Carshalton

An impromptu Sunday morning walk in the rain around Carshalton.

House Gallery

A couple of weekends ago we visited House in Camberwell for a cup of tea and a toasted sandwich. Inside it's decorated with origami flowers and butterflies and it does the yummiest flapjacks. I love finding these little South London gems.

The One That Got Away

I was walking through The British Museum on the 15th February and on looking up to the ceiling noticed a little heart shaped, helium balloon resting up there. A little rebel I think, breaking away from the grip of a Valentine to live near the stars.

I Saw This: Never Let Me Go

Subtle and subdued, Never Let Me Go deals with the quiet repression of three young friends as they grow up at a vaguely sinister boarding school and into a strangely familiar, yet all together different, Britain. Throughout there are hints of an unsaid fear; people are reluctant to approach them and they are not allowed outside of their school boundaries. Their world is isolated and cut off from everyone else. When the true horror of their situation is revealed it is uncomplainingly accepted and on they trudge.

It is visually beautiful with muted colours and bleak weather and an ageless quality that could just as easily be the present or 50 years before. The big thing that lets it down is the way in which they completely, obediently submit to their fate is never explained. They don’t put up any kind of fight. But perhaps that’s the point, maybe that’s where their humanity is lost and the quiet fear that rumbles under the surface is realised.

Today I got tickets to the Young Vic's production of Government Inspector, Nikolai Gogol's really excellent absurdist comedy of errors.

I think this is a good enough excuse to join the Julian Barratt shaped dots to my favourite ever Mighty Boosh scene - Howard Moon's funeral

Yesterday I was reminded that Jeremy Irons is in this video.

Elastica, for your viewing pleasure.

There aint nobody fresher than… A Honey Badger

Hell yes, sir!

www.honeybadger.com

Pink Panther

DePatie-Freleng's Pink Panther main titles are one of my favourite opening sequences ever. If only everyone started films like this.

In The Post: Hoolala

I got this lovely little brooch from Hoolala recently. It came wrapped in nice airmail themed paper that I couldn't resist showing off and can't quite bring myself to throw out.

Results

Here are the results of my pom-pom making. The colours remind me of a Pierrot hot water bottle cover I used to own. The final picture is a thread of pom-pom bunting that will be going into the shop this weekend.

Other goodies coming soon.

pom-poms

Tonight for fun I think I'll make some more pom-pom necklaces like the rather radioactive looking one in the picture. Stupid high contrast photo!

This one is in the shop right now.

Elephant

Kele, The Coronet, London. 12th Feb, 2011

Blue flashing lights announce the return of Kele Okereke. Gone is the shy, somewhat moody figure that we’re used to see fronting Bloc Party – New York appears to have transformed Kele. He has bulked up and now cuts a commanding figure onstage. Tonight is he cheerier, talkative and more confident than ever.

The Boxer is made to be heard live, not quite a dance album it veers more towards electronic pop with narrative lyrics and dirty drum machine beats. The Coronet quite suddenly comes alive, it's obvious this is why most people are here and Kele is clearly enjoying it, encouraging crowd participation between songs and initiating a shambolic Q&A before Everything You Needed.

Bloc Party is never far from Kele's new sound and the highlight, for me at least, was the medley of reworked songs This Modern Love, The Prayer, One More Chance.

A large complaint goes up when we're told the set will have to be cut short, everyone is having too much of a good time. We’ve missed you Kele. He said he’s got a plane to catch in the morning, I hope it’s not too long before he returns.

QUACK!

The other day I saw a duck chasing off an American Coot; it made a hasty retreat to the riverbank. I know it happens all the time but the picture makes me smile.

I Saw This: Biutiful

In Biutiful Alejandro González Iñárritu’s stark, poverty ridden vision of Barcelona paints a heavy veil of misery from the start that continues to haunt to the end.

Javier Bardem is excellent as the world weary, mournful Uxbal, he walks with his head down, shouldering his burdens. He suggests umbrella selling as a way to earn money and the reply is that it never rains in Barcelona. But for Uxbal it does rain, a storm of anguish and misfortune that at times becomes difficult to watch. As we see him try to put his affairs in order everything goes wrong for him. Perhaps if it had just been Uxbal it would have been easier to stomach but Iñárritu throws everything at the audience, person after person struggles – nothing is easy for anyone and there’s never any let up or humour just a bleak, desperate struggle to survive.

Uxbal isn’t a hero, he isn’t even a nice person on the surface of it; he exploits people in desperate situations for his own profit. But there is something incredibly human about him. Iñárritu doesn’t encourage us to question him or look for answers; his actions are never explored or excused. Uxbal can see the dead and there is knowledge of an afterlife but it offers no solace or answers. Uxbal doesn’t find himself in his situation because of a higher deity; his actions and manipulation of those in need is never judged in that way. Buitiful doesn’t ask us to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and makes for a brave and unsentimental tale.

JANUARY

This month I mostly watched.

Thanks to I Have No Sense Of Time where I basically robbed this idea from

Epping Forest

In the muddiest conditions imaginable we visited Epping Forest for a walk around Connaught Water. On our way we stopped at the Queen Elizabeth Hunting Lodge. It houses a Tudor food exhibition, taxidermy and excitingly, a Tudor dress-up box. I'm still not sure if it is meant exclusively for children but we spent a good half an hour trying on velvet capes, ruffs and feather hats while posing with the Henry VIII waxwork.

HANDIWORK

Last summer I got my hands on some scraps of leather that have been sitting in my basket ever since. At last I've started putting them to use - these will be heading into the shop really soon.

I Saw This: The Lavender Hill Mob

The world is ours

Just before Christmas I bought myself an Ealing Comedies boxset and last night I finally finished it off with The Lavender Hill Mob. So often overshadowed by The Ladykillers and Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob is my favourite of the lot.

Set in 1950s London, Alec Guinness plays a reliable bank administrator with hopes of stealing the bullion he works with and retiring a millionaire. A chance meeting with Stanley Holloway’s eccentric souvenir maker provides the spark of inspiration needed to get the riches.

A long and complicated plan is forged that involves luring a criminal into their plot, a fake kidnapping and a holiday abroad. What could go wrong?

Everything, naturally. What follows is a riotous, chaotic rampage through London and Paris with the gold. Passport officials, laughing school girls and bungling policemen combine to try to thwart them and there’s an excellent, dizzying scene with the Eiffel Tower.

Timelessly funny.

I Saw This: Black Swan

It’s been a long time since a film has been released that almost everyone has seen and has a strong opinion on; it’s a fairly even spread of applause and annoyance – I’ve heard everything from “loved it” to feeling “cheated and violated” after watching it.

I’m not sure that it really deserves the divide. I found it fun to watch but lacking in any real development and brimming with outrageous clichés. Darren Aronofsky is anything but subtle and from the start we’re treated to the first glimpse of the split personality that dominates the film.

Nina – fragile, tense, thorough and prone to self harm is awarded the role of her life playing the Swan Queen in Swan Lake. She is perfect for the White Swan but there is uncertainty about her ability to embody the edgier Black Swan. Pressure is piled on her from every angle, pressure to succeed and pressure to fail. Her mollycoddling mother, her sleazy director, her jealous fellow dancers and her own unerring ambition crush down on her.

She is under constant scrutiny. Lily, her rebellious, confident understudy seems to be lurking in every shadow waiting to steal the part from under her feet, her mother’s haunting portraits laugh at her, her own reflection betrays her. We enter a rapidly deteriorating world of doppelgangers, mirrors, dreams, slips of consciousness and fantasy until reality is lost and we can no longer define the true from the imaginary.

While in many ways completely silly, Black Swan has flashes of great paranoid horror and classic suspense but it’s undermined by an exaggerated ending and comical villains.