bluntie

lido, market, front seat of top deck of bus, another market, a very very empty turbine hall, circles of people watching other people pretending to be statues, covered in facepaint, cameras, large wheels, bens and bridges, palaces, parks, picnics. And, finally, the calmness of wolfgang tillman’s show at the serpentine gallery. so understated, large photos with smaller ones which were taped to the doors of fire cabinets, no fuss. really beautiful, i wish you could see it too. there is also an architectural pavilion masquerading as a cheap ‘pop-up’ coffee shop / american apparel corporate branding exercise. it is very red, but not much else.

my favourite photograph was this one, called Growth:

is clearly not for me. crowds, crazy sunglasses, jerk chicken and pissing in the streets. But it is amazing and next year I will be better prepared. Street after boarded-up street full of crowds, crazy sunglasses, jerk chicken and pissing. Smoke-filled from the barbecues. Shrill with whistles and heavy with the bass of a hundred speakers which made my lungs contract. At times we thought we were walking away from it, but it continued, and as we made our way through from one side to the other the crowd became more and more waste. Or, that was the passing of time. Empty red-stripes and polystyrene chicken containers floated in drifts in the gutters, and somehow i stepped on a cheeky rat. I say on, but I mean in. It was well dead.

this is a local topical blog by the youngest tasmanian hamilton in london, ricky. the daily entries are a study on the transrotational nature of the streets of east london; eternally shifting but never really changing.
chicken bones and their packaging are the product of a tide of inhabitation which sweeps twice daily and three times a night through east london’s streets, houses, pubs and buses. london fried chicken is the base unit of waste in the area, the lowest cost protein in the world and a great social leveller because everyone loves fried chicken, not least the communities of local cats.
also, in a head-spinning interconnectedness if you click on his links he gets cash from google.

visually related: bones, of the prolific and notorious 70k crew. which reminded me of the awestruck discovery early one morning in deserted melbourne (chicken bones yet to be swept from the gutter) of an empty office block whose windows had been filled with tags. beautiful and noble as the sun rose, and, as either public art or filigree sunshading (nouvel…) unrivalled in scale or value engineering.

it is embarrassing for me that i write and suddenly realise that i have created in my mind a vivid and direct connection between jean nouvel and chicken bones.

work makes me think of long-haul flights, drink makes me think of food, a glass makes me think of broken, blue sky makes me look for clouds, being with someone makes me think of solitude, loneliness reminds me of love, and summer makes me think (not unkindly) of winter. not being a pessimist, but i doubt the new bougainvillea will make it to autumn, let alone through this next winter.
spent 3 days in lovely places; like John Soane’s House (more another time), like eating a cherry almond tart and a jasmine lily tea at a tiny cafe on church st, ricotta mustard toasts and a beer at Cafe Oto, like Abney Park Cemetery, like the bar at Moro, like the insides of many pubs, like london in the throes of visitors heaving as blood during exercise, somerset house’s wide courtyard gleaming in the sunny intervals.
so i’m tired. going to read newspapers, make a nest, eat carol’s courgette then find a mossy crevice and slumber like a large stone lion.

on sunday morning i strapped on my dalston sandals and walked to the east london line.

(on the way stopping at a car boot sale to buy a brooch in the shape of a golden mouse holding a golden cat one 20th its size among other delights)

the east london line is a revelation: moving at speed but quietly through the knotted part of london which is usually slow moving and loud. sudden moments of orientation up in the roof tops of buildings and streets which are so familiar at ground. the gherkin moving in an orbit detached from the foreground.

then another moment; the grey brown shadowy patchwork of dense grainy buildings is cut by the heavy colour of brick lane sunday, on axis, like some grand boulevard. which, given brick lane, is a thought to make one smile.

traveling the cross-section of east london is restorative, look, i can exist simultaneously in a village and a city, part of life and deeply anonymous. i can ride my bike through overgrown cemetery at the northern extent of my line, through the puddles of spilled meat-juice leaking onto the street from Ridley Road’s tripe and trotters market, through tree-lined streets, on cobbles, alongside canals. gardens move from behind houses to rooftops, from wide to narrow and wide again. is there any food i cannot taste? i wouldnt need anything more.

Whitechapel Road, where I “alight”! It’s another space entirely; uninhabitable by the shops on each side. their storefronts spilling only so far into the wide wide highway. what must this look like from the sky; the last straight road before the muddy river?

The Whitechapel Gallery is room into other room and at each point it feels as though the doors lead to somewhere private rather than to another gallery space. often i love the gallery bookshop more than the works and i feel that this is wrong. most relevant today in the gallery was the delicate drawing of Jim Hodge’s piece: Everything so Alive  Lively Living,without online representation, but approximated here:

and in the card shop; Christopher Wool’s Cats in Bag. always. i am sentimental about the very slightest of things and susceptible to the hit-over-head text. cats in bag, mouse catching cats, everything so alive, lively, living.

australian hillside as english village
rainbow chard seedling re-using his seed as a crash helmet
cat with face, either very angry or stoned
i made olive and spring onion bread but this is not the time or the place

the cats try to help. batting at the delicate sprouts, headbutting my arm, trying to get into my crack as i bend over.
they weren’t there for the humiliation of carrying dirt around the streets though. just in it for the garden dance-off.
the cats are licorice and sherbet. and on the window ledge are nasturtium, sunflowers, sweet pea, rainbow chard, rocket.
bit cold out so i just brought them in for the night.

a little bit of spring in almond blossoming. softness to the wintery spanish hills of Porrera, home to some famed wine. here the grapes are planted in taut stretches wrapping up the mountainous slopes. apparently the wine made here is so good (and rare) because the plants have to try so hard to squeeze out the mineralised moisture from the slate-y soil. vines that work harder make better wine.
this is not my photo; didnt have a camera but it was winter and not a speck of green. so much like parched australia in summer that the icy wind outside was shocking.

Seaside spain in winter: empty bars, quiet streets, tiny rain, empty insitu, graf without youths, no cats or salty after-swin rinses.

oh xaloquel.
romesco sauce:
bittersweet spanish paprika, garlic, almonds (blanched and peeled), bread, olive oil, salt, vinegar
eaten with potato crisps to dip

the sun comes out. i read the guardian and have a cup of tea from a design mug after a saturday trip to the garden shop. should have bought some organic olives from the local farmer’s markets too.
but i do have six tiny trays of dirt and seeds now, as well as two planter boxes designed from found unwanted furniture in the local neighbourhood and using a restrained colour-way. i hope you like my vegetable garden, which will flourish any day now.

there is a number 38 every 2-5 minutes, but it wouldn’t be the back of the 38 without a chicken bone.