Ad men plan again

I am pro-Olympics. I'm proud that my city won the bid for 2012. I think it has an incredible potential to positively affect all sorts of things, not least of which would be my immediate neighbourhood. I'm okay with paying for some of that through my council tax. I'm on the pre-reg list for volunteer slots, because - why not?  I can walk to most of the venues!



But this This does not particularly fill me with joy.



Maybe I'm dysfunctional as a member of a consumerist twenty-first century community, but I'm just not excited about the opportunity to be "introduced to the new London 2012 brand".



Mostly I'm just irritated by receiving an email where 5% of the words used are 'brand'.

One of many zeroes

Hmm - free Britpop. This looks like it could be a fun blast from the past. (and if it's not - well - it's free and we can always wander off and do something else.)



Bit too late to switch plans for this week, but consider this me making a note for July.



http://www.burnsoobright.co.uk/

And altho' so near the landing, I, alas! was cast away.

Dear Firebugs : Please stop burning up historic locations around me. (That and anything that's going to mess up the trains.)



The poor Cutty Sark isn't going to seem real until next time I head over to that neck of the woods. It's almost impossible to imagine the river front there without her. It seems almost disloyal to go visit the Götheburg, although  I probably still will.

wombling free

So I've been thinking : what is your favourite thing to do for free in London?



If forced to pick only one, I'd have to say 'walking', which is a total cop-out, I realise, but is still true.



If forced to pick one route? (which is hard!) South bank downriver from Westminster to Tower Bridge, and back up the North bank. I do a part of that walk three, four times a week, and there's always something new to notice. (Yesterday I was not only spotting sculptures on the skyline, but also they've covered the NT in grass ...)



In fact - it's Friday. Let's make a meme.



Your favourite _______ in London.



1 -- free thing to do

2 -- cheap (ish) place to eat

3 -- one-off tourist splurge (say, £30?)



________________________



1 - Walking the river

2 - Mother Mash

3 - River boat either up to Greenwich or down to Hampton Court Palace.

(bonus tip - take the boat to HC with a picnic, and then get the train home, which is quicker and cheaper)



Yours?





Technorati Tags: london

Now above and beyond the roofs of our city

So it's farewell to one student group, and tomorrow will bring a new lot, here for the short summer session.



It's a tight turn around between the two groups, which means early starts, and late nights for a week or so, but - I don't know. I've covered a fair amount of ground today. Marble Arch in the early morning, Bloomsbury this afternoon, Oxford Street and surrounds in between, a quick dive across Waterloo Bridge to pick up something from Foyles on the South Bank. Ten minutes snatched for lunch, sitting on one of the fountains in Trafalgar Square listening to the water and watching tourists climb the lions. It's worth it, you know? Worth all of it. Because this is mine. This is my home town. I love this place.



And I think that the city has meant something to the folks who are leaving, although I guess I'll never know what or how much, and I hope that it comes to mean something to the ones just arriving.

Nicotine from a silver screen

I won't be able to go, as it clashes with a late working day, but this looks interesting (and free):

An Evening with Alfred Hitchcock

Wednesday 16th May, from 6pm

In 1972, young film journalist Sandra Shevey was granted an audience with the master of mischief, mayhem and murder, Alfred Hitchcock. He was at that time approaching the end of his 50 year career, having just directed the penultimate of his 53 films. The interview was recorded on audiotape, but as befitting the man of mystery, 35 years on, it has never been published or aired...until now!

Sandra will introduce virtually the whole of this fascinating feature-length survey of Hitchcock's career, interspersed with film clips. A word of warning however - some of the subject matter is not for the faint-hearted!

This free event takes place, appropriately, at Westminster Reference Library, in the West End; the heart of Britain's entertainment industry. You will be able browse through the many books relating to Hitchcock, including sixteen books specifically on his life and films.

So is there anything new under the sun to discover about the venerable old rascal? Sandra met him, has seen his complete works, conducts walking tours through Hitchcock's London and is preparing a new book on him: and armed with this priceless recording, if anyone can shed new light on him, she can!

Admission is free, but please book in advance to ensure a place.

Westminster Reference Library,

35 St Martin's Street

WC2H 7HP

Tel: 020 7641 5250

email: pcollins@westminster.gov.uk

Technorati Tags: film history, hitchcock,

So melt down all the ornaments

And the story rumbles on : I'm conflicted about Waltham Forest Council's decision to reduce opening hours at it's two main museums. I suspect it's a done deal, but I'd like to believe that it's not.



The Vestry House Museum is a traditional local museum - lots of local history and local knowledge - housed in a sixteenth century poor-house. The William Morris Gallery is housed in one of Morris's family homes, and holds internationally renowned collections of Morris's work.



Both of these are great things.



Neither of them are being closed / sold off / sacked by visigoths.



( Possibly I'm just having an allergic reaction to the tone of some of their supporters. Their website is keepourmuseumsopen.org.uk - just the URL is loaded. )



The council isn't talking about closing them - it's talking about changing the opening hours, partly to save money, partly to extend weekend opening hours in response to resident demand. (OK, so the council aren't linking readily to any evidence of that residents demand, but assuming that they're not just pulling that idea out of thin air ...)



I used to live in Walthamstow, and every time I made it to the William Morris Gallery (which is fantastic) it was on one of it's once-a-month Sunday openings, and because the Vestry House Museum isn't open on Sundays, I never actually visited it. Having them open every Sunday would have improved access for me. In general, more museums and galleries open at weekends is a good thing in my book.



Shifting the museum's 'opening week' to Wednesday though Thursday would be an unabashed good thing. Using weekend opening to distract from cutting hours in total, less so.



The bullet point that most caught my eye on the Friend's site was Education programmes will be taken to the schools rather than inviting schools to the Museums.. And WFC's response flat our contradicts this. We will be actively encouraging schools to make better use of both centres – and will open our doors to them during the week for pre-arranged visits. From a teaching perspective, having exclusive access to a whole museum with a curator-lead education program is also a good thing. If it happens.



But the council's plans are worrying - don't get me wrong - the shift to part time hours is obviously going to affect the staff, and their knowledgebase, their passion, are resources as much as the artefacts of the museum. It's also going to make life more difficult for serious researchers, and it's predicated on the assumption that most of the people most of the time a) work, and b) work in Monday-to-Friday jobs, and I'm not sure that's a truth which can be universally acknowledged.



It's difficult to argue that the day-to-day needs of the residents shouldn't take priority over 'luxuries' like museums, but just by setting the question in those terms WFC are sliding a set of assumptions into the debate which I'm not sure I agree with - that history and art and local roots are luxuries. (Well - they're not Maslow basics, agreed, but I'd argue they meet needs in the second tier...)



They're holding a procession/protest on Saturday, in celebration/support of Vestry House. That might just be a thing to go join in with.



Technorati Tags: museums, galleries, london, walthamstow, local history, william morris,

we're not happy till we're choking

I can't quite work out if this sounds completely bonkers in the good way, or just completely bonkers. (reading the menu/map doesn't help)

Life's a laugh and death's a joke it's true

So what did you do today, brain?



Well, after work I wandered out into the street, and surrounded myself with a miscellaneous bunch of four and half thousand people in search of silliness, and - really - that was a good choice.



I have participated in an exceedingly silly world record - woot! Well, sort of.



I arrived too late, and was still in the queue they ran out of coconuts, so I'm not officially a participant. And my camera was out of battery so there are no photos (at least, none from me). And trying to find people amongst four and a half thousand other people is kind of hard, so I didn't (sorry Nikki!) But I was there ;p And really, the addition of the threat of rain, queues, and the expectation of failure implied by having less coconuts than people just makes it more English, really.



Not quite as awesome as the flashmob pillow fight, but I did wander off afterwards humming Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, with a smile on my face, so I count that as a win.



And now I'm back home with a soft, sweet, Williams pear, and a crisp, honeyed Elstar apple, (thanks to Abel and Cole), and the positively decadent two-year-old unpasteurised farm-made cheddar I treated myself to at Borough Market this weekend, which seems like a good feast for things English to me.

For life is quite absurd

I'm English. I'm also the sort of person who finds nationalism a really uncomfortable subject, so much so that I find it hard to write 'I'm proud of being English'. It's more or less an accident of birth, so - why is proud the relevant emotion? (1)

But with St George's day on the horizon, the subject's on my mind.

It's going to be on my doorstep tomorrow, with the events being laid on in Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden, and it's probably stupid that I'd be much more enthusiastic about a screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and a Coconut Orchestra world record attempt if it *wasn't* associated with St George's and Being English TM.

That said, if they're still taking registrations when I finish work, I might have to go join in. There's something very pleasing about the public foregrounding of something so patently ridiculous, silly, and fun. Way to undercut the bombast of nationalism!

In other news, the silent film screenings at The Globe in honour of Shakespeare's birthday also sound good.

(1) In fact, I most identify as British rather than English, and nationality is a fair way down my self-definition list. Being English only really impinges when I'm being ashamed of of English people being spectacularly stupid, violent, and/or drunk, and I have to actively remember that most of the time the St George's flag being flown/worn/displayed has less to do with violent nationalism and more to do with, say, supporting a sports team.

Lay down, play dead for Di and Fergie

16th April 2007
I cannot begin to tell you how much I don't care. Or how angry I am that editors are telling me that this is the most important thing that's happened in the world today.

And to cricket those ten same rules shall apply.

Cricket's a wonderful creature. Now, I grew up with the sport. My dad and my brother both played at town level, my sister at school inter-county level, and even I once represented my form. I still couldn't explain all the intricacies of the three-day Test variant. But it is a common-or-garden game here. Really.

I took a walk in the park yesterday, taking advantage of the beautiful weather, and it was bustling - swarming may even be the word for the kids' play areas.

There were joggers, and dog walkers, and people with prams, and people of all ages enjoying the space. There were a few people playing frisbee, a couple of groups of people practising poi, people on the tennis courts, and people in the bowling nets, working on their (cricket) delivery.

And there were a hundred and one pick-up football games - soccer, for the US readers

And at least the same number of games of rough and ready cricket.

The kind with a tree or a bag as wickets, and a jumper for the other end, and maybe four people catching. The kind you play with a tennis ball and a three-ninety-nine bat from a toyshop. Or a bright orange plastic bat from Woolworths. There were adults, and teenagers, and kids, and three utterly adorable toddlers playing clumsily through the middle of a family picnic.

And then, earlier today, my neighbours' kids were playing out. They were playing cricket, with one of the traffic bollards that stops people driving through the end of my culd-e-sac as their wicket, and a very familiar sounding set of 'home' rules. If they hit parked car, they were out. If they got the ball into one of the front gardens across the way - that was a four. (When I was a kid, playing in my back garden, the pond was an immediate out, the hedge and house roof were fours, and the chimney stack or over the house was a six. All of those things happened enough to have rules for them.)

So when I hear people talking about cricket as if it's a weird esoteric thing that only wealthy people play, it always throws me. That's - polo or something, surely? Not cricket.

What's that shadow on the wall

Friday Late : Animate @ the VandA - that was a whole lot of fun.

Partly the truly excellent company, to be fair, but also a good part because the VandA know's what they're doing. The Shadow Monster's interactive doobrie just didn't stop being *cool* every time we looped back past it, the show reels were suitable impressive, and while the filmed stop-motion collaborations were a bit too audience-participatory for me, I did make a flip book, and collaborated on a zeotrope.

But mostly it was just pleasing to me to spend time with friends in this amazing building (the re-opened Poynter Room cafe is still just beautiful) surrounded by music and people and shiny things. The atmosphere is totally different to visiting the museum at any other time. I think it is the music - a really crowded day would probably be as loud, but the music being played gives the sound shape. That and the fact that everyone's there for the same thing, even if they're doing different parts of it.

The next one's on the 27th. Ritual.

I'll wait here once again

Diamond Geezer is frequently good reading - and sometimes he just goes ahead and writes the post I was going to write. Just a link for you then - Stratford has a Starbucks now??



(I'm a fence-sitter on the subject of major multi-national coffee chains. I see the arguments against, but at the same time, independent coffee shops are not falling over themselves to give me the option of sitting somewhere that's not a pub, chatting with a friend at ten in the evening. I figure that I'm not paying £3 for a coffee, I'm paying £3 for the place to sit and natter that isn't a pub full of loud drunks. I think that's worth it. Of course the new local is open more or less while I'm at work, so won't be getting my custom, but when and if they start offering me that essential service, I won't complain.)

in a rich man's world

Need a one-stop-shop for coverage of yesterday's budget? Intute and LSE Library oblige.



[as I flipped past the news last night, the presenter was laboriously explaining the 'the Gord giveth and the Gord taketh away' pun used in several headlines. There is something quite wrong about the fact they felt the reference needed explaining. The image of Gordon Brown with a long flowing grey beard will, however, haunt me for a while.]