The Horror, the horror.....

Pavement art: Museum of street semiotics no 666.

Don't normally go for halloween more of a Bonfire Night sort guy, i love the smell of sparklers in the morning.

But I was on the way to the shops and saw this and took it as omen..... bzzprts.... what was that the powers gone off......... I'll have to go out and mend the generator......

Thurston can you keep watch while I'm gone ... did you just hear something.........

Thurston Moore : Wonderful Witches

Mr Angry of Deptford

Me, me,me,me,me

At the risk of causing a media feed backloop, my little blog is in the paper today. Without me even trying, my review of the cold war show at the V&A linked to a Victor Keegan piece about taking photos in galleries and the paper found it via technocrati and published it (in extract) in the paper.

Here's the link the to page on the guardian website ,if you want the real artifact it's in the techy section page 4.

here's my piece in full before those terrible Guardian subs cut it to pieces......

A few moments in Venice

It's snowing in October and the clocks have gone back.....luckily I found a cd of old pictures so here's the sun going down over Venice.
There's also a little mp3 of various church bells I seemed to have recorded on my camera, so crack open the campari and imagine the tides changed and there's good olives at hand...

Bells of Venice

We love it when our friends are successfull

All shall have Prizes

I’m blessed by having intelligent funny and charming friends and family occasionally this fact is recognised by wider community my friend Emma last year got an award for her NHS journalism, Britain’s leading beer writer had some cream added to already jammy job by wining a beer travel writer award and going on jolly to drink more beer in Czech oh and our S got award for Architecture from Jonathon Ross once oh well, anyway.

The latest in the line is most deserving, a giant in his field Mr Warwick Mansell who has been nominated for a Paul Foot campaigning journalism award in private Eye. Warwick (as only his mum calls him!) Has written a proper book about testing and the sats tests and has been following this story for several years so it’s good that he’s been recognized. He’s genuinely nice bloke too, let’s hope he doesn’t win as he only spend the prize on potatoes and Baaaacccon.

Although I’d pay to hear his acceptance speech!

Bandwagon Jumpers

Sachs and the Twitties:
So let's see the Daily Mail et al having got some tweezers out and found a few grains of dirt to pile on top of each other have built enough moral high ground to start going on about Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand. They are as usual just following where others have led sadly in this case me !

I've thought Ross was past his sell by date for a while, his excessive wages have immunised him against complaint and allowed him to gather round him a coterie acolytes to buy off disapproval allowing him to say and do almost anything.

It's funny as I'm for free speech it's just with free speech comes with responsibility, if you say something that's genuinely offensive you have to face the consequences.
The sight however of the fake moral outrage of the rest of the media is almost as offensive.

So Red or Brown Sauce?

Load of old Flaneur
aka BLTP's Excellent A-Z adventures:
Volume 12 (probably).

I spent Saturday doing weekend stuff; washing things, buying things, watching “a kid for 2 farthings”. It’s a good film spoilt only by Carol Reeds insistence of choosing the posh kid ever to play a cockney urchin.

Anyway maybe this film (based if not shot in Petticoat lane) or a photo I saw somewhere reminded me that there’s a Bacon street in the East End. With the way that my mind works I thought that it would be good if there was a Sandwich Street near by and after a quick look at the A-Z it showed there was one in Holborn. So I decided to walk between to the two.

Beigels, bacon and bhajis
So this morning in the increasingly heavy rain I “bussed" it round to Brick lane.
There’s no place in London like Brick lane, where the ineffably cool and the ineffably down at heel rub shoulder. In the space of a few yards you’ll see highly excited modishly attired Japanese art students (madly tall fake fur cossacks hats) fighting over off cuts of leather in a skip, just down from an elderly Asian man hawking his wares in the rain. The man’s cheap anorak was sodden and he had a light orange hat fashioned from a Sainsbury bag on his head. He was morosely stood in front of a meagre square of things for sale; the most saleable being a chipped Whitbread pub ash tray. He may have other sources of income but none of them looked good.

Elsewhere in the market you can buy more fruit and veg in scoops than even Jamie could swallow or maybe 30 spanners for 3 quid.

Funnily enough Bacon (the street crosses Brick lane) is probably the hardest thing to find in the lane what with the curry houses and beigel shops. The beigels always seem ridiculous good value at £1.20 for salmon and cream cheese and not much more for salt beef (they are also bloody lovely).

Why don’t you just foccacia somewhere else then….

Anyway after a “light” bite and a mooch I headed off for Sandwich street. The rain however was quite heavy so I only got as far as Old Street and then got buses the rest of the way.

Sandwich Street I only realised, when I got there was close to one of my old flats, round the corner from the Brunswick centre (in Holborn).
The area around there has been gentrified since my time or should that be re-gentrified as in Victorian times it was quite “well to do”, the recent influx of money is just the cycle coming round again.

Complaining about gentrification in London is rather futile; after a while it’s really a case of choosing which sort of middle class person you like. The type in Brunswick centre with its Waitrose, Giraffe, and branch of Office do seem to leave a bland trail behind them though. The busy shopping parade that replaced the threadbare charity shops and retro cafes in the Brunswick centre is just so dull. The fact that the shops are packed doesn’t excuse their dullness.

Good luck to the families eating in Giraffe it’s just that the orange café that was in the parade before Giraffe came along still sold fish finger sandwiches except the ketchup wasn’t organic and they were half the price.

The whole place was quite strange almost like a parallel world, the Renoir cinema was still there but the good cheap Chinese café was missing and the book shops have been shuffled round the corner. The planners and councillors will point to the 3 wheel prams and expensive overcoats as proof that they’ve done their job, it’s just, it’s just well you know, you sometimes just want a chemist that sells night nurse and plasters not face cream at £40 a pot, Waitrose is nice but it’s not cheap.

Oh, I don’t know good luck to them all.
I was glad to see the Valencia café was still going round the corner. Its’ staff were always pleasingly gruff, the coffee was good and the food was fine if not quite what the American students from the halls of residence round the corner were was use to. I was never sure if it was trick or not but they use to put the salt in a sugar shaker which wasn’t good when you had a hangover.

Anyway it was interesting visit I may not be back soon

Oh and I still haven't answered the ultimate question, so on a breakfast butty is it "Red" or "Brown" sauce?

Warming to a cold front

Nostalgia for the Future pt12:

To the V&A with S &R. I’m only a recent convert to the V&A, Tudor wall hangings and vases not really my thing and I’ve never seen the point at looking at clothes in glass cases. But their late night openings are nice and they have been putting on some interesting design expos lately oh and when it’s open the Casting rooms are just ace, I can’t wait for them to reopen next year they are just so wonderfully odd.

We were at the museum for the Cold War design show. It’s a varied and interesting event. Looking at how design developed in the east and west in the post war years, using lots of drawings and models and in the case of bubble cars and hifis examples of the real thing.
There are examples of commercial design but also avant garde cutting edge stuff from students and design teams with numbers instead of names (cool!).
We enjoyed the show but it was a little bitty at times and some of the themed rooms seemed a bit strained. One of the rooms that worked best for me was the space room which had a 1/3 model of a Vostock space capsule, original space suits, wacky chairs and several wonderful telecom towers (hurrah!). I would like to have seen more UK examples of cold war design to put local ideas in a global context.

I got caught taking a snap of the model of the Moscow Telecom tower at the top, I don’t really see why you can’t take pictures in galleries particularly of sculptures etc. I know the arguments about the flash effecting old paper and pigments, so no flash but aside from the odd copyright issue which is frankly nonsense in public galleries. Anyway I got one snap. Victor Keegan in the paper talks about this more.

So the show is worth a visit, the evening opening was pleasingly uncrowned, so give it a go.
The V&A gift shop did have this wonderful item of neckwear: I fear our campaign group may have to adopt them as our uniform.

On the subject of the POT is this the smuggest group on Flickr?

The only downside of the V&A is that it’s in west London and so there’s nowhere to get a drink or something to eat without a trek how does anyone live round here?

Sky High Art

Tower update:

Here at last top secret plans of the GPO tower! Firstly can I explain the secret part, the plans come from a rather wonderful book the “Eagle annual of cutaways”.

It goes like this one of our family stories was that my Dad use to read Eagle in 50’s and had collected a number of these centre page cutaway pictures. A rare splash of colour in the black and white world of rationing Britain. Sadly as parents do his mum chucked them out which is slightly ironic as my Nan's house was full of dusty useless old tut in later years.

Anyway I found this reprint book (the Eagle Annual of Cutaways)in a comic shop a while ago and bought it for my Dad’s Birthday. On getting it how you can imagine my delight on opening it last week to find on the first page was this marvellous plan of the GPO Tower but I couldn’t post it in case me Dad wandered past here and the surprise was spoilt, hence the secret.

So anyway enjoy the pic sorry for the blurry edge but I couldn’t break the spine of a present to scan it better.

I know most of the world isn’t turned on by cutaway diagrams of 1950’s cargo planes etc but I would heartily recommend you at least open the book in Foyle’s as its a marvel for anyone interested in drawing, design, history, culture, graphics etc.
It's a 100 pages of incredibly detailed technical drawing mostly in colour. It’s dripping with the sensibility of 1950-60’s Britain and even though everywhere is smoky chimneys and meat and 2 veg there’s refreshing optimism of the choice subject. The enthusiasm for science and for a better world is pleasing. It’s also refreshingly un-patronising towards children as the artists assumed that they’ll be interested in more things than football and trainers. They perhaps naively assume that not only racing cars and jet fighters might spark interest but also dustbin Lorries and spectacularly oddly a potato harvester might pique some interest in young minds.

Jonathon Glancey writes an entertaining introduction revelling in a world were we still made stuff and even where even the most glamorous of motor boat is piloted by men in car coats and trilbies. So have a look you never know what you’ll learn.

In a similar vein whilst searching for Tower relate stuff I came upon this site which seems to about old telephone exchanges etc it’s even named after the colour (light straw) the metal shelves were painted in the post office. It’s worth a trawl for the old pics of holiday camps etc alone.
I’ll be back soon with new stuff honest.

Ps. there’ll be rocket cutaway on my out of this world site as a Brucie bonus
Yours space cadet Bltp second class

Go here for the more details of Eagles Cutaway

Sleeping with the Fishes

Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal
1929-2008
Another corking Obit today, not my usual fare of VC winners or political activist this time the (wise)guy in question seems a particularly bad lot so bad they should make a film about him......

My New Car!

One careless owner, High mileage sold as seen....

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to trek down and take some pics of this marvellous addition to south London’s armoury, (yeah watch out you cocky north bankers with your houmous bars and glamorous west end if you get too umpity we’ve got our own armoured division namely this T-34, that pink elephant with a castle on it’s back from just down the road and if you really get above your station we’ll swing round the big guns on HMS Belfast and get all 1944 on your a…… sorry were was I ,oh yes Tanks.

Just off the old Kent road just after the fly over on the northside of the road is this T-34 tank it’s a bit of local curiosity. I think some bloke bought it and put on this patch of land (as some blokes do) the council complained and tried to move it but it turns out to be his land. Anyway it get’s tagged from time to time and numpties like me take pictures of it etc.

Up close it’s really quite impressive and if it didn’t represent some thing terrible you could go on about its sculptural form etc.

This T-34 really shows the power of the tank on our imagination, from the very start they were almost mythical creatures, early cartoons show them like monsters or landships. One of tanks early proponents JFC Fuller was an acolyte of magician Aleister Crowley. Their mere appearance has cleared riot filled streets and stricken with fear protesters world wide. It’s no surprise this is one of the most recognised photos ever.

Indeed of all tanks the T-34 is one of the most mythical and most paradoxical. Because basically it gave the world freedom from fascist terror (well the men and women who drove it did with some helps form lots of other Russians and some American and English and Polish, and French and Indians and……..)

But then t-34 and its' descendents then spent 50 years being used to suppress Eastern Europe. Like I say a paradox.

Even with a rather timid cat living underneath it in the drizzle and the gloom of a Southwark autumn afternoon this tank did seem t be brooding as if the engines would cough back into life and the turret would slowly traverse as the tracks clanked forward.

By way of tune here's a live version of Tank Park Salute by Billy Bragg Mp3 live in Austrailia in 1992.

train in vain

Sorry for the rant I've had a bad late afternoon.

Bu**er the ice caps, bo***cks to sea level rising I've had it with public transport I'm buying a car.

Why? because it's too expensive, just now I checked my tickets and realised I hadn't a seat reservation for the east coast line but they can't print me another so I have to pay the full fare or pay more on the train it's my fault I thought 4 tickets for one journey was enough!

But one was receipt! so to get home I had to fork at 80 quid! I'm writing this on my new phone fold out keyboard on the train!
so we'll see if it works.
Sunday Night update
(It did) I have tidied up the spelling just a bit.
as to public transport it's a pile of crap. The punch line of today's journey is of course having shelled out £80 for a "seat reservation" not a "ticket" but "seat reservation" they never once checked any of them in fact no member of train crew came near the trolley service was cancelled and the bar was out of most things. When i got back to KX the Northern line wasn't stopping there and it took me 35-40 mins to get a bus to London Bridge where half the platforms where closed, a got a train the seat cushion next to my seat was missing and my 10 mins (max) journey to New X nearer 20 as the train just dawdled along.

My journey to work tomorrow will in-humanly cramped slow and deeply unpleasant, followed by a bus journey on bus whose seats aren't suitable for tall people like me. All of which we have to pay for.

So what sort of car should I get?

Take back the Tower

Take back the Tower
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

The Petition:

It started off as a mild interest and then became a mini obsession and now it’s time to take action.

I posted about the so called BT tower the other day. I promised some top secret plans see later post. But having done some light research into it I find that the Tower isn’t totally closed to the public no it is available for BT corporate functions and junkets.

Now I’ve nothing against the people in these pictures but hang on shouldn’t this be something more people have access to. Too much of this country is paid for by one lot of people and enjoyed by a smaller luckier bunch. I say all this as someone with chronic vertigo who would be clinging to the inner walls of the viewing deck if my journey up and round the Eye and the World Trade Centre is any thing to go by.

But do you know what I think we should take back the tower preferably at 1981 prices and open it up to everyone.

I looked into one of those Downing street petition but firstly I didn’t fancy giving Gordon Brown my personal details he’d only accidentally send them to some sky writing firm and have them fly over the opening ceremony of London Olympics showing them to the entire world or such like..
And secondly they warn you that fanciful petitions “however witty“ will be taken down so whether any of the below is the least bit funny I thought I wouldn’t waste my time. So we’ll start here and see what happens.

If you support the campaign add your agreement below you don’t have to give any names other than what you’d use round here already. I really don’t need to know where you live.

Anyway here’s the petition

The Take Back the Tower Petition
WE the undersigned earnestly request that the so-called BT tower be taken back into the bosom of public ownership and it’s doors flung open to the people* who paid for it and their off spring in perpetuity or until they bring back TOTP which is ever is first.
We petition that:
What with this sort of thing being in fashion again it’s time we spent some of our money buying back the BT tower. Once back in public ownership we would rename it the “Post Office Tower” or even better the “GPO Tower” and open up the viewing decks and get the restaurant going again.

It would probably turn a shilling or two and there should be a gift shop that must sell snow storms and GPO Tower sticks of rock; the money generated could be used to rebuild the Skylon on the South Bank and to get the British space programme out of moth balls.

The tower would once again become a hub of culture in this often overlooked area of London. There could be anniversary concerts for Joe Meek and Delia Derbyshire, Earl Brutus and whoever designed the stylophone. There could be poetry readings and tea dances and other events that local people fancy (it may be too small for majorettes or speedway). There is no reason why the public shouldn’t once again throng it’s viewing decks and nibble orange flavoured Club biscuits in it’s café.

So let’s take action now and Take Back the Tower.

*There are only 2 caveats for public funding firstly Noel Edmonds isn’t allowed anywhere near the place and neither are any rampaging giant kittens

What we've learned so far this week?

Some known facts:

That there’s never been a bad picture taken of Steve McQueen or in fact Chet Baker either!

That Peter Kay needs to write with other people to be truly funny and also TV comedy is best done in half hour slots.

That surely "Landes Banki" is the silliest named investment for grownups since “my Booky Wook” came out...

That Chinatown is the most overpriced place to eat in the centre of town, really £7.50 for some Pak choi choy!

That there’s no helping some people…. I saw on one of those internal envelopes the otherday someone had drawn smiley faces next to people’s names.

That it's worth going into "al'barone" just to try their new draught Duvel it’s probably the best lager (sorry blonde ale thanks PB) in the world. !!

That "al'barone" is a lesson in almost medieval theology; that the ecstatic highs of the beer are balanced by being ignored by the bar staff, 2 of whom stood and looked at me wiping glasses while I tried to get served, then in rolled the London’s most pissed vertical Scotsman (a particularly hotly contested field) followed by the (literally) bouncy cast of “we will rock you”. I think I need another sip of that Duvel.

Duvel Update wed evening: it's a new fromDuvel that's not as strong as normal Duvel and so more refreshing to drink and sadly only on draught in ABO :(

This weekend I have been mostly

....Standing at the bottom of the Post Office Tower.

On Sunday after getting shorn and having several annoying conversations with the gizmo sellers of TCR (as no one calls it) “look mate they do make them, I saw them on the internet, no they were 14 quid not 120, well if you are sure don’t want my money, no I don’t want a usb dongle my last dose has only just cleared up…."

Anyway after being ignored by the high priests of geekdom in Maplin et al I decided to get some air and a thought struck me. I have recently been privy to some secret plans of the post office tower (I can’t divulge anything yet but soon very soon I promise).

I decided to go and stand at the bottom of it and crick my neck, anyway after some wandering around with the tower doing its white rabbit thing; disappearing and reappearing I found it. Cleveland Muse is the nearest you’ll get to it and there it is. I’ll avoid too many penile similes but the Muse is the only place you can see it base to tip, it’s on a nice dramatic sixties plinth.

Sadly after Billy Butlins made a hash of the revolving restaurant (and not the tasty sort with a fried egg on the top) and some local difficulties with the boys from across the water and a bomb, it’s been closed for ages which is a shame. The views would be as good as the eye, almost as good as Greenwich Park!

Now that we renationalising stuff can’t we nick the tower back off boring rip off BT and let the discerning public back in.

I thought about posting some tunes thinking the new tower should have house band, I thought Stereo Lab and Broadcast could have residences and Burial could do club sets for da kids early Monday morning or when ever proper clubbers go out.

I think we should have a proper singer but which would you have?

Anyway the music on this film from 1960’s (did we really need the “swinging” bit added Ms V& A curator.) is marvelous.

My fave bit apart from the diagrams is where the technician goes on his break and eats his egg mayonnaise in a stark empty canteen.

London calling indeed.

If you want to hear some tunes why not try .

http://www.myspace.com/stereolab

http://www.myspace.com/broadcastuk

Autumn Leaves

Turn, Turn, Turn....

I was reading my book the other day (see pic below) over lunch and a leaf fell on it, now I’m not very superstitious part from when it comes to trees (Richard Dawkins will give me a kicking next time he sees me know) ; so I took this to be good Omen and made a wish and it came true !

Me and Winona are getting married next in Vegas and our first case of Tunnock's Caramels just arrived.

The book I was reading is by Neil Gaiman & P Craig Russell it’s called "Coraline" and it’s really rather good about a young girl who goes into that cupboard in the corridor and ends up with another mum who has buttons for eyes. It’s creepy but wonderfully told and the drawings good too.

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower"

Albert Camus

Here are a couple versions of possibly the most wistful song ever written. Nat King Cole is a great singer sadly with the weight of easy listening on his shoulders, but any fool can hear great singing when it come along, the other tune is the Coldcut mid ‘90’s “trance” version which is rather good too.

On the subject of leaves you do know why they change colour in autumn don’t you?

Well that’s because leaves aren’t really green, they really a sort of translucent brown. It’s like this; imagine them as being made out of beige glass. The green colour comes from Chlorophyll (the most important compound in the world?) and every spring the new leaves are flooded with chlorophyll hence the greenness. In autumn the thrifty trees save the chlorophyll sucking it out of the leaves and into their trunks and roots storing it over the winter.

Why do leaves go yellow and red then?
Well light comes in lots of forms (wavelengths) some of its green some it red and yellow so the trees produce a range of "Phylls" to capture different forms of light. Chlorophyll’s greenness tends to mask the other compounds colours, being the most “important” light absorber Chlorophyll gets saved first leaving behind the yellow and red looking compounds which in turn get reabsorbed leaving the brown shell of leaves to rot and decay.

One last “science bit” remember that trees are just tubes of water and sugar held up by air (well the CO2 part of the air) mixed with some nitrogen and water. They are truly magical the closest we have to proper alchemy, they are literally solid air.

Autumn Leaves Nat King Cole mp3

Autumn Leaves Coldcut (Irresitable force mix) mp3

This week I am mostly......

Things that are just good:

the hot Italian sausages they sell in Exmouth market.

Going against the Grain

Small things to go nuts about:

Where did Granola come from?
It’s everywhere seemingly; in granola bars (flapjack?) , granola and yoghurt pudding things in sarnie shops (whatever), crumbles topped with the stuff(stop it now) etc.
What happened to good old fashioned British Muesli ?

Great Record Sleeves of our time

Shame about the Music :(

here's a gaggle of great sleeves...... not a great tune among. sadly.

"Schlager" apparently means hit, shame the producers put more effort into the sleeves than the songs.

Anyway here's a brace of eager beach babes on a rather chilly looking Baltic beach.

I think she needs to watch out "Hi Ho silver lining" about to finish and she hasn't cued up a slowy yet.....

This one I was hoping was a saxtastic sleezeathon burlesque lp, it's in fact lift music with a slightly care worn glamour model on the cover....

Here's Marlon Brando getting to grips with I think Vivien Leigh!

This bunch of 'ombres I had high hopes for and their crack at La bamba is not bad it's just too crackly to post sadly. one song starts well like the theme from "Peter Gunn" al twanging guitars and horns and then sadly fizzles out into Costa Brava show band blandness, it's really sad.

Anyway enjoy the sleeve art!

Ps. Can I recommend some ace free software; scanning record sleeves is a bit of pain because my A4 scanner is 23 cm wide and of course lp sleeves are 24 cm wide so you have to stitch 4 scans together, which is is time consuming but I had seen on flickr people using Auto-stitch to put together panoramic shots.

So I downloaded it and it's excellent ,almost magical give it a go it's very easy to use.

you'll find it here!

Coffee Granita

Coffee Granita
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

Credit crunch cooking

I only chose the title as it was alliterative as most good cooks are careful and thrifty with food whatever the state or the “markets” (wasn’t life simpler when the phrase “the market was bad to day” meant they’d sold out of the caulis on your usual stall and had to got to the pricey but not as good one near the bakers...).

Here’s an idea for a cheap, sophisticated and delish afters, pudding, sweet, dessert....

Coffee Granita.
I made a bit too much coffee yesterday, I could have blasted it in the microwave later but had a mind to make a granita. I made Campari one earlier in the year which was excellent.

I searched around for a recipe; Delia suggested one that used a pint of espresso, but having had loads of Campari granita last time I decided to drastically reduce the amounts involved.

Tip of the Day: when I’m making soup, ices (you know fluid based food) I often measure the initial water/liquid in the bowls I’ll be serving the finished dish in so as to make the right amount (I add a couple of spares for good measure)

Ingredients:
Fresh espresso half a pint 300 ml approx.
50 g of sugar to taste.
A 500 ml plus lidded plastic box for mixing and freezing

I think my cafetiere had about half a pint of java in it.
I was out of loose sugar and only had cubes left so I put a handful of cubes say 10-12 Delia suggests 110 g of sugar for a pint.

Sorry for being slap dash but what I did was taste the mixture to see how sweet it was when it was little too sweet I stopped with the sugar. (Remember cold food tastes blander)

I did add the odd spoon of instant coffee to pep up the flavour because I was using filter rather than espresso.
Next it was into the freezer. After an hour or so you need to check how it is setting and mash up the solid ice at the edge with a fork.

I think it took about 3-4 four hours to set and forked in the frozen ice crystals about 3 times during this time. It’s very simple much less bother than washing up an ice cream mixer actually.

I served it in espresso cups. Even a half pint made a large amount (ice is 9% bigger in volume than water thanks A) plenty in fact for at least 6 people as it’s delish but a strong flavour.

Alternatives.
If I was doing it for larger group I would have perhaps served it with spoon full of good vanilla ice cream or may be a small amount clotted or sweeten whipped cream.

You could swap some of the sugar for a few glugs of Tia Maria in the liquid. The alcohol in the Tia Maria will stop the ice from freezing like the sugar does, so don’t put too much in a couple of measures tops.

Like I say it’s an adult dessert that is easy to make; you could probably make it the day or night before and bring it out of the freezer 10 minutes before you need it and just loosed it up with a fork making it ready to serve.

Spanish food name of week:
Tia Maria is Spanish for “Aunty Mary”

Sundays..........

amusements
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

So how's your day been?

As you can see Deptford was thrilling just now, when I went up the high street to buy some bleach.

What with the rain and the exciting night life....... I stared into this for bit, went home with my bleach........

Easy like Sun....

¡HOLA!

Here's a gentle tune for you, this blustery miserable morning, I've been learning Spanish again recently which is muy bien? We learnt this week that you need to be careful saying how old you are in Spain (and not for the obvious reasons)

Apparently "años" means year and has one of those long n sounds that I fear I'll never master where as "anos" means something entirely different (try swapping the "o" for another vowel!).

Anyway this morning's tune is in Spanish and would fit in with what my old flatmate would call "Sunday morningish music" (which is something to do with Van Morrison and cafetieres).

It's by the Sandpipers who I know very little about, I bought the vinyl thinking they might be like the The Sonics which is ironic as this tune is a gentle vocal reworking of "Louie Louie". It starts off like "you lost that loving feeling" and has some nice flamenco style guitar flourishes.

Anyway the toast's popped up and as Mike D never said it's time to get Illy! have a good Sunday.

The Sandpipers : Louie Louie.

Pretty in pink .... er no

pretty in pink .... er no, originally uploaded by bltphoto.

large chunks of the arctic are breaking off and floating almost purposefully southwards forming into fresh bergs in a desperate final last gasp attempt to sink the container ships tugging across the globe bringing useless baubles like barbie pink laptops to our shores, did people throw themselves under race horses so woman had to put up with this patronising tat like this....

I do go on about pink here's my last diatribe from this time last year which reminds happy birthday A hope you like your card and things....

Also I was forgetting congrats to G and A on the arrival of baby D. Glad to hear everyone is safe and well top stuff.

you boy

They were talking about bringing back the cane on the radio just now 20% of teachers are for it. This 20% presumably went to school after the mid 80's as all I learnt from corporal punishment was the arbitary nature of power. I was the mildest child going and was never formally caned but i was slapped punched and thwacked by teachers, I was hit on head with text book in biology (a subject I was the best in the class at), you were hit by teachers for being slow at getting changed in games and for other minor crimes. Anyway the greatest film made in English language puts the case better than me.