I Get Mail

Most of the time my job isn't anywhere near as show-businessy as people tend to assume. Most of my days are spent in front of computer or wandering around the studio briefing other artists or in meetings with our clients. There's no red carpet, no limo and no fancy frocks. I do love it though in spite of what I may think about going on set.

Every once in a while I get reminded that films still have something magical about them. At the end of last week a letter landed on my desk at work. It was addressed to me at the right company but had been addressed to Pinewood Studios. Some kind soul at Pinewood had obviously looked up the company I work for's address and forwarded it on. It's a miracle it got to me at all, I would have thought that they'd be very intolerant of incorrectly addressed mail at Pinewood but apparently not.

I opened the envelope and another envelope, two plain postcards and a letter fell out. The letter was incredibly sweet. It was from a guy who had visited the location shoot of Wolf Man (the film I'm currently working on) and he'd got the autographs of the director and most of the cast whilst there. Whether he had won some sort of competition to visit the set I don't know. He'd subsequently decided that he was going to try and gather as many signatures of people who had worked on the film as possible and hence the letter to me. I am amazed he went as low down the credits as me and he must have written dozens of these letters. The letter was very individual and hand-written; it must have taken hours, probably days, to write to everyone involved.

So I broke out my fountain pen and scrawled my signature on one of the cards and wrote a little note back answering a couple of the questions he'd asked. It felt really bizarre. I understand the completist urge that some people have, particularly when it comes to collecting something but this was a level of commitment I hadn't banked upon. I did feel a little bit famous just for a moment too, even though I'm clearly nothing of the sort. It was rather nice actually.

Courgettezilla (or Zucchini Kong)

My work chum WCC has a garden. In this garden he grows vegetables of astonishing size. I ilke to imagine it's like the garden in Woody Allen's Sleeper. When he is sick of eating his own produce he brings some into work for us. Today he gave me the monster you see above. He assures me it's a courgette. I think it's a marrow but he says not. Anyway I have just spent a good while hacking it into tiny pieces and making courgette soup. I have made enough to feed a hundred people for a week, or a hungry me and T for at least three nights. Ah, nature's bounty is a wondrous (and occasionally vast) thing.

Two Miracles and a Realisation

Bit of a mixed bag of a weekend. I've been at work for almost all of it and yet I've witnessed amazing things and made profound discoveries.

Yesterday was almost certainly the most improbable day of rugby union I've ever seen. I say "seen" but in the case of England vs Australia it was more "listened to" as I was still at work but could at least have the game on the radio. And what a game. An England side far from peak form, with injuries and a very poor record in the World Cup came up against an Asutralia side who had put in solid performances in the cup and were hungry to avenge their final defeat at home to the English four years ago. It didn't help that the chief executive of the Australian Rugby Union had upped the ante last week by saying, "It doesn't matter whether it's cricket, rugby union, rugby league – we all hate England." and latter continued, "I stand by that. Everyone does. All I'm doing is stating the bleeding obvious... If they want further proof, how do they think France won the right to host this World Cup? It is simple. No one would vote for England, and they were the only other country in the running." Strong words and with pre-match odds massively in Australia's favour it seemed like a dead game. And then England played their hearts out. In a game of gripping tension and boiling intensity England bested Australia in almost every department of the game. The scrum proved utterly catastrophic for the Wallabies who simply had no answer to the massive power that England fielded at numbers 1 to 3. With my hands shaking and my pulse racing the clock ticked down, achingly slowly, until as 80 minutes of play came to close England pulled off the seemingly impossible to win the match 12-10 and book a place in the semis.

I'd witnessed one of the greatest upsets of recent time. How could anything possibly top that? That was until the evening when France took on red-hot title favourites New Zealand. France signalled their intent by marching right up to the half-way line and staring the Kiwis down as they performed the haka. If proof were ever needed that the mystique of the All Blacks is waning this was it, a defining moment. In years gone by the haka epitomised New Zealand's ability to intimidate a side, to dent their will before the first whistle. But we live in different times now. New Zealand believe themselves to be the best rugby playing nation on earth, their team is used to crushing all before them and yet they have not been world champions for twenty years and will not get the chance again for another four. France played solidly but defensively and were hit hard. The Kiwis were 13-0 up towards the end of the first half. In times of yore that would have been that. The opposition would roll over and let themselves get crushed beneath the slick All Black machine. But since France showed in the 1999 semi-final that you can come back against the Kiwis from a massive deficit if you believe, the power of the Kiwis to have a side beaten before kick-off has evaporated. Yesterday the French were magnificent, they defended like lions and played a wiley game up front. They frustrated the Kiwis into making a petulent foul resulting in a sin-binning for McAlister. This allowed the French the room they need to level the match and then they powered home. One gets the impression that the Kiwis only know how to crush a willing opposition. They seem unable to play from a losing position. If they can't win easily, they can't win. France play brilliantly from a position of pressure and once again proved their mastery of the art. Frederic Michelak and my current favouite Bleu, Sebastien Chabal, came on for the final quarter of the game to, in the case of Michelak, set up the winning try, and in the case of Chabal to shore up the defenses and keep the Kiwis at bay. "They shall not pass".

This was a bigger upset than even the England game. To see either match is a treat, practically a miracle. To see both on a single day is definitely a miracle.

Beyond the rugby, my profound personal insight came when I realised that the Flying V I bought a while back is not the guitar for me. Tinseltroos and I have a couple of guitars out in the living room ready to be played and I noticed that I was always reaching for her Strat rather than my Flying V. I have finally realised that the impracticality of the design annoys me more than the beauty delights me and though it is a pleasant enough instrument it is going to have to go on eBay and I will begin the search for a new Atrocity Axe. I had a quick window shop on my way home yesterday afternoon and it appears that, once again, my tastes do not accord with the general populus. The current vogue seems to be for skinny indie kids in skinny jeans with fringes bigger than their heads to play 1960s style Burns and Hofner type guitars. This is all very well for those wanting to play The Arctic Monkeys but it is not going to stand up to having Hot For Teacher belted out on it. For that you need a proper guitar, built for the purpose; built like a tank. It seems that I shall have to search for something second hand. Let the eBay browsing begin.

Stinks and Smells

For the first time in I forget how long, Tinseltroos and I had a whole weekend to ourselves, to do with as we pleased. In order to maximise the pleasure we started yesterday comparatively early by wandering into Soho at about 9.45 for breakfast at Balans, a great cafe/restaurant on Old Compton Street. They do a great blueberry pancake with bacon and maple syrup, a dish I developed a real taste for in New York having sworn to all and sundry beforehand that I thought the idea of mixing bacon and syrup disgusting. Shows how much I know.

After a leisurely breakfast we jumped on a bus to just beyond Buckingham Palace. There, on Elizabeth Street, is a fantastic perfume shop called Les Senteurs. Its stock is amazing, the staff knowledgeable, friendly and helpful. In fact it's one of those places that is a true pleasure to buy things from. Tinseltroos and I both bought a couple of bottles. I needed to replenish my Green Irish Tweed and I was persuaded to buy Parfums d'Empire's "Cuir Ottoman" which I am currently wearing and is making me smell wonderfully leathery and a touch talcum powdery. Look out for a post on this on Tinseltroos' new blog, Smellbound to which I will be the (thus far) only male contributor. We walked back from Mayfair through Covent Garden to pick up the last items we needed for our stencil bleaching experiment. En route I was accosted by one of the staff of the legendary Neal's Yard Dairy who proffered a small piece of Stilton to try. It was sensational and so I was lured by their lactic tractor beam into the shop. It is a well known fact about me that I cannot enter a deli or cheese shop and come out with less than three cheeses. And so it was yesterday. In addition to the Stilton I got a slice of old favourite Montgomery's Cheddar of which I am apparently not the only fan and also a chunk of Cheshire Cheese made in Whitchurch, a village about 5 miles from where I was born. We ate big chunks of these along with English apples and sourdough bread upon our return to Schossadlerflug.

And then the real fun began. As I wrote at the arse end of last week we had planned to do some stencil bleach printing and I'd come up with a Green Man design that I liked and planned to use.

It was however an absolute bastard to cut out and use because of the filigree detail and I was nervous that I'd make a mistake cutting the stencil and ruin it, that the bleach wouldn't resolve the detail very well and that I'd tear the damn thing the first time I lifted it of the fabric. Tinseltroos, being more sensible, opted for simpler designs and she cut three different patterns in the time it took me to swear and grump my way through one. Still I was pretty damn pleased with how it turned out.

And so we got on with the bleaching itself. We made sure every window was open and that we'd covered all the surfaces in bin liner to avoid flat-deposit-voiding accidents and stuck our stencils onto our newly acquired garments. We mixed up some cheap household bleach with water (about 50/50 mostly) and, using a small atomiser, sprayed bleach onto the cloth. Most of our designs had two stencils, one for detail and one for an outer "glow" so once one layer had been done we pulled the first stencil, then dropped the second in place and applied more bleach. We stuck the stencils down with Spraymount which made them a lot trickier to get off the cloth once finished but did mean that we got quite crisp lines on the designs because the bleach didn't bleed under the edges. It was a very magical experience to watch the bleach do its chemistry on the cloth and for the image to appear in its new colour gave me exactly the same thrill that I used to get when I printed my own black and white photographs. Once the bleaching was done we put each item in the tumble drier for a few minutes before really soaking them in the bath.

As one batch soaked we sprayed the next. Needless to say we got better the more we experimented so my second batch was better than my first. After the last batch had soaked for a while we put the whole lot into the washing machine and gave them a gentle wash on the 30 degree delicates cycle before hanging them up to dry and going to bed. Here's a selection of what we did:

And here's me wearing one of my creations today:

I'm so pleased with how these turned out and it was so much fun to do (apart from the hours of stencil cutting, but that's my own stupid fault for coming up with such a convoluted design).


Today we went round the British Museum and plotted what we are going to put in the fruit crumble we're going to prepare for supper. It's been a perfect weekend and with crumble to round it off it'll end as well as it began.

My Little Sister

lizzieLeeWedding7614.JPG, originally uploaded by Mr Atrocity.

Wow, my wee sister, she who is known as "The Tiniest Bagel Toaster" for reasons no-one can remember got married on Saturday. I'm sure she was only about 6 last week.

From the Sublime to the Sublime

What a wonderful weekend. I spent yesterday at Lord's watching cricket's equivalent of the F.A. Cup final or the Superbowl where Hampshire took on Durham. It was a privilege to see Shane Warne, arguably the best spin bowler the game has ever seen, and yet he ended up on the losing side. Durham played brilliantly. Disciplined batting and a quickfire 78 from the irrepressible Shivnarine Chanderpaul set Hampshire a daunting 312 for victory. Two wickets from the first two balls of Hampshire's reply pretty much did for their chances and they never looked even close to making the runs. Even Kevin Pietersen failed to fire. It's good to see a young county (in cricketing terms anyway) doing so well. Congratulations to Durham on a thoroughly deserved victory.

Youth and vigour were much in evidence today also. After a leisurely day, Tinseltroos and I walked over to The Royal Albert Hall for this evening's Prom Concert. Gustavo Dudamel conducted the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela playing Shostakovich's 10th symphony (a personal favourite), followed by excerpts from West Side Story (always good fun) and finished with a selection of pieces by south American composers of whom I'd not previously heard, to whit Revueltas and Ginastera.

This group of teenagers were the best orchestra it has ever been my good fortune to see. They put many of the more famous names in classical music to shame. I have been to many classical concerts and have become used to orchestras who only seem to half know the piece they are performing. They don't hit the notes exactly together and thus end up sounding muddy and lacklustre. Their reliance on sight-reading also means they look less at the conductor who is therefore unable to get them to coalesce into a seamless whole and craft a whole sound from the mass of individuals. Not so tonight. Listening to this big orchestra was the aural equivalent of watching a flock birds change direction, as one, in flight. They were so light on their toes that the music felt as though it were coming from one giant living thing, one delightfully monstrous creature entirely at the beck and call of the effusive Dudamel.

The Shostakovich piece shifts from joy to melancholy to menace to anger throughout and they carried off these twists and turns with such dexterity and such soul and passion that I was left lost for words. They were so musical, an odd thing to say perhaps but one so often gets the impression that many professional orchestras really see what they do as just a job and if all the notes are there and in the right order that will do. Tonight's performers gave it their all. The packed hall responded in kind roaring and applauding them back for 4 encores. They were more than worth every one.

Have a look on the BBC's web-page for the listen again option for the show and see what I mean.

Update: Apparently I am not alone in thinking this.

The World Has Gone Mad

Ennio Morricone has a myspace page. What kind of lunacy is this?