Today's entry for the Happiness Experiment

Coffee with Dan Jones in Muswell Hill

Reading Jonathan Franzen's Freedom in the hammock chair

Doing English-French translation with N

Songwriters' Circle #4

David Gray
KT Tunstall
Ray Lamontagne

DG
1 Shine
2 Ain't no love
3 Babylon
4 Forgetting
5 Breathe
6 This Year's Love

KT
Other Side Of The World (Long distance love affair)
(Still A) Weirdo
Oi?? (Climate change)
Black Horse & The Cherry Tree
White Bird
The Entertainer

RL
(Winter of love)
Trouble

ALL
Morning of My Life

Bush Hall
with Neil B

Clips here

Starspot #222

Liam Gallagher (launch of Jim Jones Review album at Madame JoJo's 1.ix.10)
Mark Lamarr (ditto)

Creative Accounting #107

Inception = The Sting + Reservoir Dogs + Ocean's 11 + The Getaway? + video games

Brighton beach memoirs - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Underwater handstands on Saltdean beach, marvellously empty for a Sunday

Graffiti hunting around the North Laines

East Breakwater run with D - watching fish being hunted by gulls at the end

Mayorships

Present:

Victoria Station Train Crew Messroom
Scotland Yard
Department of Business, Innovation and Skills
15:31 to Horsham
East Finchley Library
Waterlow Park
Hainanese
Home Sweet Home Creative House
Maddens
The Old White Lion
Post Office N2
Royal Mail Delivery Office N2
East Finchley Smiles
Cash machine East Finchley
Boobas
Edgware Library
Hertford Road Bus Stop
Shippy Residence
Gertie Browns pub
East breakwater, Brighton Marina
Phoenix Cinema, East Finchley
Wingate FC
La Rugoletta, East Finchley
Home Sweet Home (N2)
Just behind my desk, being useful
Westminster City Council Town Hall
Julie and Miguel's home, East Finchley
The Stage Door, Apollo Theatre, Victoria
Pembridge Partners
Home Sweet Home Creative House
London "pied-à-terre"
Slutton Ground
Arts Depot
Westminster Cathedral
Lycee Saint Therese, Quimper
Place de la Resistance, Quimper
Port de Guilvinec
Chateau de Lanniron
River Odet
Portsmouth Pest Control
RHS Lawrence Hall
Artillery Mansions
Cherry Tree Wood Park
Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute
Finchley RFC
Leonie's Awesome Party! Woop!
St Anne's Church Courtyard, Wardour Street
Tommy Bring the Noise
Post Office, East Finchley
MacDonalds UK HQ
AGC Equity Partners
EasyJet repair yard, Luton
Poseidon Fish Restaurant, East Finchley
umbrella(s) outside channel 4
UOE
East Finchley Constitutional Club
Nicki's house
The Royal Oak, Muswell Hill
Parkway Walk (North)
East Finchley French Market
Kung's Chinese Takeaway
Our Lady of Muswell
The Bishops Avenue
Tosa
Finchley Spiritualist Church
Amici
Central House
Chorak
East Finchley tube - Platform 1
Eva's Polish Deli
Hughes Design
I Knit Weekender
Martin Primary School
Muff, Co. Donegal
The Bald Faced Stag + The Baldfaced Stag

Past:
Marina Square, Brighton
Looney Bin! Home

Fictitious creations:
Portsmouth Pest Control
Skynet (Europe)
Skynet GCHQ
The Slaughtered Lamb

Historic - Tuesday's Happiness Experiment entry

Seeing a Spitfire (at the Imperial War Museum) silhouetted against the sun

Chatting about forthcoming historical drama with Robert WC

Incredible Holland goal to get through to World Cup final (reaching back to the Goldsmids)

Back in business - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Chat with Graham Linehan (co-writer of Father Ted & The IT Crowd) about Quotables

Lunch in Exmouth Market at Moro with Zam

Viewing of CCTV Symphony taster in edit suite in Anglers Lane

Colemanball

"They [North Korea] collapsed like a pack of cards - and they did this in spades."
Vasos Alexander, BBC Radio 5 22/6/10

Punk

The day the Sex Pistols ceased to exist was the day they became important and relevant. That's always the case.

John Lydon

Japanese TV interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQxhbLPZVpI&NR=1

(sex pistols, punk, important, relevant)

Quotable

"the basic difference being that a novel is about interior life and a film about exterior life"
Martin Amis in The Guardian 26/5/10

Istanbul - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

The illuminated water of the Basilica Cistern

Drinking tea in the rain with U whilst watching the shipping in Gulhane Park on Seraglio Point

Watching a bird flying around the minarets of the Blue Mosque at night

Talking Turkey - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Flying over moored shipping off the coast of Istanbul

Hooking up by chance with Utku and his cousins for an evening of Turkish coffee, backgammon and hookah smoking

The piles of spices in the Spice Market

Boys and Men in Black - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Watching N being chased and tackled by Saracens hooker Schalk Britts - and still making the try line

England rugby captain Steve Borthwick's generosity with a bunch of enthusiastic kids doing a training evening at Saracens

Watching French-like Israeli film Broken Wings

Starspot #221

Sam Taylor Wood, Aaron Johnson and black dog (Primrose Hill today)

Punk spirit

Punk was an idea. I try to make ideas happen. It was an idea that could change lives.

Malcolm McLaren (Edwards) RIP

Recent Happiness Experiment entries from the Old Country

Fri 2 April - Jerusalem

Visiting the Kotel with N and D (memories of my father)

Catching glimpses of the Easter action in the Old City around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

An evening walk passing the abandoned old Jerusalem railway station (near the German Colony) - redolent of a heroic age

Sat 3 - Jerusalem to Bet Chananya

A blazing afternoon in the zoo - especially taken with the tamarins and other monkeys

Visiting Oskar Schindler's grave on my own, first visitor of the day to the Catholic Cemetery

Spotting the remains of a War of Independence convoy on the Jerusalem road at sunset (and a sign to the Burma Road) - memories of my dad (1976)

Sun 4 - Jaffa

Meeting Sandgold & Dafna in Jaffa - my first web-initiated real-life encounter

Touring the street art of Jaffa, above all the Rehov Auerbach derelict house

Jogging along the aqueduct in Bet Chananya - spotting parrots and poppies

Mon 5 - Caesarea & Petach Tikva

Paddling with D at the sea palace in Caesarea

Meeting my cousins Asaf and Guy for the first time, my older cousins Jaffa and Moshe after 15 years, and Ronen, Itzik and families after 34 years (my first trip to the Old Country with my dad)

Playing chariots with D in the hippodrome at Caesarea

Tues 6 - Or Akeva & Akko

A boat ride at dusk to give a view of Acre's walled old city across a dark wine coloured sea

Meeting up with Harold H, an old friend of Ma's, by chance 4 km down the road in Or Akiva

Lunch under the trees at the hummous stall in Bet Chananya, including lemon and mint drink

Wed 7 - Tel Aviv

Reading under a palm tree in a quiet court of the beautifully architected Ben Gurion airport

Playing basketball one-on-one with D in Bet Chananya

A display of Independence Day posters on the big slope at Ben Gurion

Recent Happiness Experiment entries from the Old Country

Tues 30 March - Bet Chananya to Negev (via Mishpa? Ramon to moshav Faran)

Lunch in the Ramon Crater beside rocks coloured with iron, culminating in desert tea

Off-road driving in Ohad's Range Rover

Bedouin tea in an open-sided tent at sundown

Wed 31 - Negev desert (Faran to M. Ramon) - Jerusalem

Spotting gazelles sweeping majestically along the dry river bed

Driving Li'am's desert buggy with U by my side

The perfect blue sky above a white desert canyon - colour of the flag

Thurs 1 - Jerusalem

Walking a section of Via Dolorosa

One of the waitresses (straight out of Delacroix -or is it Ingres?) in the restaurant over-looking the Old City at the Cinematheque

Reading Saul Belllow's To Jerusalem and Back

Quotable

"Frank Sinatra is the kind of singer who comes along once in a lifetime. Why did it have to be my lifetime?" Bing Crosby

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Bet Hananya to Tel Aviv

Long jog along the stream followed by a dog

Reading Ministry of Fear on a grassy bank in the sunshine

Seder on a roof top beside Ben Gurion's house

The Old Country - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Saturday 27th: London to Rome to Tel Aviv

A plate of cheeses and meats in Rome - my first fleeting visit to Rome

Drawing cartoon characters with D - inspired by Pocket Gods(?) game

Sharing tunes with N

Sunday 28th: Tel Aviv to Bet Hananya; Zichron Jakov

Jogging with D along a Roman aqueduct

Eating felafel, salad and hummous in the shade of some trees beside the moshav

Sleeping, reading and playing in the sunshine on the football field accompanied by exotic birds

Quotables

"We're here for a good time, not a long time"

Damien Hirst to David Dimbleby on 'Seven Ages of Britain'

"Trust me, I'm telling you stories."
(Jeanette Winterson) via Jane Doe on Moblog

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Leonardo diCaprio's performance in Lasse Hallstrom's "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" - shared with N

An extended jog round the cemetery - discovering new paths (listening to an old Simon Mayo book review)

Sorting out my CV with a focus on the Arts

Revolution - today's Happiness Experiment entry

Another encounter with Feargal Sharkey - this time at the House of Lords to support Derry's bid for UK City of Culture

Speaking gig on TV and Social Media chaired by Lisa Campbell, Editor of Broadcast

Reading 'Revolution' (by David Quantick) on the recording of the White Album

Starspot #113

Neil Kinnock on the day another Labour leader passed away, Michael Foot (who wrote the intro to the Gulliver's Travels I read at school) - Great College Street

First Light - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Chat with Nicholas Hoult at the First Light Awards - he seems to get taller and thinner at every encounter

Chat with Jason Isaacs on his return from a Green Zone tour with Paul Greengrass

An evening of soccer festivities with the Enfants Terribles courtesy of their compatriots Ireland and the ever partying Brazilians - Ireland lead by Robbie Keane did themselves proud, there wasn't that much between the teams

Starspot #112

Nodded to Feargal Sharkey as I passed listening to Dear Prudence - 1968 meets 1978

On Money & Simple Pleasures

For money you can have everything it is said. No, that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money.

Arne Garborg, writer (1851-1924)

Creative Accounting #106

Paul Nash = De Chirico + Constable

Sudden Thought

It's not Where, not even What, but Who - or rather with Whom - that really matters

Art school - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

The street on which Chongqing Institute of Fine Art sits - bustling with life

My name in Chinese lights - posters for speech today at the art institute

Being interviewed by Chinese press including a women's mag (What brand clothes do you wear?)

Sudden thought

(In the air from Beijing to Chongqing - a while after reading Brave New World)

A whole race of people with only black hair - weird?

Best Crossword Clues of the World #23

H I J K L M N O (5)

= water

China syndrome - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

A variety of goodbye hugs from my family.

Reading 'A Week in December' in a Club Class cubbyhole.

The prospect of an exotic travel adventure.

Canal Plus - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

A long walk en famille along the Regent's Canal from Gainsborough Studios (explained the concept of a McGuffin to N) to Limehouse basin (visions of Our Mutual Friend).

First jog after the snow in first sunshine for days.

Lollypop lady graffiti under the bridge.

On the pursuit of happiness

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

Apollinaire

On Religion

Religion is giving with no strings attached

An old Kabbalist quoted by Rabbi Lionel Blue

Creative Accounting #105

Moon:

Sam Rockwell = Tom Cruise + Warren Beatty + Eddie Marsden

Moon = 2001 + Space Oddity + Man Who Fell to Earth + Space 1999

Creative Accounting #104

Joe Meek / Joe Orton = gay + murder + tragic obsessive love + Islington + land lady

Sept 2006

Sep 11, 2006 at 07:40 o\clock
Peace and Tolerance revisited
by: arkangel Keywords: 11, bob, dylan, peter, ackroyd, london, love, and, theft, birthday

Mood: reflective
Listening to: bob dylan

-----Original Message-----

From: ArkAngel

Sent: 11 September 2006 07:35

To: 'breakfast@bbc.co.uk'

Subject: Memories of 9/11

I was celebrating birth on that day of death. It was my 38th birthday.

My friends at work had taken me out for lunch. We returned to our office to be confronted with the difficult to comprehend scenes of burning buildings and colliding planes. When the first tower collapsed a terrible reality started to kick in.

I remember particularly the presents I was given that innocent lunchtime before we returned to those tv pictures. Peter Ackroyd's book 'London' about a city I love. And Bob Dylan's album that had just come out that day 'Love and Theft' which represnted the opposite of death and terrorism - music, man's art and creativity.

ArkAngel

London

[at this point I moved to here (for personal) and Simple Pleasures part 4 (for professional)]

Feb 2006

Feb 5, 2006
Peace and Tolerance

Going to have a little paddle in the darker side of our world today as a way of addressing the simple pleasures of Peace, Tolerance and Freedom.

This whole row over the cartoons of Muhammad published the other day in Denmark - here's exploring a few points...

Objecting Muslims cite the ban on the graven image in their religion. The cartoonists weren't Muslims so that doesn't really apply. As it happens both Judaism and Christianity have similar restrictions on the graven image enshrined in the (from memory) second Commandment but these religions over the years have somehow been able to distinguish between an idol and Picasso's Guernica.

You only need go to Leighton House in London to see how Muslims have an admirable history of flouting this ban to the benefit of Art. The beautiful Islamic tiles collected by Frederic, Lord Leighton include images of birds - however, you can trace in the glaze cuts across the birds' throats which apparently get one round the graven image restriction. Jewish artists have taken a similar approach, for example, at Bet Alpha synagogue where mosaic images of the animals and figures of the signs of the zodiac adorn the floor - but that's okay apparently because we walk on them.

Now how about the offence caused by the images. A cartoonist dared to make an association between Muhammad and bombs - can't think where he got that from? I guess this is about thinness of skin. Islam seems to have a very thin skin. It's terribly easily offended. Perhaps a sign of lack of confidence. Most other religions seem to be able to take it on the chin, a bit of satire or even, heaven forfend, criticism.

Why on earth aren't the Christians up in arms about this portrayal of God?



Or thinking more in terms of prophets, why aren't they kicking up a stink about this portrayal of Jesus



or this one

[image missing]

or even this one?



And why aren't those serene Buddhists going bonkers over this cartoon of Buddha?



Meanwhile the Jews seem to be taking it on the chin day after day as Palestinian, Arabic and Muslim newspapers publish anti-semitic cartoons worthy of Der Sturmer and the Nazis.

So in an ideal world we'd all spend a bit more time thinking about what God, Muhammad, Jesus and Buddha actually care about. Do they care if mere mortals draw funny (or not so funny) pictures of them? Do they want us to threaten (or carry out) "beheading" and "massacring" as suggested by the placards we've seen on the streets of my beloved London this week? Or do they want us to love one another and treat others as we'd want to be treated ourselves? Perhaps it's time to stop looking ridiculous waving our swords and scimitars in the air and start behaving like loving human beings...

Dec 2005

Dec 11, 2005
Has anyone seen my old friend John?

Been storing this one up since Thursday (8 Dec) - it was 25 years ago that day that we lost John Lennon. I was in Tijuana where I saw his picture beside headlines I couldn't fully translate but I knew he was gone.



So I kicked off Thursday with Oh Yoko which this picture reminds me of - thank God he found Love.
In the middle of a cloud
In the middle of a cloud I call your name
Oh Yoko, oh Yoko, my love will turn you on

How wonderful to be able to write a song like that for your lover - so simple (which is after all the theme of this blog).
Love is reaching, reaching love

Next up was Across the Universe which is one of the very best of The Beatles' songs - one I believe John was particularly proud of (caught a bit of an archive interview on Radio 4 the other day by a Rolling Stone journo in the 70s.)

And as I headed off to work what better than A Day in the Life from the magical Sgt Pepper...



On the tube listened to his greatest solo hits and the two aspects of his songs which really stood out were the searing honesty (e.g. Mother) and the brilliant simplicity, such as Love quoted above and below.

Love is you
You and me
Love is knowing
We can be
...which links directly in spirit to my website Be Do Be

So with shades of Sinatra, echoes of Lennon, I'll just have to skip Miles and content myself with Marvin to round things off - John L is far more deserving than John F of these beautifully sung words:

Has anybody here
Seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
but it seems the good die young,
I just looked around
And he was gone...

Oct 2005

Oct 1, 2005
Chain, chain, chain

This evening i feel like linking up a chain of simple pleasures starting from a few minutes ago. It's been a while since I've been here so where better to start than...

Hallo. Hallo. Hallo. Hallo. Hallo. Hallo. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Public Image Limited's eponymous first single. It was on the radio just before. How fabulous to break the mould with the Sex Pistols and then break it again as soon as you leave.

Dub reggae - The echoey Hallo of PIL reminds me of the transcendental ethereal vibe of Dub.

45s - Seven perfect inches of black vinyl. Dub makes me think of buying records in Jamaica. Wrong and missing labels. Relying on the recommendations of the record shop keeper.

Rooms with unglazed windows/fresh air flowing in i.e. with a hole in a wall - the lounge in Noel Coward's house east of Ocho Rios - a widescreen window open to the elements looking out along the coast


True friends - I was in Ochi for my friend Nigel's wedding - he sent a text the day of the London bombings this summer which reminded me how true a friend he is

I think I'll wrap up tonight on London, the city of my birth, the greatest on Earth (in my eyes) - earlier today I walked along a beautiful brookside walk within the bounds of London - from the corner of Dollis Brook in the dappled shade of a horse chestnut tree where the enfants terribles launched polished conkers into the stream - i so love the sound of running water - it turns into the River Brent which eventually flows into the Thames, a wonderful chain of water which links into a wonderful chain of seas which binds us all together.



Comments for this entry:

1. drifting wrote at Oct 2, 2005 at 06:59 o\clock:

What a lovely idea - your chain of simple pleasures.

London is my favourite city - love it. Was last there the day before the bombing.

May 2005

May 14, 2005
Bucking the trend on Friday the 13th

So as Friday the 13th draws to a close what Simple Pleasures have helped offset it today?

Comic books - this morning I was reading a newish one I bought in Dublin on Monday entitled 'Shining Knight' from DC Comics. I've really got back into these (as Noah observed in the car taking him to skool this morning) thanks to coming across Vertigo Comics recently in a shop at Camden Market. And I came across Vertigo thanks to comic book writer Alan Moore and his fabulous The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.


Then there's the delight of story-telling which I've been engaging with thanks to a new website I've been working on called 'Every Object Tells a Story' www.everyobject.net to which I contributed a couple of stories today about seaweed in Lough Swilly in County Donegal and ancient stones (a dolmen) in the Mountains of Morne in Northern Ireland.

As I was reading to the children this evening I spotted our cat (Tommy Boy) sitting on next door's shed staring out at the neighbouring allotments, his wild orange fur radiating against the greenery - a fabulous sight.

March 2005

Mar 12, 2005
Things Noah and Dylan like

This is Noah and Dylan's first entry in Simple Pleasures. It's Saturday morning, Tom and Jerry has just finished, the Enfants Terribles were lying together on the couch under the blue blanket, but now it's time to get active and seize this day...

Noah likes drawing, Charlie Chaplin, seeing his cousins Finlay and Jake, Lego and taking photos.

Dylan likes playgrounds, eating Indian food, his Daddy and his friends and going round to play.

They've gone next door to play now so i'll take the opportunity to springboard off their pleasures.

Cartoons: The Hair Bear Bunch (Ooh ooh Mr Beazley and my kinda afro), Bugs Bunny; meeting Chuck Jones in Cambridge and asking him why Bugs dresses up in women's clothing so often; Hong Kong Phooey (Is it Henry the mild mannered janitor? Could be.)...

Lying down, relaxing: in the back garden of Lellow House in the summer, just listening; on our bed on Saturday afternoons; on grassy banks where it's quiet, perhaps the sound of a river flowing past.

Drawing: getting lost in my drawing, Egon Schiele, good quality pencils, black oil pastel, Aubrey Beardsley, the fine black line of the Rotring pen, Henry Moore's chalk sculptural drawings, emptying the wooden shavings from the pencil sharpener.

Charlie Chaplin: Dylan is named after Charlie (Dylan Charlie Wilf). My favourite film is Modern Times. His humanity; his defiance of Adolf; his dedication to creativity, day after day in the cutting room; his balletic movement; the dancing rolls in The Gold Rush; the monkey on the tightrope in The Circus; City Lights... and I think I'll call it a day there. A leisurely breakfast (weekends and holidays only) beckons. Next time I think I'll pick up at the City Lights bookshop in San Francisco...


Mar 12, 2005
The Food of Love and Happiness

You can't reflect on the sources of Happiness too long before you get to Music. I'll always remember a quotation I heard at school by Walter Pater (whoever he was, a pal of Oscar Wilde if I remember right - and while we're on the subject of Oscar it's a good time to chuck The Importance of Being Earnest and The Ballad of Reading Gaol into the Simple Pleasures pot, and while on the subject of those let's toss in woodcuts, as my copy of Reading Gaol is illustrated with woodcuts by Frans Masereel, and the films of Albert Lewin including The Picture of Dorian Gray and Pandora and the Flying Dutchman which brings us neatly to James Mason's voice and Ava Gardner's beauty ...and the beauty of Women and the voice of her ex-hubby Frank Sinarta and ...well we're back to music - but look how infectious this Pleasure thing is, and now back to Walter, reigning in this sentence in a way John Milton would be proud of - oh yes, Sing heavenly muse, let's not forget Paradise Lost, in particular that red Cambridge edition we had at school in Mr Fitch's class, which had a major impact on me because it first made me aware of the narrowness and artificiality of school subjects and the connections between things [very internety really]) ah yes dear old Walter who said: "All Art aspires to the condition of music" which I read as meaning that every other art form would love to achieve the directness of Music's impact on the heart, I mean look at this jumble of words... It could all be said in a phrase of music from say Miles Davis' transcendent Flamenco Sketches.


Mar 4, 2005
Pure White Pleasure

Light flurries of snow.

Snow flakes floating into your face.

Coming in from the cold.

Home.

Going out into the cold bright day.

The sign above our front door going out: "Dun Na nGall Donegal 1" - I mile. Or (less than) 1 day away.

Donegal.

Fanad Head. Port Salon beach. The sea arch just north of there.

That day I watched the sea weed swirling around my feet (by the arch), browns and greens and eddies of water in a PERFECT MOMENT. Noah and Dylan were playing by the water's edge with Una nearby.

Simple Pleasures - the archive

I'm just moving the original posts on Simple Pleasures (the forerunner of this blog) from the dodgy old German software where it currently resides to a cut&pasted archive here (so links may not work)...

The Simple Pleasures of Life
Feb 14, 2005

This blog is inspired by a sermon I heard a couple of years ago which quoted a 'will' left by a father for his children which was not his 'money will' but his 'wisdom will' (I can't remember the exact terminology that was used but you get the idea) - it was his attempt to pass on some of the more useful things he'd learnt in his lifetime about what really matters and about the way people are. I've come to the conclusion over my forty-one years so far on the planet that Happiness is to be found primarily in the Simple Pleasures of life so I've decided to put some of those pleasures here for Noah and Dylan to read when they're a bit older and anyone else who cares to. And one day soon Noah and Dylan can start adding their own...

The smell of cut grass
Feb 14, 2005

Always loved it. Very English I suppose. The cricket pitch (and I'm not even particularly interested in cricket) - and that's another one: the sound of ball on bat, a summer rhythm, all the time in the world. The circular lawn in my ma's house. Dozing in the sun. Mowing the lawn in my own home, a bit of physical work to make the stretching out on the blanket with a good book and a cool drink all the more pleasurable. Meanwhile, back in Asterix in Britain a Briton with a red handle-bar moustache waters his perfect lawn, flicks a blade and pronounces it "a decent bit of turf" (or at least it will be in another hundred years) - and then the hurtling chariot drives across it, carrying Asterix, Obelix and Asterix's cousin Anticlimax. Then there's Cambridge and college lawns, the shaded grass around Girton's chapel-like library, Granchester, Rupert Brooke, bees and honey, tea in an orchard. Which brings me to another SP: cycling one night, after midnight, out to Granchester by the silver light of the moon, almost day-bright. A journey I'll never forget, simply me, my trusty red bike, the night air and the silver...

Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
Feb 24, 2005

I first tasted it in a coffee shop north of Leicester Square and west of Chinatown. Thought it was in a league of its own, unlike anything I'd ever tasted. To be honest, I've never been able to reproduce the impact. Bought a sack-cloth bag of it in Jamaica on my one and only trip there so far. But it didn't match up. Bought another tin of it last Christmas at the atmospheric Martyn's coffee shop in Muswell Hill, North London (home of The Kinks - let's chuck Waterloo Sunset in the pot, both as a song and an experience, while we're on the subject) - Martyn's with its aroma of roasting coffee beans, its wooden floorboards, fancy goods, unchanged Edwardian interior - but again it didn't live up to that first experience. So I go on searching for the next magical cup. Meanwhile... back in Jamaica, simple pleasures included buying 45s from the record shop where the shopkeeper played you what was hot on discs with no or wrong labels; the view from Noel Coward's living room window, a window with no glass, widescreen; an outdoor dance on the night of my friend Nigel's wedding, featuring the roots reggae of Sizzla; the first humming bird I'd ever seen, outside Nigel's folks' place in Ocho Rios; Wray & Nephew's white rum, pretty much the only spirit I like and haven't written off through a binge that ended in tears (which reminds me I love that line in The Life Aquatic where Bill Murray's Steve Zissou invites anyone who cares to do so to join him "on an overnight drunk"); and swimming in the sea with baby Noah, about 9 months old.

Reasons to be Cheerful
Feb 24, 2005

The other root of this idea (beside the sermon mentioned in the first entry) was Ian Dury's wonderful song Reasons to be Cheerful, part 3, a long list of simple pleasures from which the one that stands out in my memory is yellow socks.

Summer, Buddy Holly, the working folly
Good golly Miss Molly and boats
Hammersmith Palais, the Bolshoi Ballet
Jump back in the alley and nanny goats

18-wheeler Scammels, Domenecker camels
All other mammals plus equal votes
Seeing Piccadilly, Fanny Smith and Willy
Being rather silly, and porridge oats

A bit of grin and bear it, a bit of come and share it
You're welcome, we can spare it - yellow socks
Too short to be haughty, too nutty to be naughty
Going on 40 - no electric shocks

The juice of the carrot, [for me it's the juice of an apple] the smile of the parrot
A little drop of claret [I'll take a dessert wine] - anything that rocks
Elvis and Scotty, days when I ain't spotty,
Sitting on the potty - curing smallpox

Health service glasses [preferably John Lennon-style little round glasses] Gigolos and brasses
round or skinny bottoms [here, here]

Take your mum to paris
lighting up the chalice
wee willy harris

Bantu Stephen Biko, listening to Rico [on The Specials very special Ghost Town]
Harpo, Groucho, Chico [especially the cabin scene in Night at the Opera]

Cheddar cheese and pickle [served up by my mum in front of the radiogram listening to my Winnie the Pooh record in2A Selvage Lane, my childhood home], the Vincent motorsickle
Slap and tickle
Woody Allen [title sequence of Bananas had me under the chair before the film even started, just the interaction of the animation and music, punctuated with bullet holes], Dali [an inspiration since childhood, the finest of painting, from Christ's shoulders to a pomegranate], Dimitri and Pasquale
balabalabala and Volare [certainly Deano and of course Frank, who as a child I thought was half of a double act, Franks & Artra]

Something nice to study, phoning up a buddy
Being in my nuddy
Saying hokey-dokey, singalonga Smokey
Coming out of chokey

John Coltrane's soprano [above all on A Love Supreme and Miles' Kind of Blue, both of which I want played at my funeral], Adi Celentano Bonar Colleano

Reasons to be Cheerful, part 3...

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

An outing to Ronnie's for John Grounds birthday - songs of Nina Simone sung by Gill Manly

Sitting on the bench at Saracens with the Enfants Terribles and Syd from Clock

Walking through Soho on Saturday night

1st Happiness Experiment entry of 2010

Walking in the countryside near Essendon, Hertfordshire en famille

Jogging in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery (surviving a slip on black ice with panache)

Making pancakes for the Enfants Terribles

Best of 2009

[Work in progress - moved to here on Simple Pleasures part 4]

Film:
1. Inglourious Basterds - because it reignited my excitement with cinema

2. The Hangover - because it afforded me a fine evening of laughter with the Enfants Terribles
3. A Serious Man - for the uncompromising ending and beautiful cinematography by my former boss Roger Deakins
4. An Education - for a supercharismatic central performance
5. Nowhere Boy - for fine performances all round

Actor:
1. Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) - couldn't take my eyes off him

2. Christian McKay (Me & Orson Welles) - a close second, not an easy persona to capture
3. Aaron Johnson (Nowhere Boy)
4. Andy Serkis (Sex & Drugs & Rock'n'Roll)
5. Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man)
6. Adam Sandler (Funny People) - got papped with him leaving BAFTA
7. John Travolta (The Taking of Pelham 123)

Actress:
1. Carey Mulligan (An Education) - old school screen charisma

2. Anne-Marie Duff (Nowhere Boy) - did a great, feisty Q&A at The Phoenix, East Finchley
3. Emma Thompson (Last Chance Harvey)

Supporting Actor:
1. Brad Pitt (Inglourious Basterds) - captured the humour whilst retaining the character's intrigue

2. Alfred Molina (An Education) - also a close second, helped pull off the ending with a pivotal moving scene
3. Ed Helms (The Hangover)
4. Thomas Sangster (Nowhere Boy) - huge charisma
5. Peter Capaldi (In the Loop)
6. Fred Melamed (A Serious Man)

Supporting Actress:

1. Kristin Scott Thomas (Nowhere Boy)

2. Claire Danes (Me & Orson Welles)
3. Rosamund Pike (An Education)


Director:
1. Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds) - gets it on the strength of the opening scene alone

2. The Coen Brothers (A Serious Man)
3. Todd Phillips (The Hangover)
4. Jason Reitman (Up in the Air)
5. Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)

Script:
1. The Hangover

2. A Serious Man
3. Up in the Air


TV:
Gavin & Stacey

LP:
Sea Sew - Lisa Hannigan

The Low Anthem - Oh My God, Charlie Darwin
Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago


Single:
1. Glass - Bat for Lashes

2. Say Hey - Michael Franti & Spearhead

Gig:
1. Hothouse Flowers - Community Hall, Baltimore, West Cork

2.
Bat for Lashes - The Roundhouse
Christy Moore - Festival Hall
Lisa Hannigan - Festival Hall

3.
Blur - Hyde Park (The Enfants Terribles' first gig)
Michael Franti & Spearhead - Empire Shepherd's Bush
David Gray - The Roundhouse

Book:
The Great Lover - Jill Dawson

Art exhibition:
Anish Kapoor - Royal Academy

Play:
August: Osage County (NT)
Prick Up Your Ears (The Comedy)

Sports event:
1. Ireland winning the 6 Nations

2. Spurs 9-1 victory over Wigan

Website:
Posterous

Saddest loss:
John Martyn

Last Happiness Experiment entry for 2009

Drawing with N & D at midnight

Fraternal support in adversity with Ja

A bit of old age surreality with N. Rita

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.


William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) written in 1875

Rather a bleak view of life but you've got to love that last couplet.

Best of the Cracker Jokes 2009

How do farmers count their cows?

On a cowculator.

***

Why did the astronomer get told off at school?

Because he was always staring into space.

CinemaConnections #1

Me & Orson Welles (& me):

Louis Elman - Sound Casting (my first experience of the film industry, in Dean Street)
Dick Pope - DoP (my first job in the film industry, at Solus in Marshall St)
Jacqueline Hurt - Legals
Marc Samuelson - Producer

Actresses I fancy

I played this game late one night in a bar in Edinburgh or somewhere with Anthony Lilley but was struggling to come up with answers...


Madeleine Stowe (in 12 Monkeys and Last of the Mohicans)

Claire Danes (in Me & Orson Welles and Romeo & Juliet)

Audrey Tautou (in Amelie)

Halle Berry (in Bulworth)

Creative Accounting #103

12 Monkeys = KPax / Terminator

(even the poster has echoes of Terminator)

Starspot #553

Stephen Merchant in Berwick St

Frances Spalding in Hatchards (4/12/09)

Week begins - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Being reappointed as Trustee of Culture24

Revisiting Banksy's Anywhere in Archway

Being in the edit suite again - at Uncle for Life Begins - including an amazing sequence of a Japanese woman giving birth in a waterpool

Zurich - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Ulysses close-reading session with Fritz Senn at James Joyce Foundation

Doing 90 minutes unscripted for Schweizer Fernsehen with Anita Hugi and the culture dept

Bumping into Johnny & Sue as if destined, after thinking about Wulfi & Nat - they told me the story about Milly's parents and how a love affair against the tide saved us all

3 try hero - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

3 fabulous tries by Enfant Terrible #1 including a third of the field run

Catching up with Roger Deakins about his excellent A Serious Man

Looking through the 70s badge collection with N & D

Crewe - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Talking about Irish myths with N

Listening to Crossover Science pitches

The Friday night walk home past Black Gull

Creative Accounting #98

Lisa Hannigan = Nathalie Merchant + Kate Bush + Grace Slick + Suzanne Vega

Quotable

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C Clarke

Act

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Friedrich Engels

Cube - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Support from U in Marylebone High Street

Shooting London Inspirations vid

Watching a Swedish movie (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

An amazingly blue autumn sky above Pimlico

A momentary encounter with D in playground

A snatched coffee with Chloe Moss of Misfits

Creative Accounting #102

Gerard Butler - Scotland + acting talent = Jason Isaacs - Liverpool



(top half of face similar)

CPH - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Reconnecting with Thomas Gibson after a long while - thanks to helping Michael Birch with his Help Jess Breathe website

The book stacks in Copenhagen University library illuminated at night

A story about the Cyprus crisis of December 1963 from a Turkish Cypriot taxi driver - how he got to Nicosia in January 1964 to be reunited with his family on a British Hercules transporter plane

Help Jess breathe

Hi

Jess has been waiting for 4 years for a double lung transplant. Mainly because only 25% of people in the UK are on the organ donor register.

Please check that you are on the register by clicking below:
http://helpjessbreathe.org/inv_non/950/559722580/93/851924421

adam gee

Feeling innovative - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Kick off meeting in Airlock's homely offices opposite the former Forma hq

The afterglow of Landshare winning the RTS Innovation Award yesterday at BAFTA

Visiting Archbishop Tennison's school at the Oval with fellow Cutlers

MurdochWatch #22

Rupert Murdoch: "The editors in Britain for instance have turned very much against Gordon Brown, who is a friend of mine. I regret it."

What does Rupe's concept of friendship say about him?

Quotable

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them" - Einstein

Spotted on the way to Copenhagen - useful for the upcoming critical conference?

Quotables

"When a woman is a really good driver she is just about perfect." Raymond Chandler, Playback.

"Common sense is the little man in a grey suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always somebody else's money he's adding up." Raymond Chandler, Playback.

“Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.” Einstein

Creative Accounting #412

Ben Affleck (in Hollywoodland) = Robert Smith - lipstick

Saturday's Happiness Experiment entry

The heat of the sunshine on landing in Naples

An incredible momentary sunset

Seeing an infinity pool at close quarters

Positano - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Jason's story, told at the kitchen table after supper, about his nightmare holiday with the boys in Spain, including the Mini heater burning his face

Bean soup on the beachfront at Positano

Playing table tennis with N, Finn and Jason

Wild life

Jake: Can you take out the splinter with the weasals?

Noah: I've got a horn in my foot!

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Listening to Jason Reitman talking about his film-making after screening of In the Air - George Clooney's old school star quality

Making a peanutbutter sarnie for Honeyman to beef him up for his rugby match against Fortismere this evening - FCHS won

Approaching home

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Reading Lynne Barber's An Education by Lac Leman at sundown

Getting back to 93.0

Roesti and egg

Waumth - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Approaching the end of Waugh's Men at Arms (with the prospect of picking up Officers. & Gentlemen from Black Gull on the weekend)

A hot bath

A sunny interlude in the Embankment gardens with laptop and ed spec

Telly - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Chairing RTS session on multiplatform TV with Dr Dawn and the Embarrassing Bodies team on 14th floor of LWT

Coining the concept of Quotables

Taking Orla to Channel 4

My concerns about the Tories

Ex-Bank aide attacks ‘bizarre’ Tory plan

This is the most wildly dangerous thing I have seen in 100 years of economic policy in Britain

Joe Murphy, Political Editor - London Evening Standard
09.10.09

David Cameron's economic plans have been branded “wildly dangerous” by a former senior Bank of England official.

Economist David Blanchflower, former member of the Bank's monetary policy committee, said the Tories would risk plunging Britain into a deeper recession by turning off the Government's measures to stimulate recovery.

In his conference speech at Manchester, Mr Cameron said quantitative easing should end “soon”. Mr Blanchflower called the stance “bizarre” and told the Daily Mail that calling off stimulus too early would snuff out recovery. “This is the most wildly dangerous thing I have seen in 100 years of economic policy in Britain” he added. He said the Tories showed “no understanding of economics”: “It could drive the economy into depression.”

The Bank has held interest rates at their 0.5 per cent record low. So far it has created £146 billion of fresh cash, buying up debt in the form of government and corporate bonds. Mr Cameron said: “If we spend more than we earn, we have to get the money from somewhere. Right now, the Government is simply printing it. Sometime soon that will have to stop, because printing money leads to inflation.”

Chancellor Alistair Darling said: “If we stop supporting the economy now it would crash.”

On Pantheism

That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.

Einstein

on Doing the Right Thing

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.

Martin Luther King

on Christianity

Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.

Shelley

Plenty of kind, decent, caring people have no religious beliefs, and they act out of the goodness of their hearts. Conversely, plenty of people who profess to be religious, even those who worship regularly, show no particular interest in the world beyond themselves.

John Danforth - priest, ambassador, senator (b. 1936)

Quotation - Simple Pleasures & the Present

One should count each day a separate life.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, philosopher (3 BC - 65 AD)

Quotation - Simple Pleasures

Let your capital be simplicity and contentment.

Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Word of the Day

callipygian = having well-shaped buttocks

From Greek calli (beautiful) + pyge (buttocks)

Creative Accounting #602

Bat for Lashes = Kate Bush + Bjork + Josie Lawrence

Visitor from the old country - today's Happiness Experiment entry

Seeing Cecelia again and a big hug outside Tate Britain

Chicken soup in the Wolseley with Ce and U

Reading Waugh's Men at Arms

Prick Up - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Sorting out bookshelves - to make space for N

Seeing Prick Up Your Ears at the Comedy with Roddy - including Matt Lucas & Chris New getting the giggles

Watching the clouds floating in front of the full moon

Creative Accounting #144

Noah & the Whale = Jonathan Richman + Chris Martin

Fresh ones - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Seeing Colin Jones at the opening of his exhibition of early Who photos (at Proud Central) - young Keith Moon was particularly captivating

Sharing my know-how with Jamie Oliver's Fresh One over in Nile Street

Chatting about movies over lunch with FilmFour's Paul Grindey

Hoxton - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Speaking at Hoxton Hall, an old East End music hall with original fixtures and fittings

Bumping into my friend Roger on his way home from hanging out with his fellow sci-fi authors

A nice afternoon ride in a posh Bima

My 1st submission to Guardian Notes & Queries

Are there any examples of books being improved in translation?



The Asterix books - for example, the dog is Idéfix in French (meaning obsession) but Dogmatix in English, adding the canine pun to the idea of single-mindedness; the druid is Panoramix in the original (meaning panoramic) but Getafix in the translation, providing a more relevant name through druggy wordplay.

Creative Accounting #102

The Lost Symbol = Da Vinci Code + National Treasure 2

Creative Accounting #101

John Smith = Gomez - band

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Reading Evelyn Waugh's Men at Arms in the late summer sun

Picking up a 2nd hand copy of the Beatles' Blue Album on a whim in our high street

Jogging round London's biggest cemetery with youngest Enfant Terrible

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Reading Rupert Brooke in the wee small hours (my copy from Clapham Old Town)

An easy run around St Pancras Cemetery in the autumn sun

Seeing the first designs for CQD

Belfast - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Finishing 'The Great Lover' by Jill Dawson about Rupert Brooke

A positive meeting with the Culture & Arts Minister for Northern Ireland

The pool of water outside the Radisson Hotel where Ed Baker and I dined on a sunny evening

Some Kind of Wonderful - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

More John Hughes - Some Kind of Wonderful



The 1940s pencil sketches on the wall of the stairs down to the gents at The Ivy (during Guardian Student Media Awards judging)



A distinctly autumnal meeting about Landshare out on the back terrace of Channel 4