Burlesque Beauty

Burlesque Beauty, originally uploaded by Mr Atrocity.

Drew this today. I think she needs a name, possibly Glenda.

Weekend of Excellence

I had a pretty amazing weekend. T was away with friends so I was free to play all the guitar I wanted. I did sate my guitar needs but I also managed to see my first cricket match of the new season which was a lovely day out on Saturday even if the game itself ended up coasting to a dull draw. The added bonus was that despite apocalyptic weather forecasts it remained dry all day so sitting outside was very pleasant. I treated myself to fish and chips on my way home and managed to time my arrival at the chippy to perfection as a fresh batch of both fish and chips were just coming out of the fryer as I entered the door.

In the evening I watched a lot of Bob Dylan footage and the Dylan documentary "Don't Look Back" before settling down to watch another documentary,this time a surf one, called "Crystal Voyager". I'd found out about this movie through a CD purchase I'd made earlier in the week. I love surf music and I love stoner psychedelia rock too. For this reason "Chairman of the Board - Surf Soundtracks '64 to '74" leapt out at me and I had to have it. Having loved the music I found that one of the films featured was available on DVD and one Amazon visit later "Crystal Voyager" was winging its way to me.

The film is great, the first two thirds are a reasonable matter of fact documentary about surfer and film-maker George Greenough and his attempt to build a yacht for sailing to places too remote for others to try and surf. That was fascinating enough but the last third of the film, which is separate from the rest of the movie is a 23 minute short of abstract footage shot from within the tube of waves and under water. Greenough made a camera mount he could wear on his back whilst surfing and it was using this that he got the footage. The music for that last sequence is "Echoes" by Pink Floyd and the sound and picture complement one another perfectly. Awesome movie, I completely recommend it.

On Sunday I cleaned and tidied the flat and then in the evening I walked up to Camden to see Bob Dylan play the Roundhouse. I'd never seen him before and apparently this was the smallest gig he'd played in about a decade. The music was great although the more successful songs were the more modern ones that played to the Tom Waits style growling delivery which is all his voice is capable of these days. His band is a rootsy, rock and roll, bluesy type outfit and on the newer tracks the whole sound, including Bob, were amazing. He played "All Along the Watchtower" as an encore which was extra special because Hendrix played a really noted gig at The Roundhouse so there was a real sense of history to it. It's a bit bizarre to me that songs like that were written. They seem so much part of our culture that must surely have always been. The idea that this little old geezer on stage in front of me created those things out of nothing is a bit magical. It was a great end to a great weekend.

A Great Way to Spend a Weekend

I had an absolutely fantastic weekend but only now have I the time to tell you about it. Due to varies diary conflicts T and I have not had a whole weekend together in an absolute age so merely to have time with my little buddy would have been plenty but there was much extra to enjoy. We got up a little late on Saturday and had a leisurely breakfast in a little local café. After that we went for a stroll, I bought a cheap vintage Cuban shirt and T got some pretty summer shoes. Once we got home we the weather took a turn fr the worse and became incredibly cold with occasional downpours of rain. Unfortunately we had to go out again though there was an excellent reason: we had tickets to see Metallica in the evening. T had never seen the band and the last time I saw them was 17 years ago, a fact that makes me feel very old. So we bundled ourselves up in our warmest coats and headed out into the late afternoon rain. Thanks to the usual foresight and planning that makes London Underground legendary, the Jubilee Line, the one with the gig venue's station on it, was closed and so we had a half hour walk followed by a 20 minute train ride to get us to the right area of town. Once we'd got to Greenwich we had to cross the semi-industrial wasteland that is the Greenwich peninsula to get the the O2 Arena. It's a strange place. Following the Millennium festivities there was a concerted effort to try and keep the area thriving and many new blocks of houses were built. As we walked through only a few seemed occupied and all of the local shops that had also been recently built were deserted. T commented it was a bit like walking through a disused Soviet holiday camp and I think that sums the place up.

Eventually, cold and soaked we got to the gig venue and once inside found our way to our seats. There were two support acts, The Sword, whom I adore, and Machine Head of whom I am not so fond. The Sword were on first and I thought played a great set to a scarcely quarter full hall. It's a 20 000 seat arena and yet, because the stage was in the centre and the bands played in the round, it felt really quite intimate: no need for giant TV screens here. After a short gap Machine Head came on stage and made a horrid racket for about 40 minutes. Thankfully they eventually finished up and off they went.

And then came Metallica. The lights dimmed and the strains of Ennio Morricone's "The Ecstasy of Gold" came over the P.A. Everyone went nuts and then the gig started the stage criss-crossed with beams of laser light from the ceiling. Metallica were just awesome, I cannot think of a better live band. They played for two hours and had every member of the audience in the palms of their mighty metallic hands. They played "Master of Puppets", my favourite song by them and entertained the crowd royally. T thinks it was the best gig she's ever seen. I don't know about that but I struggle to think of better.

We left the venue, grinning from ear to ear but determined not to return in the way we'd arrived. Fortunately we were able to get tickets for one of the Thames Clippers, a river-boat ferry service that runs from Greenwich to Westminster. It was a lovely end to an amazing evening to be whisked along the Thames seeing the city by night as we glided past.

On Sunday we got up late, ate a small breakfast and then took ourselves off to Andrew Edmunds, my favourite restaurant, for lunch. We managed to eat and drink for two hours and finally made it home in the middle of the afternoon. After a nap and some pottering around the flat we walked over to Shoreditch for a friend's birthday drinks. A great end to a perfect weekend.

What I Did Today

In The Beginning...














The End.

I'm Free!

I am now officially on holiday. Wow, for a while there I didn’t think it would happen and in fact Wolf Man isn’t completely done yet but apart from minimal tweaks here and there my involvement is at an end. And so, for the next three weeks, my time is my own. Poor T had to work the weekend (seems when I don’t have to work weekends, she does) so I’ve had about three days almost to myself already.

On Saturday I went and got a hair cut which was needed as I was on the cusp of a proto mullet and that is not a good thing. Once I got home I tidied the flat and cooked up the veggie faux-cassoulet thing I invented and described way back when. Yesterday was mostly spent cooking and lounging about until about six when we had friends come over for dinner and cocktails. Had a lovely time chatting and getting merry. I felt incredibly fat by the time I waddled to bed. In fact I ate so much that I didn’t need breakfast this morning and with me, that almost never happens. I spent the rest of today making a few more guitar tweaks, all of which were accomplished without incident this time. After that I went for a thirty minute back massage for which I am currently feeling no benefit. After half an hour, much of it in pain, I feel no looser than I did before but my back and shoulders are sore. Perhaps I’ll feel amazing in the morning. If not, I’ll know not to go there again.

I’m off out for dinner in a few minutes. I’m meeting T and our friend Z from work and together we’re going to walk to New Tayyabs, an amazing and incredibly cheap Pakistani restaurant near Brick Lane. I suspect there will be orders of jugs of mango lassi and copious amounts of tandoori chicken. All in all, not a bad start to my time off.

Weekend at Last

I can scarcely believe it. I have actually spent two whole days without setting foot in the studio for either of them. In fact this is the first time in forty days straight that I haven’t been in the office. Of course my body had to remind me that I should rest by making sure I had a rotten cold by Friday afternoon which only got worse on Saturday. Tinseltroos was away for the weekend with buddies in Wales so I got to potter about by myself reading and watching rugby.

I also decided to fit the new tuners I’d got for my Stratocaster and was doing very nicely up until I grossly miscalculated how hard maple wood is and managed to split the heads of some of the screws that hold the tuners into the headstock of the guitar. That will teach me to do guitar repairs when I have a head full of cold and not too much in the way of concentration. I shall have to go to the guitar repairman on Denmark Street tomorrow looking suitably penitent and hope that he can help me out.

So aside from blowing my nose a lot, buggering up a guitar, watching England lose in the rugby and moping what else have I done with my precious time off? Well not a lot. I have cleaned the flat today so T will come back to a shiny abode tomorrow. I’ve also made a ginger cake, most of which I’ll take into work.

Having watched three games of rugby on the TV this weekend I think I’ll finish the evening off with some football. Apparently the BBC is showing the Milan derby match, I guess because David Beckham is playing for AC Milan at present and I shan’t miss the opportunity to watch some football as most games are exclusively on satellite TV which we don’t have.

I had my holiday confirmed so I have five more days of work to survive before I take three weeks off. I have a train ticket to Cornwall and hotel room booked for three nights of the first week and after that I have no plans. I might try to do some painting, I’ll probably take some photographs and I have a couple of short film ideas I’d wouldn’t mind dabbling with. None of these are definite plans you understand, they’re just tantalizing possibilities which is how I’d like them to remain. The most important thing I need is some rest before I get going on the next movie.

Sorry Excuse for an Update

It's brief apologetic update time. So I haven't had a day off in thirty something days and my brain, or rather what's left of it, has turned to mush. I have, theoretically, five more days left on Wolf Man but we'll see if I manage to escape scot free or whether I get pulled back from time to time to help out until it actually wraps. After that I have a week to get the next show I'm moving onto up and running and then I have three weeks holiday. I can scarcely believe it. Three whole weeks. I shall probably go to Cornwall for a few days, I want to read some books and I plan on doing some painting but aside from that I'm open to suggestions.

So I haven't posted anything because I haven't done anything other than work. Keep your fingers crossed for the end of the week and the weekend that I've been dreaming of for a month...

Guitar Gets a New Home

It's been another work dominated week. I'm heading toward my deadline now and, as tends to be the case, I'm now doing 7 day weeks to get it all done. As I mentioned last time, I went up to my mother's last Friday night and cleared out all of my old stuff that she'd been storing as she's moving to a smaller house next month. One of the very few things I brought back was the second guitar I ever owned. I bought it nearly twenty years ago and as I graduated onto better instruments a few years later it has sat in its case at my mum's for about sixteen years. My plan was to bring it back, fettle it up into playing order again and give it to someone who was wanting to learn the guitar.

When I actually got the case open I found that two of the strings were missing, not a problem as I was planning to swap them all anyway, but it made me wonder what I'd been doing to the poor thing all those years ago. It was also fairly filthy, had creaky machine heads and trem plus when I plugged it in to see if it still functioned electrically the horrid hum and buzzing told me something was wrong somewhere. When I had got the remaining strings off and opened up the guitar the source of the hum became clear: my dreadful soldering at age 15. I had feared this might be the case and so I dutifully went through the guitars' innards and resoldered any of the dodgy connections afresh. I am still not good at soldering but I'm a damn sight better than I was back then clearly. After that I cleaned up the front, oiled all the mechanical parts and restrung the beast. This is how it looked after some surgery, a clean and a fresh set of strings:

Once the strings were on I fixed the intonation which was so far off I wondered how I'd managed to think anything I'd played back then was in tune and then plugged it back in. This time all was good. It's actually a really decent guitar. I had a play for a few minutes as a last goodbye and then put in into a gig bag ready to take into work.

Once it was safely stored in the studio I sent a message to the company news group to the effect that I had a guitar to give away and wanted to give it to someone who'd always wanted to play but never had - I wasn't going to give it to someone who already had an instrument. I got twelve responses and randomly picked the name of the receptionist. I was a bit surprised she'd asked to go into the draw as she didn't strike me as the guitar type. When I gave it to her she explained that she had two sons who desperately wanted a guitar and that made me feel very good. It had done me proud in my early teenage years and now it was going to get the chance to do the same again.

Long live rock and roll.

Goodbye to all that.

After a busy week failing to get shots finalled for Wolf Man (and hence why I'll be working on Sunday) I left work yesterday, walked up to Euston Station and headed north to my mum's. The last time I did this the journey took 5 hours thanks to engineering work. They must have finished as yesterday the feat was achieve in an hour and a half: much more respectable.

The reason for the whistle stop visit is that my ma has decided to move house to a smaller cottage and therefore she had decided that she could no longer store some items that I'd left at her current and previous houses over the years. So after a quick bite of supper I set to work. There were many things which I had forgotten about and some which I never knew were technically mine in the first place. Elderly relatives of mine had a habit of leaving things to me in their wills but I was never explicitly told that they were now mine. Then there were the things such as my "birth spoon". Until yesterday I had no idea that such things as "birth spoons" existed let alone that I was the proud owner of one. This is what I have discovered: If you have parents who are keen on the whole antiques schtick (big yes for my folks) then to celebrate the birth of their offspring they have all the details of the happy event etched into an ornate silver spoon. And I have one, well had one; I told my mother I had no use nor for desire to keep it (never having known of it before) and so ownership has reverted to my mum who couldn't bear to see it got rid of.

Having sorted through the stuff that came as a surprise to me I set to throwing away reams of letters from friends and ex-girlfriends that for some reason I'd stuffed into an enormous jiffy bag. Whilst I'm a big soppy romantic, I'm not very sentimental about stuff and so the letters went into the trash along with years of old photographs and all the artwork I made at school and college. I don't have the space to keep it in London nor frankly the desire. By midnight I had several distinct piles: items to go into the recycling bin, items to go to the local tip, items to go to the charity shop and a tiny pile of items I actually wanted to keep and bring back to London on the train with me.

After breakfast this morning we loaded my mum's car and took the load destined for the charity shop. Having delighted the lady in the store with her haul of very decent china we returned to my mum's and loaded up for the tip. Upon our return from there all that was left for me was to load up my rucksack with my keepsies and get the train back. The items I kept were mostly out of print books, a couple of comics and 4 Victorian cartoons by Rowlandson that my dad bought and gave to me when he ran out of wall space. The final item to carry was my second guitar, bought nearly twenty years ago by a long-haired pimply 14 year old Mr Atrocity. I shall write a piece about that guitar and its destiny in a follow-up post soon. By 2 o'clock this afternoon I was back home in London, exhausted but relieved that I'd finally sorted through the last vestiges of my formative years that had been in storage for so long.

Busy Weekend

It's been a bit of a frantic weekend up until today, hence the lack of posting. It all began on Friday night with a Visual Effects Society meeting to help decide the nominations for this year's awards. It's the first time that the UK chapter has got to have a say so we were all on our best behaviour. It was actually quite stressful. After work those of us who'd volunteered to vote turned up at one of the London VFX houses where we were given an extensive briefing on what we were and were not allowed to do. I'd been allocated to the group selecting the shortlist for "Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Motion Picture" and so having had a coffee and a Coke to keep me awake off we went to our screening room.

It was all incredibly strict. We weren't allowed to discuss any of the entries until after the voting process had concluded so we all sat in silence watching presentations from the long-list of nominees and taking notes. It was almost exactly like taking an exam. The hardest part came at the halfway point where we went and had a little dinner still under instruction not to talk about what we'd seen. This, as you might imagine, was incredibly difficult as it was the only thing on our mind and had had our undivided attention for an hour half. After eating our pizza and talking about the weather, what our plans for the weekend were and anything to keep us from discussing the work we went back to the hot, airless screening room for part two. After the screenings had finished we had to place our votes and then sign the envelope in which they were placed. Once the ballots had been checked were we free to talk. The relief was palpable, partially because we wanted to talk but also because we had so much caffeine and sugary drinks by this point to keep us alert that were all wired.

After this it was about 9 p.m. and I went home had a shower and felt really, really awake. At that moment I decided to install the new pick ups that had just been delivered for my guitar. I am not the neatest solderer on Earth but after an hour of careful work the deed was done reasonably tidily and most importantly it all still worked.

Saturday I worked until late afternoon when I wandered down to Waterloo and took a train to Twickenham to watch London Wasps play Leinster in the Heineken Cup. It was not a classic game of rugby union but I did see Josh Lewsey make an incredible run to set up the only try of the game scored, eventually, by veteran French player Serge Betsen. The game outing was organised through work so I met up with lots of work chums and that made the whole experience more fun. I did manage to lose them all in the walk back to the station after the game so I travelled home alone and did a little recording with my newly fettled guitar, the fruits of which I may post in due course once I've fiddled with them bit.

Today T and I did pretty much nothing. T made us a spiced toasted bread covered in mushrooms in cream thingy for breakfast and then we we took a mooch in the West End to get a couple of odds and ends for the kitchen, I for one can't wait to cook with baking sheets that don't warp at the first opportunity in the oven, tipping your food over the bottom of the oven. And that is it. I think an evening of reading and listening to music is in store. Yay.

Angry Otto

Angry Otto
Originally uploaded by Mr Atrocity

I made this little fellow in Processing, a graphics programming language this afternoon. I was inspired by all the little monsters made using Processing on this page. In the video, the moving dot represents the location of the mouse pointer and Otto really hates mouse pointers. It's fun to make him chase the pointer in the actual application and to see his cross little face snap at it when he gets close enough makes me giggle every time. It's surprising how much life and fun you can impart in just 200 lines of code.

The Last Laugh

On Saturday evening I met up with two buddies at the Tate Modern for a wander around the Rothko show followed by meeting up with two of their friends and dinner at a really lovely Malaysian restaurant near London Bridge. As the weather here has been filthy for the last few weeks with frequent, heavy downpours I took the precaution of donning my outfit as you see above. Many of my friends mock my Drizabone and oilskin hat as old fashioned and I must admit it was in part my general tweediness that led me to get them. There was a practical concern too and that was you can't get men's full-length waterproof coats in more modern fabrics and styling.

The last laugh came as I walked home from the restaurant. The heavens opened and I saw many folks diving for cover, even those in fancy Berghaus all-weather jackets as their jeans got soaked. I, clad in my old-school garb, down to my solid, no-nonsense English heavy leather shoes was able to carry on, warm and dry, until I got home. Sometimes I am accused of being a recalcitrant, old-fashioned git. I'm not sure that's entirely fair. I tend to think it's also a matter of quality. To those who accuse me thus, I might point out that I embraced digital cameras and CDs early as they are in most practical respects superior to the formats that preceded them. On the other hand I have stuck with tube guitar and hi-fi amps because I have yet to hear a transistor amp that gives me the sound I want, and the same considerations come to the fore with clothes. I like the older styles partly because they are generally better made and will last a lot longer than fashionable high-street stuff. In the case of the Drizabone, for example, it is a design that has been refined over many years from practical experience and from Saturday's sojourn I'll take well-made and thought out old-fashioned duds every day.

When Too Much Choice is a Bad Thing

On Saturday morning, as T was curled up in bed grumbling with a headache brought on by one too many glasses of fizzy pop the previous night, I decided to take myself off for breakfast. As is my wont I ended up at The Breakfast Club, a cafe with trendy pretensions in Soho. It may be faux scruffy chic but it does do the best fry-up in those parts and reliably so. I was delighted to see, upon my arrival, that only one couple stood between me and the counter. It did however take me ten minutes to get served. The reason for this was that said couple, well half of the couple at any rate, were ordering by the following method, "We'd like a Full Monty breakfast but can I have a bagel not bread and can I have poached eggs and can I swap the sausage for another piece of bacon and don't make the eggs too runny and can I have this yogurt smoothie but can I have banana rather than yogurt?" and on and on. The poor guy entering the order on the gizmo that tells the kitchen what to cook seemed almost at the end of his tether by the time they finished up. "She's so particular" said the, until this moment, silent party in the couple. Particular? Ye gods and little fishes that's not particular that's insane.

We are all aware, I imagine, of the idea that the customer should get what he or she wants, that the customer is right and that the role of the server and establishment is merely to serve. The idea above all that more choice is always better. But is it I ask myself? I had much opportunity to ponder this question and asked it of myself many times as I stood in line behind this prattling half-wit. No, I decided, sometimes more choice is not better.

It is not always better for several reasons. Firstly it is rude. If it takes you ten minutes to order breakfast how long must it take you to do anything important and how many hungry people must you make wait whilst you do? This is the same rudeness as those who like to order eight coffees in tiny coffee shops at rush hour, just as the queue is already stretching out of the door. It shows an astonishing level of arrogance and a total inability to behave sociably to those around you. "Do unto others" and so on.

The second reason why choice isn't always better is because you probably don't know best. When I see someone in, say an award-winning coffee shop, telling the barista that they'd like "An extra hot cappuccino with extra foam" I think ill of them. Are they seriously doing this because they know how to create a better tasting cup of coffee than someone who makes coffee for a living and who has carved out, through hard work, a serious reputation for them self? No. They do it because they are a pseud and they think it shows they are sophisticated. This is not the case. The sophisticate is the person who takes the trouble to find the best people at any given task and goes to them and allows them to work their magic. To return to Saturday's example, I appreciate that a basic fry-up is not an extravagant work of gastronomic sophistication but it is easy to screw up, it is a dish that requires balance to work well, and some pimply trustafarian with a whole host of imagined allergies and intolerances which are actually just fey fickleness does not know better than a battle hardened short order cook how best this might be achieved. In short it is insulting to crafts-people. In even shorter short, why do these people keep finding the few remaining places where there are people who care about how things should be done and then mock these good people with their imbecility?

If you want to choose from 87000 possible coffee combinations to make your soya moccha frappuccino individual then Starbucks would seem to be ideal and their billboards now advertise this feature of their operation. If, on the other hand, you would rather have a good cup of coffee then ask a barista in a proper coffee shop to make you a cappuccino or latte or flat white and let them do their magic.

And don't, for Christ's sake, take ten minutes over it.

Painting

I've decided that I want to do some painting again. I haven't used a brush in anger for far too long and I've been thinking of a methodology I could use to generate some composition with which I can then allocate some colour and texture. It's all very rough but here are some sketches I did this afternoon and a page of colour swatches culled from my stash of magazine pages collected over the years. I think this is going to be fun.

Slack Blogging Behaviour

Again almost a whole week without posting. Sorry folks but it's been hectic. On Monday, T and I are off to Florence for a week. This cannot come soon enough for either of us. Our last proper holiday away together was last May to New York and we really needed this one. In order to ensure peace of mind for me there was a whole bunch of work/briefing I had to get done at the studio before I could leave. I managed most of it but it meant that there wasn't much time for anything else (like writing here for example).

It's one of the frustrations of supervising a whole project is that I am suddenly directly responsible for a lot things directly and I am directly responsible to our clients so if I screw up I get the angry e-mails. It's been the angry e-mail prevention tactics that have consumed the time.

I did manage to see my last Prom concert of the summer on Tuesday though, and I thought it one of the best. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Bernard Haitink played Shostakovich's 4th Symphony. I always like the 4th more than I remember. It's the first of his symphonies where I think I see the style that categorises the later, more famous works (7th and 8th symphonies especially). In the 4th I really get the impression that Shostakovich has thought, "Wow, I have a whole orchestra here, what can I do with them?" and then proceeds to try out a whole host of ideas, some of which come to fruition in the later works. There's the haunting oboe solos, the incessant percussion, the dissonance followed by more sweeping romantic passges and there's a gorgeous part where a solo violin is accompanied by two harps playing chords in the lower part of their register: unique and beguiling. Having had a fairly rough week at work it really lifted my spirits and cleansed my soul to hear such magical music. I love Haitink's conducting of Shostakovich. Apart from an elderly Fritz Reiner recording I have, all my Shostakovich CDs are the Haitink versions.

On Thursday I went out, rather briefly, to say "Hi" and then "Bye" to TR, who is now off back to Seattle and from there to become a citizen of the world. It is always sad when friends leave but the industry I work in is highly cosmopolitan and so there is a constant coming and going of friends to and from the City. In happier news as TR leaves my buddy ZF flies in from California so we're swapping one super smart American woman for another. There must be some sort of quota system in operation of which I am not aware.

Right, well I'm going to start tidying the flat and beginning to pack for Florence. I have purchased a fistful of memory cards for my camera so expect pictures upon my return. I'll try to avoid cliché if I can but there'll probably be some - I suspect it's unavoidable. Happy weekends everybody and I'll write more in a week upon my return.

A Quick Update

I had a pretty good weekend all told. Saturday was spent mooching around town and then cooking veggie lasagne and chocolate and chestnut mousse for our pal ZF who has just moved from California. She came over to Schossadlerflug in the evening and we ate drank and were merry until about 2 a.m. where she went for her first experience of the London night buses and all the adventures that they can provide.

On Sunday we played Spore, which is amazing. I think hard-core gamers aren't going to like it much because it's very much a journey rather than destination type game. Winning (if that's the term) isn't really the heart of what makes it great. If you don't get a small tingle of joy at seeing your own 6 legged and 4 armed monster hatch from an egg and stomp about the landscape in search of something to eat then it's probably not going to really appeal to you as a game.

I also spent the afternoon finishing off this biography of John Dee, mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, mystic, alchemist, scientist, probably spy and advisor to Queen Elizabeth 1st. I'd been wanting to read something of him for a while that went further than the angel summoning and mysticism with which he is most famously associated these days and this book was it. He was a fascinating man with a wide-ranging mind at a time when religion, the occult and science were all so enmeshed as to be almost inseparable. A good read. I received the book nine days previously and for me to read 350 pages in that time is unusual so it must have been good.

Tonight I shall be playing more Spore I think; these planets don't get conquered by themselves you know.

Crystal Palace

Today, after making myself blueberry pancakes and bacon for breakfast, I hopped on a 'bus to Crystal Palace Park. Back when I used to live at Shenley Mansions, Crystal Palace was much closer and so I visited more often. I don't think I've been in about a year so it was fun to revisit old haunts. There are two main features of the park I like. One is the site and foundations of The Crystal Palace itself and the other is the Dinosaur Lake. Having had my fill of Victoriana I walked up to Herne Hill for a late lunch at one of my favourite cafés, Café Prov. Refreshed and refilled I took another 'bus back to Schossadlerflug.

Here's a few photos from today:

And....Stop.

What a week. I have shifted a huge amount of work this week, I scarcely feel like I've had time to stop and catch my breath. For the next three days, however, I shall be master of my own destiny. This weekend is a bank holiday so we all have Monday off work. Tinseltroos is off to Wales for the weekend with some buddies and I have a few items on my agenda but not enough to make me feel like I'm not going to have time to relax. Tomorrow I have absolutely no plans whatsoever; I may go to Brighton or I may go to Crystal Palace. We'll see. On Sunday I'm off to Lord's again and then Monday will see me off for lunch with Tommy Dog at a Thames-side pub. It should be good. This evening I've had a couple of beers with the stone giant from Hellboy 2 guys and now I'm sat at home with toast and honey with the cricket on the radio. Life has just got a lot better and less stressful.

Casting Call

For one of the projects I'm doing at work an in depth analysis of human facial skin qualities is needed. One of the things I thought would really help would be a good plaster cast of a human face and since I'd feel bad about bullying someone else into doing it, and I wouldn't want to ask anyone to do something I wouldn't do myself, I spent most of Sunday morning in a variety of very sexy outfits. First off is this skin tight, see-through polythene top. Note the handles at the bottom and its distinct resemblance to a bin bag with arm and neck holes cut in it.

Next up, once I had my skin-tight (spotting the theme?) rubber hat on, my glamourous assistant poured dental alginate all over my my face and made sure it was massaged into all the cracks and crannies. My world went dark and strange smelling for a while.

The next item was several layers of plaster bandage, applied to support the mould. The next photo is taken at the moment when the plaster is drying and becoming quite hot, as it does, whilst I listen to Rammstein. My world is now very dark and smells of algae and hot plaster.

After waiting for ten minutes for the plaster to harden I was finally able to start wriggling my face and after a few minutes of this the mould came loose and I emerged back into the light following a very strange a calustrophobic half hour. The mould, when angled to the light in a certain way looked like a positive image which was odder yet:

Here's the mould filled with good ol' plaster of paris:

After another couple of hours to allow the plaster to really set hard I carefuly lifted the plaster bandage support off the mould and then began peeling the mould itself away from the cast. This is quite nerve-wracking. iI you screw it up you have to start again because you destroy the mould pulling it away from the cast. Fortunately this worked out OK:

A bit of a clean up to remove any loose lumps of plaster or alginate that stuck to the mould:

And here's the finished article.

I find it very odd to look at. Because I'm more used to seeing my face in a mirror I find it weird to see it the "right way round" and although I recognise the face I don't think it looks much like me. Tinseltroos on the other hand is equally freaked out because, she feels, it looks exactly like me. She wasn't too freaked out though as she now wants me to cast her face. That'll have to wait for another Sunday though.

All Off To Lord's

It was the Friends Provident Final on Saturday and this event saw myself, Papa Atrocity and my chum Tommy Dog meeting up at St John's Wood tube station at the unpleasantly early for a Saturday hour of half past nine. I left Schossadlerflug at 8.20 so that I could pick up supplies for lunch en route through Marylebone. Once we'd collected ourselves together we pottered up to the ground where we endured the usual security bag-poking and leg-patting that the Lord's marshalls seem to like indulging themselves in. We took our seats and Kent got us underway in a pretty lacklustre fashion with both openers falling cheaply.

Tommy Dog invented a new photographic technique which invloved stuffing the lens of a small compact digicam into the eyepiece of his binoculars to get a super telephoto image albeit with lots of vignetting and chromatic aberation. I had a go too:

During the lunch interval Tommy was able to indulge in two of his other hobbies beside cricket, those of beer drinking and reading books with pictures of tanks in them.

I stuck to the beer part.

Here is a snap of Papa Atrocity looking perplexed at Number One Son. He does that a lot.

After a few splutters, Essex did what they ought to given the target they had been set and won the game with a little to spare. Here the Essex dressing room celebrates, They are in the red sweaters on the first floor of the pavilion.

All in all a very good day with a game that had more excitement that it at first appeared it would plus I got to sit outside with my dad and a buddy for a whole without a single drop of rain spoiling procedings in spite of the weather forecast. All in all, a happy time was had by all, apart from Kent and their fans.