I bet those golden tickets make the chocolate taste terrible

The original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is on, and it is just such a spectacular film. Why did anyone ever think it would be a good idea to remake it? The film is truly magical.

Anyway, I was coming here to get down all the details of this weekend. It has been the loveliest time. My dad and his girlfriend came down to visit me. It's a four hour drive, so it's a lot for them to do just for two days, but it was such a great time that it felt like a full holiday.

They came in time for lunch yesterday, we had a picnic in the park at the end of my street, and since it was the hottest day of the year, we were all melting after a while. We went back to their hotel for a swim, which felt so refreshing. We went out for dinner and had huge burgers before coming back to mine to watch a film. Today we went for a walk through a big park near here, and played badminton there. Then we had another picnic for lunch in the park down the street from my house and played frisbee (badly on my part). In the park you can hire a row-boat, so we did that while a brass band played at the edge of the lake.

It was a perfect weekend. Well, I did get sunburned, right through my factor 50, but it was still worth it.

It seems to be the time for seeing my favourite people at the moment. On Wednesday, my shower-partner returned from Hong Kong and we had sushi and cocktails. Tomorrow the boy is coming here. Then next weekend I'm off to Devon for a few days with my almost-twin. I just need to see the beautiful girl soon and it will be complete.



On a different note, is this not the most awful statistic you've ever heard?:
"There are 72 million children out of school across the world. That's more than all the children that are in primary school across Europe, USA, Canada, Australia combined."

How can that be possible? Join 1 Goal if you want to see something done about this.

New ways of looking

I really like this video. I think it's very effective - there are lots of things that it's easier to put to the back of my mind rather then really look at. But this made me look:

If It's Hip, It's Here

This is not the usual sort of blog I like - it's very specific, based on design. But it's definitely worth a look, there are some stunning images on it.

Subway Signs

Home

I wish I were home right now. I've just read this and I want to escape to the wild surrounds to go swimming.
I'm going to have to go back soon and do some wild swimming.

Today, I'm loving this photo essay, especially the 4th photo down.

Peggy

Also, take me home and let home be this life and a place where I can wear these wonderful glasses:

Royal Ascot

I went to Royal Ascot yesterday, it was a very lovely day trip. I went with a group of people from work, and though it was very nice, I think next time I'll go back with a few friends or family members. There isn't really much to do apart from bet (which I do incredibly badly) and watch the races. It really is all about the socialising.

Oddly, one of the most amazing parts was going to the toilets. I went (foolishly) after the Queens Jubilee race, as did every other woman at Ascot. The toilets were down a little path, and there were hundreds of cubicles in one giant tent-room. All of the ladies there crammed into the tent, chattering with their friends, with their little feathered hats and head-gear bobbing. It was like being a battery-farmed chicken. It had that odd sensation of being something totally new - something that I've never experienced before. I love that feeling.

Additionally, I did make all of £3.60 on a horse that came in 3rd, all of my other bets lost as though they were doing it to spite me. And I managed to get very sunburned.

Smiling in the shadows in the sand

Is this the best photo of all time?

I think it might be. It is the exact feeling of Summer, and being young and carefree, of loving and being loved.

Today

I miss everybody today.

Don't be sad, I mean that in the sweetest way.

100 posts

To celebrate turning 100 (in post terms), I've changed my whole layout. It was triggered by wanting to have a wider main post section so that my images could be bigger, and the template I had didnt allow that. Also, I've been making minor changes for a while, that haven't really satisfied what I want this to look like....And clearly, books, books, books.

Happiness

I'm feeling happy at the moment, and I just want to go with that and express it in a way that will hopefully stand out from the tangle of despondent and confused posts on here.

I've been loving this today (via):



And also, I have to reblog this (via someone sweet and anonymous), it made me smile...and want a pug that I will name Puglet:

Yet more art

This weekend, The National Gallery. I always, always forget how much I love this place. I got there early so that it was nice and quiet. I had no purpose in mind, just a quick scout around to see if something caught my eye.
Straight off I was in a room full of Canalettos. He was one of the first artists I truly fell in love with when I was in Italy. He has such particular lines and he entirely captures the feeling of being in Venice.


Then on through the 1700-1900 rooms, full of all of most the wonderful things you'd ever want to see on a Saturday morning. A whole room of Rubens made the visit perfect.

The evening was football, which I actually enjoyed, though I think it was more the company than anything else.

Homesick

The word for what I feel is homesick, but really what I miss is something that no longer exists. I want to be this little girl who doesn't even know what it means to be afraid and who cannot even imagine falling without being picked straight up.

Meetings

Today, work was nothing but meetings. Even though they're part of my job and things were discussed or information was disseminated in the meetings that needed to be so, I still felt like I was wasting time I could have spent doing real work.
A good thing that came out of one of the meetings was that I found out about the publication of this book. I feel it will be too popular for me to rustle up a copy from somewhere at work, and I'm sure someone would notice if I got the warehouse to deliver me a book that's totally unrelated to my job. Maybe I will have to purchase it, with actual money...perhaps I should just set up an account with work - let them hold back some of my wages to be spent on books, rather than going through the dance of them putting it into my account, me withdrawing it, and then giving it straight back to them. It's like being at Blackwells all over again. I think the book trade is bad for me.

Mindfuck

I am loving this right now. So much of it is getting hearted.

Anxiety Girl

This is a picture of me, miraculously drawn by someone I've never met:

Dreaming of being a Functional Freak

Thanks to the Rejectionist, I have found my Ten Commandments, as given to humanity by the incredible John Waters (excerpted from here). I really cannot choose which one I like the best, which I guess is the way it should be with Commandments. I shall dedicate my life to following them all equally.

F&L

This has been a week of free phone calls. I've had long talks with lots of the people I love, and I don't feel so bad about being far away. I think I'm understanding the benefit of breaking out on your own, even if you love the things you're breaking away from....of course, I'm cheating in my breaking away - the is a fraction of my old life that I've brought into the new, but in a different way from before.

I think I'm just starting to feel entirely in control of things. Staying in the same place you grew up in and living with the same people you always have done - it lets you divest some of the responsibility for your life and actions to them. It's not a bad thing, but it takes going away for you to find out how all of those parts of yourself work properly.

Also, down here, I'm near to the heaven that is Ben's Cookies.

I ate about a million of them this weekend (real number more life three and a half), and even now I'm wishing I had brought some back from London with me.

The museum for this week was the British Museum. I mostly went for the Enlightenment gallery, because the collection culture of the time still interests me so much. I also went through the Egyptian, Asian and African galleries, and mainly just felt curious about what all that stuff is doing in the British Museum rather than museums in the countries to which it actually belongs. Particularly that applies to the Egyptian stuff, there are these huge room-filling sculptures which used to guard temple gates - they are amazing but so out of place trapped in the controlled environment of the museum. I can certainly see that there would have been an argument for that sort of thing before air travel and the internet, but now I'm not so sure.

One thing that was really interesting there was in the Enlightenment room, it was in the section on collections. There were several examples of the plumage of Birds of Paradise, and next to them was this:

Europeans first became aware of birds of paradise in the sixteenth century, after merchants returned from Indonesia with prepared specimens known as 'trade skins'. These skins were made to display the birds' fabulous plumes, and had the feet and wings cut off. As a result some Europeans thought that the birds did not have feet and spent their lives floating through the air, drinking dew and never touching the earth until their death. It was because of this that they were called birds of paradise. One species was even named Paradisea apoda, meaning 'the footless bird of paradise'.

Consequences consequences

I love this painting so much. I don't recall ever seeing it prior to standing before the original in the Palazo Pitti. It isn't the same in reproduction - in real life it's as though a huge wind has swept across the canvass and stirred up the paint. I want to go back and stand in front of it again.
I feel smaller away from it. Back home, in my father's house, I have a postcard of it stuck to the wall by my pillow so that the first few seconds of wakefulness make me feel wild and full of war.

Also, today I have been reading City Boy, which is interesting but impossible to love. I liked this in it though:
"No one is sincerely interested in writing a journal that will never be published...If a writer has the desire to communicate by writing and be heard, then he necessarily cares about seeing his work into print. I suppose its the difference between masturbation and making love - the real writer wants to touch another person."

New Boots

Also, another wonderful thing from this weekend - I got new boots!



I love them so much. They make me miss wearing my hiking boots everyday a little less, and they are so beautiful on. I feel as though I am striding everywhere with immense purpose.

Where the streets are paved with gold

Much as I hate to admit it, I really enjoyed being in London this weekend. Certainly, part of that was due to the presence of the beautiful girl and a certain boy, but the city itself did not seem as awful to me as always.

I feel that the boy tricked me somewhat with Primrose Hill deliciousness:

But there was also the loveliness of the Tate Modern. I don't like the way the collection is laid out there (it tries to do far far too much), and there was the usual weekend business (especially the annoying children so well described by Waldemar Januszczak a couple of weeks ago). But, amongst other things, there was a lovely Calder mobile which took me right back to the entrance of the Guggenheim in Venice:

(Arc of Petals - Calder. Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Venice)

And there was also a delightful little room of strange and sweet drawings. It contained a collection of Marcel Dzama drawings:

(Marcel Dzama Last Winter Here, 2004)

The same person who did the artwork for this wonderful album:

And in the same room were some Dave Shrigley drawings, which were really surprising and great (this one was my favourite).

Then there were the books. So many lovely books. I got Wilson by Clowes (signed and all too lovely) and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern 13 from Foyles. Then yesterday we went to Henry Pordes and I experienced an awful Sophie's Choice of just too many good books.

Too wonderful.