peripathetic

Clean Air

2010-11-04T21:04:00.002Z

Yes, I know it's been a while. A long while, in fact. But anyway. A couple of weeks ago, here in Belfast, we knew that the first stretchng fingers of winter were exploring the landscape because the air was cold, there was frost in the morning, and the air was clean after a warm wet summer.

For the past couple of days, it hasn't been like that at all. To redress the balance slightly, at least in my own head, here's a womderful variation on the idea of presence, absence, and substance... a billboard that advertises clean air.

A ship, underneath a time in a city

2010-07-15T20:26:00.006+01:00

The news from New York City that an 18th-century ship has been found underneath the (fortunately rainy) World Trade Center site reminds me of this fascinating look at the fact that in San Francisco, lots of scuttled wooden ships were actually part of the built city and are still there underneath it.

(It's worth reading around that last linked post, as there are plenty more riches to discover.)

(Edit - another blog about this here. And Gothamist here.)

Channel 4 and New Labour

2010-05-11T20:19:00.003+01:00

The Labour Party in the United Kingdom came to power in 1997 in an election in which I voted for it directly, in Scotland. I was still a teenager.

Its period in power saw pop stars courted in Number 10, iconic additions to the cultural and architectural landscape of the country, including the rebuilding of a power station as Tate Modern and the partial demolition of institutionalised homophobia. Tony Blair bonded with George Bush in the weeks and years after 9/11, thousands of new crimes were added to the statute-book, the concept of the nanny state was talked about more and more, and civil liberties were eroded so much that a photographer cannot walk today down any street in London without fearing the oppressively chilling effect of Labour's Terrorism Act. My passport contains a microchip and antenna which invisibly identifies me wherever I carry it.

And yet. The one time that springs to mind for me, now that the Party's time in Government is over, is a dark evening in March 2003. It was raining, I was out of work, and the United States, assisted so essentially by the United Kingdom with Tony Blair at the helm, was just about to start bombing runs over Iraq because of the oil.

Shock and Awe, we were told to call it, even though it was neither. And I sat there, in this chair, all those years ago, feeling sad and sick and powerless. I had a beer, and lots of cigarettes, and thought of war. Back then, I couldn't have realised that the oil takes on a quite different sheen today. America's own Gulf Coast hates the stuff.

The Channel Four News aired earlier tonight as Gordon Brown stepped down as Prime Minister and Labour leader and removed himself and his Party from Government. An HD camera, fixed to a helicopter, provided dispassionately sharp aerial pictures.

And as the silent motorcade brought Prime Minister Brown into the courtyard of Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to Her Majesty, the well-loved newsman Jon Snow provided a thoughtful commentary:

"Well, if what they say is true and the Queen really does watch Coronation Street, she'll be postponing it tonight!"

The cars stop. A camera in the courtyard records the scene. A shiny black door opens. There is, for a long moment, silence.

"...They say she does."

Ideal world

2010-03-09T20:46:00.002Z

Someone just asked me what I'd do for entertainment in an ideal world.

I typed the following:

Morning, up earlyish but not so early that I'm bleary. Nice cool morning, hot coffee and croissants outside in green, delicate garden. Medium-long, hot bath. With either Radio 3 or 4 on in the background. Dress. Trip, by train, out of cool, modern but tiny Norwegian / Icelandic / Swiss alpine village where I live, with good book, magically arriving in large but originally medieval town for lunch. Wander around the cathedral after lunch, impromptu organ concert. Preferably Bach, Glass and Messiaen. Another train trip by magic train to London, nice jaunt in the tube to Tate Modern, to see some Cy Twombly. Beer and olives in the cafe afterwards. Magically end up in the Lake District for an early evening walk around a lake surrounded by mountains before dinner in an excellent little restaurant in Ambleside. Old-fashioned but magic train home, via a bar in, why not, Northern Canada, to catch some snow, fir trees and the Northern Lights, before getting back to Norway / Iceland / Switzerland, a LONG hot bath, whisky, continental sausage and cheese, and then bed.

Demand

2010-02-03T20:44:00.001Z

Demand, originally uploaded by LutzSchramm.

A few minutes ago, I said to a friend:

I'm currently cobbling together a blog post solely for my own benefit about an organ in an open-air tower in a castle in germany, inspired by the photos of a guy who takes photos of models of photos of quietly significant things in recent German history.

Pavey Ark and Old Peculier

2010-02-01T13:13:00.004Z

Now, I know this is just a video, but I am putting it here because Jonathan doesn't approve of me using Twitter, and I meant to put it here at some point anyway. It's actually not really a video at all, but a series of stills taken with a digital camera on a rotating mount. I think they timed the rotation precisely so that they'd catch the cliffs above the lake being illuminated by the sunrise. More info here. Click through to Vimeo and watch the video HD and fullscreen, though.

24 hours, Pavey Ark from Michael Moloney Studio on Vimeo.

Pavey Ark is a fell (local dialect for mountain) in the Lake District, NW England. It stands above the valley of Great Langdale, which is the most beautiful valley I have seen in the UK, and is climbed most via the Stickle Ghyll ascent from the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel down in the valley bottom (not so much a hotel although you can stay there, but more a wonderful, atmospheric no-shit climbers' bar with higgledy-piggledy wooden snugs and a big old black range with a fire when it's cold, and Old Peculier on tap).

The point of Pavey Ark, as with most fells in the valley, is that it is both beautiful to look at and hard to get up. You can't stroll up the steep path by the stream which flows from Stickle Tarn (the lake in the video). You can't stroll from the tarn to the summit.

And that cliff above the tarn - you can, if you wish, take your life in your hands and climb it without ropes, and I have done so, although at the temporary expense of my nerves. And the skin on my fingertips. Should you try the same thing, don't try it on a wet day, and if the day is wet, watch your step on the way down from the tarn. You may break an ankle if you're not careful.

But the Old Peculier at the end of it all is so good. Worth rushing for.

Blasphemy

2010-01-02T10:37:00.003Z

Brr. It was -4 here last night and there is a light dusting of snow over everything. So that the birds could have a drink, I had to break the ice on the buckets in the garden this morning with heavy blows from a hammer. I couldn't be happier.

Anyway, perhaps I'm just not awake yet, but 'blasphemy' itself seems a strange, messy, sticky sort of word this morning. In any case, there is now a blasphemy law in the Republic of Ireland which means that if you utter something that causes enragement within a religious brow, you can be fined up to twenty-two thousand pounds.

So, feeling that isn't right, I've decided to post the excellent website of some people fighting against it - keep trying if it's slow - and the Guardian's story about it, reminding you of its importance by way of this other news story. (The guy who drew the newspaper cartoon of Muhammad all those years ago and raised such controversy has been pursued again - this time by an axe-wielding maniac.)

Giving thanks

2009-11-27T13:37:00.001Z

Giving thanks, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Well, after going through the snaps of Thanksgiving dinner that I took last night, I can't think of a better one to go at the head of a little blog post about it than this one.

It's not that I chose to apply an old-fashioned cross-process for the heck of it. There is something very lasting about the way that a tired host and a good friend sit down contented after a mammoth meal on a warm traditional occasion. So lasting that it can span decades, back to the days when you had to wait for your paper memories to come back from the lab, the colours all changed and random and wonderful and smudged like the colours of your memories themselves.

It was a lovely meal, a lovely night, lovely people. And the cheese and honey afterwards weren't bad either.

In honour of CERN

2009-11-21T12:49:00.001Z

Large Hadron Collider, originally uploaded by chippa.

Well, over one year later, the 'Big Bang Machine' or Large Hadron Collider underneath Switzerland and France has been repaired after its rather expensive hiccup, and was restarted last night. Two proton beams have been injected into the collider so far and have been spun around at buttock-clenchingly flabbergasting speeds, and nothing's exploded yet.

More pictures here. The video below is a timelapse of the construction of just one ickle part of the thing.

Roni Horn, a new... exploration

2009-11-09T21:33:00.003Z

I should point out that if you click this link, you will see an article about an artist I have written about before. With her boobs out.

I suppose she felt like celebrating the latest incarnation of her retrospective.

I would say 'that is all' here, but as always with Roni Horn, that's not all.

Autumn day

2009-10-26T15:16:00.002Z

Autumn day - mushrooms, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

The Guardian says today should really be a bank holiday, so it's good fortune that I decided before the weekend that today would be a day off.

So after reading the article and smiling at my freedom, I had a cup of hot coffee and headed out into the very autumnal local woodland for some photography, which you can see more of if you click the photo and explore the rest of the set.

Multicoloured Belfast City Hall

2009-10-18T13:10:00.001+01:00

Multicoloured Belfast City Hall, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Yes, I know this is blurry and horrible, but our City Hall has been given, from what I can tell, just a new electrical system, a café, and a lick of paint.

Anyway, the really striking thing about it is that they've taken to making it look like a rainbow at night. The colours shift and merge into one another. It's a striking effect and very welcome as we head into darker nights...

Keith Jarrett - Testament

2009-10-11T17:34:00.001+01:00

Keith Jarrett - Testament, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

It is NOT natural to sit at a piano, bring no material, clear your mind completely of musical ideas, and play something that is of lasting value and brand new (not to mention that these are live concerts, and the audience's role was of utmost chemical importance: they could change the potential and shape of the music easier than the difference of pianos or hall sound). I then did a series of solo concerts in Japan in the spring of 2008 that seemed to hit a technical high-note in the history of my solo events. I wasn't sure what could possibly happen next after these concerts.

Then my wife left me (this was the third time in four years). I quickly scrambled to stay alive (music had been my life for 60 years) by setting up a Carnegie Hall Concert (a leaflet inserted into the program for my 25th Anniversary trio concert there in October 2008 advertised a solo concert in late January 2009), but before I did that concert, Steve Cloud managed to quickly come up with two solo concerts in Europe: Paris and London. I had not played solo in London for, I believe, 18 years. These were the first solo events since my wife had left. I was in an incredibly vulnerable emotional state, but I admit to wondering whether this might not be a "good" thing for the music. It truly didn't matter; I had to do them. - Keith Jarrett

When disasters have befallen me, I have not had the (difficult) good fortune of being able to set up a concert in Carnegie Hall to blow the blues away. And in the two concerts recorded on these three CDs, Keith Jarrett certainly does blow his blues away - or if not entirely away, there's a lot more here besides The Blues, or Gospel, or the lush, tearjerking tunes that nestle into the corners of your mind for months on end.

The first concert, on CD1, is from the Salle Pleyel, Paris, recorded on the day before Thanksgiving in 2008. The second concert, spanning CDs 2 and 3, is from the Royal Festival Hall, London, recorded on the following Monday. It's sometimes tempting to feel, when you remember what you were doing on the date a recording was made, that you have somehow influenced the music - in my case, that a warm Thanksgiving table, very special people, new experiences and a sense of quiet acceleration at the start of winter have leaked into these CDs as if by magic - but of course, that's wrong. We all influence music anew each time we listen to it, and if there is anything fresh and bracing about Jarrett's creations here, there is also plenty that is warm and slow and like a summer night. This is music that will last until next spring - and next century.

I won't spend time giving a 'proper review', except to say that these concerts aren't as raw and fragmented as the earlier album 'Radiance', nor are they quite as coherent and complete as the Carnegie Hall Concert. They do, however, keep Jarrett pecking at fresh material in short episodes, the results are always satisfying, there is always something old behind them, and those tearjerkers are there too. Obviously, you should really buy the CDs as soon as possible, but first, read Jarrett's liner-notes at Amazon, and have a preview listen there - but a better listen at the ECM Player.

Tower house

2009-09-26T10:02:00.001+01:00

Christ Church Greyfriars , originally uploaded by EZTD.

If you fancy living in a church tower thanks to the Blitz, it'll only cost you four and a half million pounds. But it's well worth it - you get a prime location in central London and a garden in the shell of the bombed-out church. The photos look wonderful. I don't know how long they'll be up, mind you. Via Londonist.

Frozen

2009-09-26T09:37:00.003+01:00

No - it's not cold here today. Just ever so slightly chilly first thing in the morning. So far, at least, Autumn here has been kind. 'Frozen' alludes to the title of this photo gallery from the New York Times. I know a lady in Belfast who keeps a house very much like this one...

Open spaces

2009-09-20T16:15:00.001+01:00

Luigi Russolo - The Revolt (1911), originally uploaded by Marc Cox.

The painting above was finished not last year, but nearly 100 years ago. It's by an Italian artist called Russolo, and it's called The Revolt. Russolo was a Futurist, and the Futurists were fierce, angry artists who wanted to smash the prescriptive, ordered ways of thinking of the past and speed towards a modern future that was more fast, free and easy than the slow, bogged-down past.

During my recent holiday in London, I did a lot of walking. I did some photography, some of it while walking, other bits while sitting down or ambling aimlessly. While sitting down, I was usually also reading or thinking. And whereas earlier this year I was thinking about light and dark and surface and depth as things in themselves and what their properties might be, this time I'm thinking more about movement through dark and light, and movement across surfaces. And what the dark and the the light and the surface contain, and mean.

Moving across the earth, whether you walk down your road, or whether you take a tube-train in London and pop up above the ground again, or whether you fly, has lately become very... directed. We start our journeys from a particular patch of ground given some significance and a name. We move from that point to another point, and to do that, we usually walk along a road, or a path, or we follow a map, or we sit within a form of transport that will impose our route upon us. We are as directed in our movements as actors upon a stage or as plants upon a pergola.

Richard Long is an artist who is interested in those paths and roads and the surface of the earth and how we move across it. He is interested in prising greater freedom of movement from apparently regimented ways of moving. For example, one of his works comprises a higgledy-piggledy series of worm-like lines, moving freely across a white surface - the lines are actually an unmarked map of the paths and roads which 'allow' our movement over a particular area of the English countryside.

Another work, which looks much more limitational, is a straight line drawn across a map from one random point to another. There is no path - the idea is simply to treat the surfaces of the earth along the line - the random sequence of mud - stone - paved road - grass - pebbles - dry leaves - more grass - mud - heathland - outcrop - crag - as free land to be travelled upon and over without paths in mind, without routes to follow. The straight line ruled across the map suddenly opens out in the imagination and becomes the pathless way without rules of any kind. And his gallery installations - the ground on the wall in the form of mud, lines of mud splashes looking as delicate as the shoots of bamboo or reeds on a Japanese print - simply draw further attention to the freedom of the surface.

Which is why, wandering aimlessly around the gallery, I was surprised when a Tate gallery attendant told me I couldn't take a photo of a group of stones. And which is also why, wandering wide-eyed around Tate Modern's Futurism exhibition, I was surprised at how directed a future the free-thinking, museum-smashing, free-thinking, velocity-loving, car-driving Futurists seemed to be speeding so headlong and blindly towards.

It's not that their love of the machine is alien to me. I love aeroplanes and fast trains and slow, clunky underground ones, with their shadows and sounds and flashes of light and colour just as much as they did. But it's all so samey for fierce, free-thinking people, isn't it? And all those people in the painting above, rushing forwards as one, so fast that they seem to be breaking the sound-barrier... couldn't they see the threat to freedom lurking in a mechanised future?

Or was it that nobody could have seen that, and now that we're in the present day with its planes, trains, automobiles and timetables, it takes an artist like Richard Long to nudge us out of the airport, away from the coded motorways and across the open fields?

(And another couple of things. One: there's no way my camera could have captured all that - stop your silly snapshot policies, art galleries. Two: Roni Horn's art, which I blogged about before, suddenly seems more 'Free-Futurist' than ever.)

Magic

2009-09-15T21:51:00.002+01:00

Well, I'm back from a holiday London - apologies for the silence, which I know has persisted for longer than I have been in London. There are good reasons for it, the most prosaic of which are work and being tired and not having had a creative thought worthy of a follow-through for a while. I may blog about some things later.

Anyway. Yesterday, something happened which was rather mystifying, somewhat eye-opening, and a source of confusion even today. I don't simply mean the act of travel, although it is like that also. I mean what happened when I was sitting, a little worn-out, before the closed door of the departure gate, minutes before the security girls appeared to check our passports and shoo us to the plane.

I had settled down for what I thought would be no more than a few minutes. A few minutes passed. My eyes misted over with memories of London. Little things about my surroundings brought me back - the gradual sparse arrivals in the little lounge, the out-of-place guy standing on the left, the.... out of place guy standing on the left who had been looking around him, the only person standing... and who then looked straight at me as if he had intended to all along, and then smiled right at me and shyly and firmly walked over and knelt down on the floor in front of me.

He reached into his pocket. "A trick." The eyes. The smile. Maybe Italian? Maybe Eastern European with a tan...? A pile of coins. Two little containers of metal. His smile. His eyes directly on mine. The coins go into one container. He puts it into my hand and closes his hands around mine, ever so gently, still smiling at me. And I am expecting slight of hand, flicking between his eyes and his hands, no movement. Just his smile. Everything else stops. London is forgotten. I haven't felt this way in a year. His smile says he meant this. He must have meant this.

He could physically yank the damn thing from my hand and I still wouldn't notice, so it is hardly a trick. But the coins in my hand have disappeared from the container. Of course they haven't, I think. It's a trick. But the childish amazement comes back and I clap and grin and smile at him and he laughs quietly too, and leans towards me, and brushes me with his hair, and touches me and said "...see you..." and touches me again and walks right out of the gate and down the long corridor back to the main airport and never looks back.

I sit there, dumb, and think: he's not on my flight. This gate is miles from the others and everywhere else too. He meant this! Should I run back?

So then, of course, all the closeted-in-public gay and bi guys on the flight had noticed this and had to sit near me on the plane. And flirt, in silent Northern-Irish ways. But that wasn't the point.

Who *was* he?

If you're reading this, I was in the yellow t-shirt, and I think you have beautiful eyes, and I know those coins were fake. Totally.

Normal

2009-06-22T21:56:00.001+01:00

Hanging off, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Boy 'tried to eat toy sandwiches'
Teenager 'beat toddler to death'
Man climbs 200ft wheel attraction
Teacher raped by boy wins damages
Taxi driver rapes male passenger

The above headlines are all real. Who'd have thought it?

I was sitting in a bar facing the Belfast Eye (the 200ft wheel attraction) when there was a minor commotion at the windows, and my friend John said "What's going on?", and we proceeded to figure out what was wrong.

A guy said "There's a guy on the top of the wheel!". We drank more. He didn't come down. We went outside. A very drunk guy didn't drink more. He was carried to a bench next to an improvised police cordon below the wheel. Then the police went away. The guy on top of the wheel still didn't budge.

The drunk guy, helpless, was hugged and posed beside for photos by grinning Belfast delinquents, as if he was a Guantanamo detainee about to be happy-slapped. Other Belfast teenagers looked on, silent and horrified. A guy who tried to help was called a dick. The guy on top of the wheel didn't budge.

And then, a couple of hours later, the guy on the wheel came down, and the world went back to normal.

Gin and tonic

2009-05-30T17:50:00.001+01:00

Gin and tonic, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

In honour of the first properly summery day Belfast has had this year. Warm air, no wind, gentle sounds of traffic and birdsong in the background... and very, very cold Gordon's and tonic water. Perfect.

Singing ringing tree

2009-05-06T22:14:00.001+01:00

The singing ringing tree 1, originally uploaded by felixspencer2.

This is one of a series of hilltop sculptures, collectively titled Panopticons, in Lancashire, England. The others are Atom, Colourfields, and Halo. They are based on the cohesive idea of the panopticon, a type of building which would allow an observer inside in a single place to observe all rooms.

The concept of panopticons as buildings was originally applied to prison design (dreamt up by the now stuffed Jeremy Bentham). How fortunate that it has been conquered by such lightness.

Cave Hill Rescue

2009-04-25T23:19:00.002+01:00

Cave Hill Rescue, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

My feet hurt. Giles was out of breath. So we stepped to the side of the steep path, through the soft, springy mixture of soil and dry leaves and wild garlic.

The helicopter, which had been hovering over this area since we had set out from Giles's front door, made it troublesome to hear sounds at a distance, and it soon emerged that the woman who appeared to sit in the gentle valley below the path was yelling for our attention. She had fallen from far above; she needed help; she had called for the helicopter; could we help?

Giles got his phone out and wandered uphill to call mountain rescue. I stayed close to the woman and waved and waved, with big sweeping gestures, at the helicopter, which moved more closely overhead.

Soon Giles was back, with a policeman in tow. And what was her name? Louise, she said. She was very sorry - she had been beaten black and blue since she was six - she needed a light - were we going to arrest her? She had fallen. Honest. Not a one of them cared. Not a one. She was serving her suspended sentence, too, and being good. She couldn't walk. She needed help.

And the policeman and I helped her up, his radio burbled for a while below his tired sunlit face, and he helped her away as the helicopter, above, gradually moved downhill.

We gradually moved uphill towards the summit.

Niigata and light

2009-04-17T20:42:00.001+01:00

House of light open sky, originally uploaded by yukito inoue.

Wow. A house of light. Beautiful idea.

Storm - Dark - LIGHT - Storm - Dark

2009-04-14T21:05:00.001+01:00

Pigeon Point Lighthouse, originally uploaded by MumbleyJoe.

Lighthouses! Lots of them! Original impetus here, and a big database here, another here, and a mystery here. Just so you know.

Roni Horn

2009-04-04T22:36:00.001+01:00

IMG_1679, originally uploaded by Caraes.

Following: a post I made to metafilter, just because.

In the early 1980s, Roni Horn travelled to Iceland and lived alone for a few months in the (supposedly haunted) lighthouse at Dyrhólaey. While there, she made rocky, earthy drawings. They formed the first volume of a currently incomplete, abstract encyclopedia of the country which has now progressed to include beautiful photographs of hot pools, glaciers, lava and rivers. A river's surface has appeared in different guises within a university. She has even made a library of water in a little Icelandic town. However, those currently in or near London can visit an exhibition in Tate Modern.

The stars of Horn's work are water and its surfaces, time, memory - and all the echoes thereof. The overall flavour is of purity and simplicity of form. There are deeply fascinating studies of the surface of the river Thames in London, and fascinatingly deep pieces of cast, annealed optical glass.

As we cannot step into the same river twice, so it is obvious that one beautiful face may not look the same if photographed a few seconds or days later. And just as we are usually very good at recognising anything familiar, time can blur our perception, and there is a chance that it may not be the same thing at all. Pairs of photos and objects explore this strange relationship between surface and substance, whether the photos are of a hot spring or a bird's head.

Horn also achieves beautiful effects by cutting together similar drawings onto a single large surface, further blurring the boundaries between one thing and another. And she is very good at causing you to doubt your perception of single objects. This, for example.

Doubt Box - Roni Horn

2009-03-24T20:30:00.001Z

Doubt Box - Roni Horn, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

I opened Doubt Box by Roni Horn today. And I am unable to express the first experiences inside it any more precisely than this.

Mean time

2009-03-18T09:40:00.001Z

24 hour clock, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

This clock, at a gate into the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, unusually shows the time on a 24-hour dial. It has ticked its way — without stopping, we hope, as this is the home of Greenwich Mean Time — through many different times, and many happenings in the world have existed somewhere else while these hands have moved forward at their precisely regulated pace.

From last Thursday until early on Monday afternoon, the mechanism measured the time that contained the stay of my friend Adrian and I in Greenwich. I was there for my usual Spring visit, and Adrian was along for the ride and his first visit to London. He was very excited. The hands didn’t speed up one bit.

There was an evening at The Wapping Project — a converted hydraulic power station on the shore of the Thames — where we had cocktails among the slowly-rusting machines, marvelled at skulls lined up in neat rows on the walls of the coal store, and squeezed our way inside a tiny greenhouse outside to hear a young writer with a voice with the consistency of soft bubblegum read wonderfully from his work with a cardboard box over his head.

There was the first true Spring morning of the year for me, a new, exciting light pushing around the blinds, and the air in the garden was warm, and in the sun really gloriously warm, and we got our Winter heads all flustered wondering what to wear to the Japanese Garden later on. There was a dead mouse found behind the cooker by the cats, and retrieved by Willie. There were wonderful friends to catch up with. There was the night when Adrian disappeared.

And, most hauntingly of all, there was the day when he reappeared, and stayed at home all day, and Jonathan and I wandered towards Tate Modern and saw there a captivating exhibition of Roni Horn’s work. It doesn’t matter who she is, so don’t worry about that. What matters, and is foregrounded in her wonderful drawings and photos and glass and sheets of gold, is time. And how you can look at something 2 times, and is it still the same? And how light strikes water over time, and is contemporary water really the same as older waters? Come to think of that, is our memory for water or light or looks any good? And when you have nothing to think about but time and weather, is Iceland the place to be?

Massereene

2009-03-09T21:55:00.001Z

ATTEMPTED MASS MURDER @ MASSEREENE, originally uploaded by littletriggers.

From an msn conversation earlier:

Pete says:
It's not such a biggie, for our peace process, I hope. And everyone's saying it isn't. But all the same - and I don't know whether this is respect or shock or something more - Belfast city centre was noticeably quieter as I walked home today. Less people around.

Words fail me. I heard the news a couple of days ago and the first thought through my mind was - 2 young dead guys. Fucking hell. Second thought - are we THERE? AGAIN?!

Of course, we're not. But we've all leant forward in our chairs, here, a little. We just haven't stood up and gone in search of matches, candles and emergency supplies - or petrol bombs, thankfully.

Sneeuw - yuki - neige - hanki - snow

2009-02-03T21:39:00.001Z

The day it snowed in London, originally uploaded by woobiquity.

During the past two days, a massive weather system has dumped cold air over the United Kingdom, and instead of the more usually snowed-upon North, it has been the South (England and Wales) which has borne the brunt of exceptionally heavy snow — the heaviest in eighteen years. Here in Belfast, we haven’t had any, and if we have over the hills I haven’t seen any evidence of it. Boo hoo.

So I’ve been taking refuge in the flurries of my synapses, so to speak, and have buried myself both in Jonathan’s photos, his descriptions of the cats glued to the window by the magical sight, and a wonderful book called The Snow Tourist.

I haven’t read it all yet — far from it, thankfully — but I have read enough to know that it is rich, magical, and wafts fresh, cold, snow-filled air around as the pages turn in front of your eyes. With stellar little sprinkles of science, and deep accumulations of history, it is overlaid with the scurrying patterns of its author’s curiosity. So do buy a copy before the end of Winter.

No damn pool anymore

2009-01-28T22:35:00.002Z

Just thought that this should be somewhere easily findable should I ever need to refer to it again. The White House website, which used to provide this Press Pool Report page openly linked, no longer does. For the moment the page is there but all the links to it are gone. At first I was horrified, thinking that either Obama suddenly got secretive or the site was falling down. But no. After a little googling, here is the reason. It is not like that on this side of the pond.

Dubya in photos

2009-01-26T20:09:00.001Z

The Internet Renders Its Verdict on Dubya in HTML, originally uploaded by Madison Guy.

Here is a rather fascinating, extensively illustrated, rundown - in several senses of the word - of the Bush presidency in images. As usual with all great posts to do with photography, the pics are only half the story.

Renewal

2009-01-20T18:38:00.001Z

Inauguration Day 2009: President Obama takes oath, originally uploaded by USA TODAY.

Moments ago, President Obama (who is shown taking the Oath of Office above) issued the following Proclamation:

NATIONAL DAY OF RENEWAL AND RECONCILIATION, 2009

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

As I take the sacred oath of the highest office in the land, I am humbled by the responsibility placed upon my shoulders, renewed by the courage and decency of the American people, and fortified by my faith in an awesome God.

We are in the midst of a season of trial. Our Nation is being tested, and our people know great uncertainty. Yet the story of America is one of renewal in the face of adversity, reconciliation in a time of discord, and we know that there is a purpose for everything under heaven.

On this Inauguration Day, we are reminded that we are heirs to over two centuries of American democracy, and that this legacy is not simply a birthright — it is a glorious burden. Now it falls to us to come together as a people to carry it forward once more.

So in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, let us remember that: “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twentieth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

Ahhh. I feel refreshed!

Rather whoooaah

2009-01-15T21:46:00.001Z

Portrait II, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Last weekend, after going to bed, my left arm went very cold and tingly for no reason I could think of, and I was convinced the end was near. Although it turned out not to be - at least not then - I have felt somewhat like a woozy, lightheaded occupier of my body since, and this self-portrait is as close as I can come to sharing the feeling.

For those who are interested: it was a trapped nerve, most likely in my neck.

It was also a 15-second exposure at ISO 200 and f/22, for those who care not about clicking through to investigate further. I took great care with the shoes, you know.

Almost like a dream

2009-01-06T21:17:00.001Z

Almost like a dream, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

This was taken on New Year's Eve (actually, scratch that - it was taken on New Year's Day, very very early), but is fitting as a celebration of the festive season in general. Here's to warmth in winter.

Nearly over

2009-01-05T21:05:00.001Z

Snowflake, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Well, this is it - the Twelfth Night or last night of Christmas for this year. Tomorrow, it will be time to take the decorations down, but there are still remnants of the season to enjoy, whether they are based on food, presents, or memories, and here in Northern Ireland the weather is getting colder. If it keeps this up we might have the promise of snow!

So I sit here sipping a Franconian style dark lager from London, and listening to a lovely lady drawling out some wonderful jazz, and I feel thankful for each of the past 12 days. Here's to the next lot...

Iceland part of America now?!

2008-12-15T21:43:00.005Z

Heh. Well, here's a novelty. The BBC News website's live stats map (linked from things magazine) thinks Iceland's part of North America!

Well, obviously it is, continentally speaking. Europe generally ends at the Atlantic Ocean, after all. But politically, Iceland has been a part of Europe, and has more recently proudly stood apart, very much a place unto itself, but still more 'European' than not. And while we're at it - how come the UK gets its own stats to itself but isn't included in with the rest of Europe? Why is this part of the BBC's map political whereas the Icelandic bit isn't?

What is most interesting about the BBC's decision to make a continental judgement about the affiliation of any given country is that this isn't a geography subsite but one focused on news. News is only, after all, the small part of what happens that people pay daily attention to and are fed by the newsgatherers. And people care about different things when you start thinking regionally or geopolitically. You could say that poor Icelanders' interests would be submerged by the flood of American and Canadian traffic stats, or (less plausibly) that the American stats would be skewed slightly by the more shark-eating, Scandinavian ways of thinking of the land of fire and ice!

It's probably just the way their servers are set up, or something. But it would be lovely to know in detail about their back end and how it affects fascinating little questions of the regional zeitgeist like this - and whether they think it's right that it should! ;o) Just a thought.

Little things

2008-12-07T10:20:00.001Z

Noel, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Last Monday morning, the door-knocker rat-tatted in Greenwich, and after some manoeuvring I propped Jonathan’s Christmas tree against the wall in the back garden, waiting for this weekend when he would decorate it.

This past Friday morning, he sent a photo (above, shamelessly stolen) of some of the old, white enamelled letters, found in a junk shop, which will decorate it. The letters spell NOEL. A cat shows obvious interest and delight.

Yesterday morning, I awoke to a quiet, empty house and what I will call frost-light — a promising brightness beyond the curtains and cold air — and found that everything in the garden and the street was coated with hoar frost. It didn’t disappear all day.

This morning, I awoke to more of the same. The bin lid is firmly frozen shut. Footsteps across the garden make tiny high-pitched noises as frost is compacted underfoot. The wooden garden table’s surface looks rather like a dark smooth cake dusted with icing. Coffee steams more thickly amd vigorously than ever in colder, crisper air. The bright, distant sound of a church bell somehow travels at least a mile. And there is a new recipe for a Christmas cake in the Sunday paper.

These are little things, but wonderful. They make me smile and feel excited. I just thought someone should know. :o)

The push and pull of London, paint and steel

2008-12-04T22:33:00.002Z

Rothko big room at the Tate, originally uploaded by libbyrosof.

Back from Thanksgiving in London. I can’t really give you too much of an idea of any of it because it was all so wonderful, and therefore incommunicable in so many ways, but I will say that I had the most wonderful Thanksgiving day with Jonathan, Willie, Ruairidh et al, and that I had a lovely chorizo and rocket sandwich at Borough Market, and that aside from those precious experiences on winter days and nights, there were two others which just overlay themselves on my mind and don’t go away.

Last Saturday morning, I visited Rothko at Tate Modern. The exhibition presents a selection of Mark Rothko’s later works, including some seemingly plain and very luminously dark canvases — and the so-called Seagram Murals, some of which were intended for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building, New York City. They are what we have come to see as quintessential Rothko: massive, insistent, throbbing presences. They were never hung in the restaurant after all; he withdrew from the commission but took the same care over them as over the rest of his work. And anyway, it would be impossible to eat near them.

I was somewhat sceptical of their ability to make me emote. I’d seen some of them before, many times, in the Tate collection, but this was the first time they were nearly all together, united from many different countries, in one perfectly-lit room. I got all choked up with real emotion after a couple of wanders around the other rooms and back to the one above.

The exhibition had the effect on me of at first intensely interesting me and almost pushing me away at the same instant, and then utterly compelling me to let myself get pulled in. It was the same with the Richard Serra sculptures at the Gagosian gallery in King’s Cross later that day. He uses huge, heavy sheets of thick corten steel, sometimes curved and twisted into funnel-shaped forms, sometimes almost sandwiched to create claustrophobia, sometimes left weighty and brutal and straight. They really are almost monstrously large, far far bigger than human scale, but as with the proverbial tree falling in the forest, they are transparent spaces, blank cinema-screens for your soul, and have no power beyond your engagement with them. If you aren’t there, they really don’t make a sound.

So if you get a chance before either of these things leave the UK, please go see. That’s all for now, folks.

House in the woods

2008-11-13T21:37:00.000Z

Sou Fujimoto’s house in the woods around Kamamura.

Iris Robinson's chocolate balls

2008-11-13T07:57:00.002Z

Northern Ireland's assembly members have always faced a battle to keep the public satisfied. So a new charity cookbook featuring their favourite recipes could help.

An Assembly of Recipes includes the likes of George Robinson's easy fruitcake, Jim Shannon's hedgehog cake and Iris Robinson's chocolate balls.

I've had enough of Iris Robinson's balls already this year, and I suspect most people would agree.

Apologies for continuing to be remiss in posting. There sometimes just aren't enough hours in the day, what with admiring weird buildings online, and all.

President-Elect!

2008-11-05T08:50:00.001Z

CAN OBAMA WIN AND BE THE NEXT US PRESIDENT?, originally uploaded by _ØяAcLә_.

For some reason, thinking of America, the money, the mess, the churches and the election, I kept thinking of this passage from the end of James Joyce's story Grace:

`For the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. Wherefore make unto yourselves friends out of the mammon of iniquity so that when you die they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.'

Father Purdon developed the text with resonant assurance. It was one of the most difficult texts in all the Scriptures, he said, to interpret properly. It was a text which might seem to the casual observer at variance with the lofty morality elsewhere preached by Jesus Christ. But, he told his hearers, the text had seemed to him specially adapted for the guidance of those whose lot it was to lead the life of the world and who yet wished to lead that life not in the manner of worldlings. It was a text for business men and professional men. Jesus Christ, with His divine understanding of every cranny of our human nature, understood that all men were not called to the religious life, that by far the vast majority were forced to live in the world, and, to a certain extent, for the world: and in this sentence He designed to give them a word of counsel, setting before them as exemplars in the religious life those very worshippers of Mammon who were of all men the least solicitous in matters religious.

He told his hearers that he was there that evening for no terrifying, no extravagant purpose; but as a man of the world speaking to his fellow-men. He came to speak to business men and he would speak to them in a business-like way. If he might use the metaphor, he said, he was their spiritual accountant; and he wished each and every one of his hearers to open his books, the books of his spiritual life, and see if they tallied accurately with conscience.

Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster. He understood our little failings, understood the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood the temptations of this life. We might have had, we all had from time to time, our temptations: we might have, we all had, our failings. But one thing only, he said, he would ask of his hearers. And that was: to be straight and manly with God. If their accounts tallied in every point to say:

`Well, I have verified my accounts. I find all well.'

But if, as might happen, there were some discrepancies, to admit the truth, to be frank and say like a man:

`Well, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this wrong. But, with God's grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set right my accounts.'

For the past four years, whenever America has been on my mind, it has seemed like a question, a living, teeming question more than a nation: "What next?" A question, under strain from all sides, pushing and pulling itself towards a future nobody seems to have envisioned and everyone is sure they are a little afraid of.

Fear has been, at least from a distance, a very palpable undercurrent even in the last few weeks of the American elections. Fear of the economic situation. Fear of what happens. Fear of the wider world. Fear that jobs will be lost. Fear of McCain. Fear of Obama.

Fear for Obama.

I stood in the kitchen very early this morning, and turned the radio on. Almost instantly I heard the phrase "President-elect Obama" and felt myself smiling from ear to ear. Jubilation, excitement, relief - but is it a measure of just how wound up we've become about America that I also feel afraid for Obama? Is it just the after-effect of the past eight years, which will melt away in a few days? Will I relax and stop thinking about the possibility of a staring face, a pointed gun, another worldwide scream, a funeral the like of which I hope never to see?

I think so. Hopefully.

America looked at its fears yesterday, and said "Enough". Obama will stride over them, also. He has a lot of work to do. And I am very much looking forward to seeing him do it. Thanks, America. Many, many thanks. :o)

Browns

2008-11-02T23:28:00.001Z

Browns, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Brittle and crunchy summer memories, blown into a little corner by the wind. Apologies for the silence: I've had a somewhat intense past few weeks so haven't been posting as much.

This weekend has been grey with wonderfully bright, crisp and cold periods. During one of these I nipped outdoors with my camera (and my new cheap cheap cheap, but wonderfully sharp and bright 50mm lens) and took some photos. This is one of them. It's pretty much what Belfast is like right now.

Greek sculpture

2008-10-10T08:04:00.002+01:00

...but posed by real human beings. I noticed this in the centre spread of today's newspaper. Enjoy.

Photography, and a rather lovely video

2008-10-05T21:41:00.003+01:00

I like taking photos. Why this is, I have very little idea. It started with flickr, back in 2004, when I realised that far from being some amateurs-showing-their-snaps site, it was a searchable repository of some of the most fantastic and diverse photography, both in subject-matter and style, that I'd seen.

That inspired me to buy a little Nikon compact. It was, and is, a very nice little camera. But all compacts are restrictive - they don't let you vary the aperture, with which you can get cool "this bit's in focus, and this bit isn't" effects, or the exposure, with which you can get equally cool "blurred people walking around a sharp building" effects.

Digital SLRs are larger cameras, with removable lenses so you can fit different lenses for different effects. I bought one relatively recently. And without becoming too geeky, I'll just say here that the tilt-shift lens is possibly one of the most versatile lenses ever invented for sheer jaw-droppingness of visual effects. It can let you take a photo of a tall building without it seeming to curve at the sides and bend backwards. It can make a photo of a street look like that street is in fact a tiny model street, if you do it right.

So I give you what I've seen in plenty of photos, but never like this: tilt-shift videography.

Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo

Stockwell Shooting

2008-09-26T22:49:00.001+01:00

Stockwell Shooting, originally uploaded by coconinoco.

Oh my.

Oh my goodness.

I'd really like it if this was deliberate.

Summer and Autumn

2008-09-25T21:06:00.001+01:00

Autumn and Summer, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Today has been both in Belfast. So here goes.

The cover of the book underneath shows part of the large Autumn canvas that Cy Twombly painted for one of his Four Seasons cycles. The cover of the book on top shows a house torn apart by Hurricane Katrina.

Reading both of these at the same time, my mind mixes them up. There are little boats in the other Four Seasons paintings, blurred, primeval and dreamlike - setting out on the water to make an offering, perhaps? To the gods of wind and water? To keep us all safe as each season passes?

Too bad.

Twombly's seasons paintings say: we are small beside all this. It is neverending and has nothing to do with us. It is beautiful and dangerous somehow; bountiful, also.

In a certain mood, your mind too may play at chinese whispers, and suggest much the same about hurricanes. And old cities.

Now move away from my nigiri unagi, you tramp

2008-09-21T17:15:00.001+01:00

Feng sushi, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

...a good deal of the progressives’ attitudes, preferences, and sense of identity are ingrained in an unlovely disdain for those outside their charmed circle. In Lander’s analysis, much of their self-satisfaction derives from consumption (the slack-sounding “stuff” in the title is deceptively apt)—and much of that consumption is motivated by a desire to differentiate themselves from the benighted.

Sushi, for instance, is “everything [White People] want: foreign culture, expensive, healthy, and hated by the ‘uneducated.’”

White People [like being protected] “from having to look at things they don’t like. At the top of this list is anything that has to do with Christianity”—an aversion, Lander discerns, rooted not in religious enmity but in taste (Christianity is “a little trashy”), formed largely by class and education.”

The other week in London, after spending a small amount on trainers and trackies, and a small fortune on a trendily branded item of sports clothing — which I’ll probably never use for sport and nobody else will either — I ambled along to the cultural enclave of the South Bank, took a few arty photos with my expensive new camera, and then met my atheist friend and some other white people from his writers’ group. We all drank, and talked about how normal and hard-up we are for a while, and discussed creative writing, and agents, and getting published.

And then went for sushi. Oooops. Cough.

Warmth

2008-09-18T10:01:00.004+01:00

Little brown leaves on the pavement outside the office, but only in patches. The sort of air that makes your skin feel all-over cold, but you don't feel cold. A short night's sleep. Darker outside than you remember for the morning. A strange clarity of mind and vision.

If things keep on like this, I'll start imagining some radiant, crisp autumn.

London, this time, was marvellous. Nearly two whole weeks there, packed with things to do, but nothing was rushed. The Prom at the Royal Albert Hall held electrifying music, played slightly slower than the CD, and an interval that glowed with Victorian warmth and a wonderful friend. Then he was gone with his other half for a few days. The house was very empty but full of the rich, slight sadness when you miss people.

When they got back, the world shifted, London became cushioned again but absolutely not any worse for that. The cats moved around the house more, there were little warm social calls to make, there was a wonderful 10-minute stretch of morning at a market by a cathedral. Warmth above the table over dinner, breakfast, lunch. Warmth on the Bakerloo line. Warmth in a cold mojito. Warmth in a cushioned space around which floated a vanishing room. Warmth, even, in the morning alarm bleeps.

It can't last forever, though. Really, it can't. There's a reason these times are so special. They are unusual. And until the usual next dose of the unusual in November, I suppose I'll find my warmth in bed, in the slow turn to autumn... and hopefully in a few other things too.

Inhabitants

2008-09-17T22:22:00.001+01:00

American Folk Art Museum, originally uploaded by ekainj.

To make a break with the London posts but still stick with architecture for a while, because I’m still in the ‘larger architecture than my home town’ phase that comes after London:

I always like before-and-after photos of sites that have had new buildings built — or spaces where buildings were. So it’s fascinating and infuriating and encouraging to see this lengthy and hearty set of just such photos about new buildings in New York City. In a city that size, it’s unsurprising, I suppose, that so many striking (and sometimes strikingly ugly) buildings have appeared recently. But even London has a proportional paucity of such character in its brick and stone and metal people. Anyhow, do a bit of google searching on the addresses given in the article, because you will turn up far better photos of the new creations than the article is able to provide.

This New Orleans post mentions architecture too — new stuff before the storm, evacuation, stuff after the storm, and now old stuff being stolen. Or is everything old stuff now?

Finally, things magazine has an excellent entry on material spaces.

Now I need a little space inside my head. So if you’ll excuse me...

Cheese sandwiches, Borough Market, Step 3

2008-09-17T00:12:00.001+01:00

Grilled Cheese at the Borough Market, originally uploaded by nadi0.

Mmmmm. These are made with cheddar (the stall also do a separate dish with potatoes and raclette cheese, by the way), leeks, onions and garlic, on sourdough Poilane bread.

Note to self. Repeat this step many, many times.

Cheese sandwiches, Borough Market, Step 2

2008-09-17T00:09:00.003+01:00

Grilled Cheese Sandwich stall at Borough Market, originally uploaded by Tom Coates.

Cheese sandwiches, Borough Market, Step 1

2008-09-17T00:09:00.001+01:00

Cheese sandwiches, Borough Market, London, UK.JPG, originally uploaded by gruntzooki.

Memories of last Saturday. Part one. More to follow.

Attention

2008-09-15T15:27:00.001+01:00

Attention, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Feline concentration on something somewhere else, courtesy of Sissie, Greenwich, London

Muse

2008-09-15T15:26:00.005+01:00

Muse, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Sissie, musing on the table in the study, Greenwich, London

Leer, lick

2008-09-15T15:26:00.003+01:00

Leer, lick, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Guru, being uncharacteristically demonic, Greenwich

Lines

2008-09-15T15:26:00.001+01:00

Lines, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

This is David Adjaye's Sclerae, apparently part of the London Design Festival 2008. But Jonathan and I found it while escaping the massive crowds of the Thames Festival. Lucky we did.

Wooden pavilion, South Bank

2008-09-15T15:25:00.005+01:00

Wooden pavilion, South Bank, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

This is David Adjaye's Sclerae, apparently part of the London Design Festival 2008. But Jonathan and I found it while escaping the massive crowds of the Thames Festival. Lucky we did.

Wooden pavilion, South Bank

2008-09-15T15:25:00.003+01:00

Wooden pavilion, South Bank, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

This is David Adjaye's Sclerae, apparently part of the London Design Festival 2008. But Jonathan and I found it while escaping the massive crowds of the Thames Festival. Lucky we did.

Toilet, after Cy Twombly

2008-09-15T15:25:00.001+01:00

Toilet, after Cy Twombly, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Well, during, actually. Or even inbetween. Tate Modern's insistence that you can't take photos in the galleries annoys me, so I took the chance to walk through an almost invisible, perfectly white toilet door in the perfectly white wall between two huge Twombly canvases in the current retrospective, and snap this.

In the Troubadour

2008-09-15T15:24:00.001+01:00

In the Troubadour, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Looking towards the front from the back, Earl's Court, London.

Glass and light bench

2008-09-15T15:23:00.003+01:00

Glass and light bench, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Again, this is certainly by someone and probably called something, but I don't have the resources right now. In the V&A Museum contemporary glass gallery, London.

Silver cover for a bible

2008-09-15T15:23:00.001+01:00

Silver cover for a bible, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

In the silver galleries, V&A Museum, London. See here for further info - collections.vam.ac.uk/objectid/O117930

Amazing

2008-09-15T15:22:00.001+01:00

Amazing, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Now you know how many Swarovski crystals there are in the previous photos. Astounding. The entrance hall of the V&A Museum, London.

Unknown

2008-09-15T15:21:00.003+01:00

Unknown, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Three panels, name currently forgotten (ooops), artist currently forgotten (ooops again).

Arcus 1

2008-09-15T15:21:00.001+01:00

Arcus 1, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Arcus 1, by Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova, in the V&A Museum, London. Apparently it's called mould-melted glass, very characteristic of the Czech school of glass.

Swarm

2008-09-15T15:20:00.003+01:00

Swarm, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

The Swarm chandelier by Zaha Hadid, made of lots and lots of black Swarovski crystals. In the entrance hall of the V&A Museum, London. See here www.vam.ac.uk/collections/contemporary/swarm/index.html for more details.

Swarm

2008-09-15T15:20:00.001+01:00

Swarm, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Chihuly swirls

2008-09-15T15:19:00.003+01:00

Chihuly swirls, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

The Chihuly Rotunda Chandelier in the V&A Museum, London.

Chihuly swirls

2008-09-15T15:19:00.001+01:00

Chihuly swirls, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

The Chihuly Rotunda Chandelier in the V&A Museum, London.

Swarm

2008-09-15T15:16:00.001+01:00

Swarm, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Gilt music room

2008-09-15T15:15:00.001+01:00

Gilt music room, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

The rebuilt Norfolk House music room, V&A Museum, London. For more, see here: www.vam.ac.uk/collections/furniture/musical_instruments/n...

Chihuly swirls

2008-09-15T15:14:00.003+01:00

Chihuly swirls, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

The Chihuly Rotunda Chandelier in the V&A Museum, London.

Swarm

2008-09-15T15:14:00.001+01:00

Swarm, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Swarm

2008-09-15T15:13:00.003+01:00

Swarm, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Swarm

2008-09-15T15:13:00.001+01:00

Swarm, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Swarm - and arch

2008-09-15T15:12:00.003+01:00

Swarm - and arch, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Swarm - suspended in light

2008-09-15T15:12:00.001+01:00

Swarm - suspended in light, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Chihuly - tendrils of light

2008-09-15T15:11:00.001+01:00

Chihuly - tendrils of light, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

The Chihuly Rotunda Chandelier in the V&A Museum, London.

Swarm - smaller than you think

2008-09-15T15:10:00.003+01:00

Swarm - smaller than you think, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Swarm - glinting in the light

2008-09-15T15:10:00.001+01:00

Swarm - glinting in the light, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Cornelia Parker - Breathless

2008-09-15T15:04:00.001+01:00

Cornelia Parker - Breathless, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

In the Occulus, the V&A Museum British Galleries, London.

V&A John Madejski Garden fountains

2008-09-15T15:03:00.001+01:00

V&A John Madejski Garden fountains, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

For more on the courtyard, see here: www.vam.ac.uk/about_va/garden/index.html

V&A John Madejski Garden fountains

2008-09-15T15:02:00.001+01:00

V&A John Madejski Garden fountains, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

For more on the courtyard, see here: www.vam.ac.uk/about_va/garden/index.html

Vast and overdone

2008-09-15T15:00:00.001+01:00

Vast and overdone, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

The rather bucolic Painted Hall, The Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, London

Grandeur

2008-09-15T14:59:00.003+01:00

Grandeur, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

The Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, London

From Maidenstone Hill

2008-09-15T14:59:00.001+01:00

From Maidenstone Hill, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Canary Wharf and Docklands on a grey afternoon, London

Sneaky of me

2008-09-15T14:58:00.003+01:00

Sneaky of me, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Elizabeth and Joey, in Greenwich, before saying goodbye

His'n'hers

2008-09-15T14:58:00.001+01:00

His'n'hers, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Macbooks glowing happily away, Greenwich, London

Grey skyscape

2008-09-15T14:56:00.003+01:00

Grey skyscape, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Part of a tower at the Barbican, London

Alley

2008-09-15T14:56:00.001+01:00

Alley, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

It was as colourful as this, but just in a different way. Soho, London.

The sky in the brick

2008-09-15T14:55:00.003+01:00

The sky in the brick, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

A warehouse down a back alley off another back alley, round a corner from somewhere, Soho, London

More flat whiteness

2008-09-15T14:55:00.001+01:00

More flat whiteness, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Another kind of flat white, in the Milk Bar, Soho, London. I really liked the chair design.

Flat white

2008-09-15T14:54:00.001+01:00

Flat white, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

In the Milk Bar, Soho, London.

Diminutive

2008-09-15T14:53:00.003+01:00

Diminutive, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

A photographer photographed. Taken from the London Eye

So many people

2008-09-15T14:53:00.001+01:00

So many people, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

St Pancras Station, London, on a bleary early morning

Clock and girders

2008-09-15T14:52:00.003+01:00

Clock and girders, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

At St Pancras Station, London

Model for a Hotel

2008-09-15T14:52:00.001+01:00

Model for a Hotel, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

On the 4th plinth this year, Trafalgar Square, London

Well, back to Belfast

2008-09-15T14:44:00.001+01:00

I'm back in Belfast now after nearly 2 weeks in London, and feeling predictably bereft and full of thoughts such as "This time last week, I was doing...". This has only been intensified by working on a small number of photos that I took while there, and which I will now post in order taken. Some of them will be from days already posted about below, and some of them will be from days you haven't seen yet.

Coal Merchant...?

2008-09-11T20:49:00.002+01:00

Coal Merchant...?, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Point Hill, Greenwich. Can anyone decipher all of this?

And cut!

2008-09-11T20:48:00.003+01:00

And cut!, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Done with Dorian Gray for now. So quite why these actors were still walking along I don't know. It must be an actor thing. The men even tipped their hats to the ladies.

Painted Hall, Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich

2008-09-11T20:48:00.001+01:00

Painted Hall, Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Forced inside while they filmed outside. Not bad scenery though!