Why This Is Hell

Foot pain retreated enough this morning to allow me to walk to West station and the 8.07 to London Bridge - truly London will be fab when they've finished building it - and a walk to Tate Modern. I'd done the Alighiero Boetti and Yayoi Kusama last Sunday, finding them both very rich and fecund artists, the Kusama beng the more interesting of the two, and I was a little arted out after Picasso and photographs to do Damien Hirst. Plus there was a queue. It looked heaving.

I got to the gallery just before it opened, and as a member I got to go straight in. I believe I have a potential for a private view, but I think I've had my money's worth. He's actually a rather old fashioned artist - his themes are mutability and preservation, most obviously in the cow, sharks and sheep in preserving fluid, sliced in half or whole. These have a melancholy beauty, as much due to the refraction caused by the tanks as anything else. Then there are the flies - buzzing around a decaying cow's head in a piece I've seen at least once before, in the RAA British Sculpture show, or stuck to the wall in a circle. - and the butterflies - flying around one round like Kew has been transplanted - or stuck to the wall. Then the endless cigarette butts and pills (not a show to inhale at). Perhaps the best piece is a autopsied angel, but I fear it all feel a little obvious in its juxtapositions.

In the Turbine Hall there is the diamond encrusted skull in a small blacked out room - you wait a few minutes to be admitted, walked through a dark tunnel, then into the room with the skull. It has a certain beauty, but it's flashy and vulgar.


I didn't feel the need to buy the catalogue.

Then north to St Paul's and a busy Central Line, via a coffee shop to a meeting in the Crown and Sceptre, a pub whose staff have gone from adequate to hopeless - this one didn't know what stout was, didn't recognise the name of one of their beers and was confused by notions of coffee or tea. Half the menu was off, too.

Then a walk with someone from the meeting in search of a coffee shop off Oxford Street - via a colour coded stationery shop which clearly either sells nothing which is yellow or has sold everything it had which was yellow - and to Selfridges. I didn't quite stand on the spot of the cover to Solar Flares, so next time.

Back to Charing Cross via CeX and Fopp and a sinking feeling that I'd dropped the fiver in my back pocket. A productive day.

The Anifest kept me indoors for most of Saturday, aside for a brief period of reading on the balcony of Albatross House and an hour in Caffe Nerd, so I was afraid the weather would be against me on Sunday. As things turned out, it stayed clear, and I headed east, pausing for a discount brand store. I fancied Widders Bel, but the coffee is better in The Ram, and I was at the mercy of whichever bus turned up first.

They came at the same time - but Widders Bel was a better bet, transport wise. Up north we went, and there is indeed an original for Bollock Stones, outside Horney Boy. I was thinking about potential for walking - but if I went to Reakys Over I'd have to go back as well. Next time. Eventually I ended up in Widders Bell.

The tide, fpor once, was in, but no swimming gear. Ho hum. Browsed the market, had an ice cream, hit the cheese shop. An Ashmore Cobble and a local Brie, and a lovely goats cheese. Yum. I clearly have a pusher there. Then the bookshop - nothing I wanted, thankfully - and a walk down the high street to the second hand shop. Yes, the very Quintan Jardine I bought on Friday and a pound cheaper. Damn. No more, though. A John Connolly I don't have, but I'll need to wait for a book tidy to track down where the intervening volumes I've yet to read are. And thence to Costa, for a coffee and a read in their garden. Bliss.

But a shame just to sit - so I set out along the Saxon Shore Way, past Peter Cushing's house, across the golf course and over the railway. A tad inland. All too soon half an hour was up, after about thirty minutes in fact, and I turned off the way to Joy Road and past Valkyrie Avenue to discover a bus stop which would take me back to Cambry.

Much of today was taken up with London, and a cunning plan to go to a bookshop in Blackheath en route. It would also yield four hours of travelling (and thus potentially reading), plus time in coffee shop. What I hadn't reckoned on was they close Wednesdays - I'd not thought to look for opening times on their website, which are helpfully hidden on their Contact Page. The journey was not entirely wasted as the Oxfam yielded The Shield series two - not that I've watched the first yet, and possibly minus disc two - and NYPD Blue series three and four (which no doubt the rest to collect as and when). Blackheath has the world's crappest Bux, with more staff than seats for coffee drinking, hence I suspect being given a cardboard cup which very soon I was to spill. Train to London Bridge, tubes to Holborn where I walked to a certain architecture museum to see an exhibition of a certain bluestocking. Word of advice - travel light for this as they really don't like bags.

Back to Kingsway and Cafe Nerd, where I indulged myself in my free coffee from a fortnight back, finished a book and was amused by the tale of the amateur sailor who got stuck going round the Isle of Sheppey having decided to keep the land on his right. Smirk. Started second book, then walked via Oxfam Drury Lane and Lovejoys (four more Wordsworth horrors, one a duplicate alas) to Piccadilly 'Stones to wait for Roger in the cafe (which I note is now ruined by Too Much Service). Clarke Award and dash to station - I should have gone to Victoria and waited half an hour, instead Charing Cross train caught with a minute to spare and a taxi home to a bath.

XLVII: Richard Cowper, Domino (1971)
XLVIII: Richard Cowper, Clone (1972)

Both very much of their time - the one apparently a psychic thriller, the other a satire on overpopulation, The EU, and (metaphorically) immigration and race (especially post Planet of the Apes). Clone has aged less well than Domino - as if I recall correctly as had Profundis, but I'm a couple of days away from that. Back to Cherryh at the weekend, but I'll read all the seventies Cowper, even though I think it's going in three chapters by the end. Well, certainly two, maybe three. Stretching geography a little - the secret scientific research unit is where Pfizer is based now (that is if Sandwich were six or seven miles from Folkestone, so very stretched then...). Of course, for strict chronology I should have read Kuldesak, but I jumped the wrong way.

Stewart Lee got about twenty minutes' of material out of Café Nerd.


I ran into G on leaving the house - he was off to buy a fourth reading lamp, I was off to have coffee with T, my ex-office mate, and had planned various bits of shopping first. G told us not just to have serious talk, but to do ludicrous talk too - I countered that I could hardly tell the difference. I had some problems in finding a free cash point - everyone was slow - but I got to the coffee shop ahead of time.

Just.


I ordered a large cappuchino, and as T arrived I said make that two. "Is that large as well?" they asked. Well, yes, otherwise I wouldn't have said make that two, I would have said can I have a small one as well.

Then the coffee machine broke and we had to go to Costa instead.

Justice. For them. But perhaps a pyrrhic victory.

No divi card there, of course, but I learned I got 10% off for the Resident's Card. That amounts to the same thing - but depends on the taste and cost of the coffee. I think I prefer the ambience of Café Nerd. Still, T and I talked about langue and parole, the erotics of signifiers, the films of David Decoteau, and it struck me that the idios kosmos and the koinos kosmos seem to stand in the same relation as the chora and the symbolic order, and oh god, do I really have to write an article on Dick and Lacan now? And all in all, it was three hours before we mention colleagues who were Pissing us Off.

In time, though, we parted, and I headed off to Oxfam, where a minor Oops yielded:

• Adams, R. (1984a), The Coming of the Horseclans
  
• --- (1984b), Revenge of the Horseclans
  
• --- (1984c), Swords of the Horseclans
  
• Boorman, J. (1974), Zardoz
  
• Chambers, I. (1986), Popular Culture; The Metropolitan Experience
  
• Millett, K. (1977), Sexual Politics
  
• Pournelle, J. (1980), Future History
  

but none of the pile of Feminist Reviews required purchasing, which was a little disappointing.

I ran into two colleagues in there, one of whom said to the other, "Do you come here often?", which I suggested sounded too much like a chat up line.

I then moseyed up to the Goodsshed, where I purchased chorizo and duck slices from Patrick and three kinds of cheese from Tom's wife (Tom's leg seeming much better).

I wandered home for a bath, via the Carps and Uncle Pete, whom I wished happy new year (it's been a while since I saw him).

Then out again to the Carbuncle, to see Stewart Lee and support (Canadian Tony Law). I didn't leave enough time to do the secret exhibition in the library - maybe Monday week - so hid in the corner of the café and surreptitiously ate my own food.

Someone admired my t-shirt - a red one of Schroeder at the piano with Snoopy, labelled "PLAYER", and asked where I'd got it. I confessed it had been Burton's - imagine my surprise. He paled a little, and I suggested he might wish to make me an offer for it. This he agreed, and I agreed, there needing to be two of us for agreement, so perhaps, rather, he opined, that this was a little too weird and we left at that.

There was also a tramp, or maybe a drunkard, who was hassling customers and he was eventually escorted from the room by security. This became part of the show - as Lee offered to pay for his ticket and joked about the management getting their retaliation in first. The auditorium was more or less full, relatively young, and very male.

Lee actually did well over an hour in the second part, "If you prefer a milder comedian, please ask for one", with basically three or four anecdotes, in part in response to Frankie Boyle's accusation that comedians over 40 have lost their anger. Lee is angry - but even more he is disappointed. The first section was about Caffe Nero's refusal to honour his divi card because two of the stamps were blue rather than red, suggested he had forged then in order to rip off 2/9 of a coffee, then discussed people who move to the countryside for the quality of life and then hate it. The remainder of the show was about how much he hates Richard Hammond, and wishes him dead (just a joke, like the sort they make on Top Gear) and Magners theft of a family phrase and a favourite song - a song he ended the show with.

Lee's style is to obsess on a particular phrase - to repeat and to reinforce, and to re-run through with minor variants: for example "The guildhall, in the country town, with him from Max and Paddy, not Peter Kay, the other one, with the horse, in the field, for the quality of life" or "Give it to me straight, like pear cider made from 100% pears" As was proven 40 years ago - even the word teapot is funny if repeated ad infinitum. Curiously, he doesn't mention that it's comedian Mark Watson in the Magners advert, just a welsh guy. It's very strange to see him stretch a joke to breaking point and beyond.

That's the end of a long week, which began with Reginald Hunter and also included Sarah Millican ("I bought a book called 250 Ways to Drive You Man Mad. It doesn't mention hiding his Battlestar Galactica DVD boxset"). The theatre was full for both - rare for a female comedian, alas. And this week looks busy, too, with a visit to London and, apparently, Manchester.

"Can I have a large black coffee, please?"

"Certainly. Do you want milk in that?"