
7 Dissent
8 Spinter in Head
9 Charlotte Sometimes
10 Hanging Gardens
***
11 Let's Go to Bed
12 Japanese
13 Love Cats

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Smiling at Michael Johnson, holder of the 400m world record - and watching him from the front row of an audience with him at work

Bedtime reading with D

Listening to songs from Grace and Danger (while reading about them)

Starspots #288

16/11/11
Ken Clarke MP
by The Speaker's House

16/11/11
the Queen (almost)
at Westminster Abbey for St James's Bible anniversary

15/11/11
Alan Johnson MP
Strutton Ground

14/11/11
Michael Johnson
C4 caff

14/11/11
Russell Grant
Gym Box, Shepherds Bush

12/11/11
David Baddiel
Wembley (England vs Spain)

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

On the cobbles (Strutton Ground) reading about John Martyn with a coffee and pain au chocolat

Revisiting 1979 with The Cure at the Albert Hall playing their first three albums

Getting SexTips4Girls.com through the system

Creative Accounting #612

Of Mice and Men (1937) = Frankenstein (1931) + Westward Ho (1935)

Day-before-yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Jog along the Liffey beyond Four Courts, catching late autumn sun

Porridge at Queen of Tarts

Walk around Rathescar lake, Co. Louth - found by chance. I fixed the dodgy sign at the nearest crossroads after.

Carlingford - Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Family gathering at Bernadette's including first meeting with the delightful Aoife and chucking a ball/lads' talk out front with Des and the Enfants Terribles

Jog from pier to pier (cancelled out by breakfast at Dan's)

Coffee and chat over at Pierre McDonagh's in Greenore

Dublin - Day-before-yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Walk along Clontarf river-front with Bernadette (including Hot Press photographer's [Nixon] and posh food - best cappy I've had in Ireland)

Down to the Liffey by the Winding Stair in the low autumnal sun

Dinner with Orla and Meabh in Temple Bar

Little Jerusalem - Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Finding Leopold Bloom's birthplace, Chaim Herzog's family home and hanging out in Little Jerusalem (Dublin 8)

Getting into the Irish-Jewish Museum by chance (thanks to Howard) in the heart of that bit of Dublin I'd want to live in - red brick, tree-lined streets, suburban tranquillity

Fresh Italian lunch at the Bernard Shaw, home of Dublin graffiti

Leopold Bloom's birthplace

52, Upper Clanbrassil Street, Dublin 8

Back in the Old Country - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Buying a mag for hols (all about David Bowie)

Having a laugh with the Enfants Terribles in McKevitt's after dinner

Being in Joe McKevitt's house on the 10th anniversary of his death

Friday's Happiness Experiment entry

Doing admin on the Brighton train on the way to creative meeting at Ricochet

Picking up some old green Penguins, a record recycled as a dish and other bits and pieces in the North Laines

Watching the original Arthur en famille

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Catching low autumn rays on a Kenwood slope with U

Reading Robert Harris' The Fear Index in bed in the afternoon

Hearing Smells Like Teen Spirit by Paul Anka played by Chewy in Stokey Record Club with U, Sara, Wayne and Ben

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Playing Secret & Obvious with D at Ed's Diner after Tintin screening

Approaching Wembley in low autumn sun with the Enfants Terribles for Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs Chicago Bears NFL game

Listening to Word podcast about Bowie on an afternoon jog

Creative Accounting #433

On The Waterfront (1954) = A View from the Bridge (1955) + 0.3 X West Side Story

Starspot #212

David Morrissey reading Waugh's A Handful of Dust yesterday afternoon coming home on the Northern Line

Starspots #211

30.ix.11 Feargal Sharkey (The Undertones) - East Finchley tube, he caught my wife's Northern Irish tones on the air

29.ix.11 Robert Harris (author) - Hatchards (wish I'd have had my copy of The Hitler Diaries for him to sign)

28.ix.11 Anna Richardson (The Sex Education Show) - chat out back on the terrace at C4

Recently:
Jamie Oliver - in the office
Kirstie Allsop - in the office
Mariella Frostrup - in Pret near BBC Broadcasting House
Stephen Fry - in a warehouse in Hackney (100 Greatest Gadgets shoot)
Jon Snow - brief exchange outside QE2 Conference Hall, Westminster
Paul Brady (musician) - brief exchange in Khan's restaurant, Westbourne Grove
Leon Russell - ditto
Morgan Spurlock - quick chat in Showroom cinema in Sheffield
George Clarke - chat at Soho Square
Jeremy Hardy - chat in Showroom cinema in Sheffield
Neil Morrisey - chat on Parkway Walk, Finsbury Park
Boo Hewerdine (musician) - behind Feis in Finsbury Park
Michael Portillo - Horseferry Road

Helsinki - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

My speech going down so well at YLE

FotoFlaneur trip across Helsinki culminating in watching my much-needed capuccino being made in the Citroen van

Buying apples in the market by the port (where I probably landed on the SS Uganda all those years ago)

Eastwards Ho! - Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Getting a bunch of developments signed off and the paperwork done

Worky lunch with Katie Boyd in the revamped C4 caff

Overview time (work) on the plane to Helsinki

Day-before-yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Ireland beating Australia at Rugby World Cup 2011 in New Zealand crowning BOD's and ROG's careers

Phone chat with Katherine in Aspen

Hitting 91.5 pm

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Walk along the Lea Navigation Canal from The Castle Bridge to Olympic Stadium with U and D in the autumn sunshine

Spurs beating Liverpool 4-0 with Adebayor scoring 2 on his home debut

Sunday night viewing - Jane Eyre at the Phoenix with U

Networks

Hierarchies have been under attack from networks for 20 years now.

Ben Hammersley

from here

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Listening to Heather Rabbatts' Desert Island Discs during my jog - fond memories of early days at 4Learning with Jonathan, James, George, Sally et al (many now at Royal Opera House with Heather)

Reading a vintage Penguin in the garden at sunset - Roger Casement's trial by H. Mongomery Hyde

Watching Harry Brown with N - the recent riots throw a new light on it (remarkably prescient)

Innovation quote

Innovation comes from creating environments where ideas connect.

— Steven Johnson in 2011

Source

from Quotables

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Working with designer Neville Brody on a project to create a new London building

Reading through a selection of multiplatform ideas from Mint Digital

Watching 24 (season 5) with the Enfants Terribles

Lisa Hannigan - Bush Hall 19/7/11

A Sail
Paper House
Flowers
Ocean and a Rock **
Venn Diagram
O Sleep (with John Smith)
Little Bird
Nowhere to go *** (hill, house - could be Home)
Home
Dunno *
Sea Song
Passenger
What I'll Do
Lille
***
Knots
Safe Travels Don't Die
Personal Jebus

[see original Set List in blue folder]

John Smith - supporting and accompanying
with Una

Words I like

Yak
Aromatic

Neil Diamond at The Millennium Dome 9/7/11

1 Soolimon
2 Shiloh
3 Cherry O Baby
Aint no sunshine
4 I'm a Believer
5 You don't bring me flowers
6 Holy holy
7 Sweet Caroline
8 I am I said
+++
9 Cracklin' Rosie
10 America
11 Travelling Salvation Show
12 Released

With Ma and Mo

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Playing Top 3s with N & D at Cafe Rouge, Highgate with The Black Book (all since ripped off by Claudia Winkelman's King Of)

Lunch at Maurizio's with N - artichoke me, Milano salami him - the usual

Collecting D from Euston after his longest time away from home to date

Michael Franti at Bush Hall 3/7/11

Everyone Deserves Music
Sound of Sunshine
Hey Hey Hey ***
---
Could It Be Love (Bob Marley)
Say Hey

Creative Accounting #98

Bob Marley + Arrested Development + Richie Havens = Michael Franti

Songwriters' Circle 29/6/11

Donovan:
Mellow Yellow
Colours

Buffy Saint Marie:
Little Wheels
Universal Soldier *

Roger Cook:
Something's Got a Hold of My Heart
I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing

At Porchester Hall with Claire and Jacqui, for BBC4.

Songwriters' Circle 28/6/11

Leon Russell:
Tightrope
Marsquerade

Nick Lowe:
Battlefield
Beast in the Cage (Johnny Cash)
Cruel to be Kind
I Read Alot More

Paul Brady:
Smile
Nobody Knows
Steelclaw
Luck of the Draw
The World is What You Make

All:
Train Arriving

At Porchester Hall with Neil B, for BBC4.

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

First blackberry of the year picked

Life drawing (first time in a fair while) - Justa

Reading Ulysses late at night when all are abed

Creative Accounting #663

Matthew and Son (Cat Stevens) - all but the start of the chorus = Mad World (Tears for Fears) - all but the start of the chorus

Feis 3 Van

(?)
(?)
?
Real real gone
I can't stop loving you
Moondance
Have I told you lately
(Never let me go)
?
In the garden? No methon no guru *
Girl from the Co Down
Step right up
Walk when I walk **
Gloria

Feis 2 Dylan

Gonna change my way of thinking
Its all over now baby blue
Things have changed
Tangled up in blue
Summer days (and summer nights are gone)
Simple twist of fate
?
Hard rain
Highway 61 **
Forgetful heart
?
Mr Jones *
Rolling Stone ***
Watchtower
Blowing in the Wind

Feis 1

The Undertones
(Get Over You)

The Waterboys
Glastonbury Song(?)
You're a big girl now
September 1913
Whole of the Moon
Fishermen's Blue
Don't you love me(?)

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Reading Jill Dawson's Lucky Bunny in the back garden in the late afternoon sun and earlier with singing wafting over from Martin School fields (punctuated with dozing in the shade and having a love-in with Tommy Boy)

Evening burst of Led Zep in the car on the way to Primrose Hill

Chats with a woman from Cushendun and a girl in Friern Barnet

A&M

I've been spending the weekend at the Krakow Film Festival in Poland. While I was in the hood I thought I'd have a go at finding my great-grandparents' house which is somewhere in a town about 50km East of Krakow. My grand-mother died a few years ago in London and with her went the address. So all I had to go on, beside the name of the town, was a description, based on memories of 75 years ago, of how my distant cousin (of my father's generation) used to get to the house from the train station with all the timings in horse and cart terms; a rough memory of a street name from the Communist era incorporating the glorious name of papa Stalin; and A&M - the letters of my great-grandparents' first names which (the one concrete fact) were on a shield or crest high on the house.
So I set off, with my older son, at 10 this morning in some wheels organised by Adam, one of the friendly admins of the Dragonforum documentary workshop. You're into rural Poland within minutes of leaving the city centre. I was nervous for some reason - I knew we had very little to go on and my phone research of the previous day had drawn blanks and stonewalling, I didn't want to disappoint or be disappointed or lose the link with the family home where eggs were kept in sinks in the basement and from which my grandmother struck out on rides on the first bicycle in the town. Scraps of stories, not quite accurate, Chinese whispered through the family filtered by old age and post-war reticence.
I started with my Hamburg cousin's three quarters of a century old description of the 15 minute cart ride from the nearest station (which bore another name than the town). We got out where my best guess was combining the description (sent via Facebook, fairplay to Anni for being so wired at her age) and Googlemap. I'd been told the crest was near a balcony and the building on a corner. The first corner looked promising but no initials. The diagonally opposite corner looked equally possible. More or less every balconied building felt warm - the right age of building, crying out for a crest. After 40 minutes of searching the confidence was ebbing. I rang my dad's cousin who had found and visited the house in the mid 80s but didn't know the address. Nor whether the house was in fact on a corner. And doubted there was a balcony as the owner had spotted him and called down from a window. So all I had left was the initialed crest. The owner in the 80s name - which was not in the phonebook. And the Stalin street scrap.
We trawled every main street (three) of the sleepy Sunday town whilst the inhabitants stood around the church listening to the amplified service playing I imagine to a packed house of God-fearing Catholics inside. I know my great-grandmother was killed in this town in the view of others and I pictured it in the under reconstruction main square with its piles of cobbles, mass drifting over and my strapping half Irish-Catholic son standing with unconscious strength on its new stones in his Leinster top, blue as the sky.
No joy. So we hit the back streets. No a crest, shield or initialled plaque in the place. It was getting hotter. 26 degrees the day we arrived, 12 the next day, back over 20 today, fluctuating like my confidence in finding this link. We passed a corner shop. Junior needed a Coke (why do they mainly sell Pepsi in this country being one of his preoccupations of the weekend). My other half had given one piece of advice at the outset of the day by text - talk to people. I talked to the middle-aged female shop keeper, she had a bit of English. Do you know where there used to be a video sklep? (I'd heard sometime in or after the 80s the ground floor had been turned into a video store). Or do you know where Stalinska was in the Commiedays? She asked a local fella hanging out by her doorway. A contrary barman from the opposite corner approached. The shopkeeper urged them to help. They went off into Andrej's bar to find an old map. We waited expectantly. A break? They failed to reappear, the shopkeeper chased, they reluctantly got their shit together, had a quick somewhat heated debate and eventually, again at the helpful shopkeeper's urging, the hanging-in-the-shop fella started to lead us off to where they'd concluded the Stalin street used to be. We followed in silence, he spoke little English, we spoke less Polish (like not a single word except Sklep, Alkohole and Computery - this last and first turned out to be on the money). Down one of the three bigger streets we'd already tried then off to the left, pulling up on a three way junction, indicating a not particularly old corner house. I asked him which of the three joining streets was the Stalin one, gave him a few zloty which he was reluctant to take, then walked the length of that street as well as exploring the junction. Nada. Back behind the now deserted church. Mission failed. I'd sent some vibes to my grandmother looking for help (I was favourite first-born after all) but to no avail. Cut along the side of the church back to the rendez-vous with Machek our taxiguy? Or one last look at that Stalin junction? Back to the junction, then retracing our steps earlier with the shop hanger guide... Then out the corner of my eye I spot the only crest in town. A. M. A swirly L for Laub conjoining them. What a moment of pure soaring joy. "That's the first time I've seen a prayer answered" says A and L's great-great-grandson.
We contemplate the letters. Look at the door (beside the Computery Sklep) but there's no bell and it looks pretty unihabited. I spot something in the red brick beside the door - some scratched graffti dated June 1922. My grandmother's childhood era. Any more? No, but high up not easily noticed a bell. I ring. Nothing. Then some movement. A boy the age of my son comes to the door. After a bit of explanation (and he had heard tell of strange Englishman Marcel's 1980s visit) he cautiously let us in, his parents weren't around, and allowed us to get a feel for the place with its high but shallow rooms. I didn't push to see the egg basement.
We headed back up the hill to the square. I now knew for sure Dora's feet had pounded this trail. And I felt she'd be pleased we'd made the effort to see the place she spoke of with affection til her last days despite what had happened there. I was glad to have brought their great-great-grandson to be seen by A & M and to have joined that link.

Carlingford -Yesterday's and Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Sat 30th

Reading the paper in the sunshine on the grass at the corner of the harbour (by James Murphy's childhood home)

Drawing Carlingford from the far pier, warmed by the sunshine in a gentle breeze

Watching Thor with a bunch of 11 year old boyz

Sun 1st

Breakfast reading the paper in Dan's Stonewall Caff

Chatting to Meabh about her art

Walk with Des, Orla, Meabh, D & N along the beach in Rush, lively sea over to Lambey Island

Thursday's Happiness Experiment entry

Shelagh Fogherty's last show with Nicky Campbell on Radio 5 Breakfast - end of the second golden era

Canoeing round Lusty Beg in an Irish-built North American wood and fibre-glass canoe

Drawing one of the eight stone figures on White Island

Royal Wedding Day - Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Watching Kate's wedding dress emerge (complete with Irish-style lace) with the staff of Lusty Beg

Drawing in the walled garden of Fountain Court near Enniskillen, lying on the well tended grass in the afternoon sun by a fountain

Jogging the length and breadth of Lusty Beg in the morning, no-one else to be seen

Lusty Beg - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

D lying on me on cairn by Drumskinny stone circle

Winning a round of drinks in the Lusty Beg pub quiz as The G-unit

The smell of cut grass wafting around the old gravestones in St Mary's churchyard, Ardess

Art Vandals

Music in the Tuileries Gardens - Manet
Man waved/hit with? walking stick
See Julian Barnes review of Manet retrospective in Paris - Guardian 16/4/11

Carlingford - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Sitting reading outside Dan's Stonewall Cafe (The Heather Blazing)

Walking along the harbour in the evening with U

Reading The Brigade to N

Rush / Ros Eo - Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Making the Creature of the Irish Lagoon with D on Rush beach at sundown (after a jog down together)

The sound of the low tide whilst in my headspace on my morning run

Walking the beach with U in the evening

Bob Geldof on Robert Elms (Radio London)

I get into this melancholic state, it's not a depression ... you can use it [depression] as an animus, I mean physical things can spark it like twilight - I get very edgy if I'm not doing stuff
...
If there's nothing going on I have to have a book that I just get lost in, somebody else's world
...
If you have an idea, this is the city to live in if you have ideas, I mean London is driven by the culture of ideas ... so this is the place to be if you want to be in music and the arts, that's my view, it's the most exciting city in the world, and I could choose to live elsewhere so I choose to be here

Thursday's Happiness Experiment entry

Following up GTD/PWD with Steve

First shadowing day with Noah C

Booking Olympics tickets

To Ireland - Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Reading The Heather Blazing (Colm Toibin) in the air above Ireland

Laying and playing on the beach at Rush in the evening

Watching Starsky and Hutch en famille

Torquay - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

The sound of the steam train chuffing away from the beach at Paignton

N's rugby runs

The sight of orange sheep on a hillside

Torquay - Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Finding out by chance that I'd met Pete H's mum unknowingly at Clive's QC do in the museum

Jogging down into the valley to the next village (Daccombe)

Walking along the beach-houses in Paignton beneath the gardens

From Derry to Torquay - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Randomly crossing paths with Alice Taylor and Cory Doctorow in some motorway service station near Taunton

Breakfast at the Beech Hill overlooking the pond and green bridge

Reunited with D after me being in Derry and him in Brixton

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry - Antibes

Walking to le vieil Antibes, the square between the Musee Picasso and the cathedral

Dinner with the Maverick folk en plein air after the Digital Emmys

The hip bones of the girl on the jetty at the far-point of my run

Today's Happiness Experiment entry - Cote d'Azur

Picasso's Joie de Vivre (1946) at the Musee Picasso, Antibes

The birds chirping inside Nice airport departure lounge

The glaring sea off le vieil Antibes from the balcony of the Musee Picasso