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