Another one from my recent holiday.
I’m not a religious man by any means, but I’ve never been one to let a visit to an old chapel, church or cathedral pass me by.
Today’s entry is from the small chapel on St. Michael’s Mount. It’s a relatively new sculpture, but still a timeless and powerful image. St. Michael himself defeating Lucifer.
It would be rude of me not to credit the sculptress, Lyn Maxwell.
Historic number though not logical sitting as it does next to seventy six. Question raiser. Shiny brass on a black satin background.
Is it true that all they serve at the Tate Cafe at the Albert Dock is potatoes or have I been living in Lincolnshire too long?
Wonderful view of part of Liverpool from the Maritime Museum. It’s a great blend of the historic and the modern.
Latest in a series of surreal photos not taken by Salvador Dali. A fusion of food and art. click on the photo to find out where we were.
Probably the most expensive Crepe Suzette ever. It’s clearly a very posh part of the Albert Dock, presumably frequented by media stars and Premiership footballers though I didn’t see any there during our visit but there again it was Easter Saturday so they would have either been getting ready for a football match or away at their villa in San Tropez/Antigua/Isle of Wight (delete as appropriate – do people still go to St Tropez – it’s so yesterday dahling). Out of my league.
Either that or the most expensive typo. If so they must surely have wondered why nobody ever orders the Crepe Suzette.
La Crepe Rit, Albert Dock, Liverpool.
Voila.
Sleigh’s interest in reworking art historical movements, from the renaissance to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, is reflected in her explicit paintings of male nudes, which subvert the art historical tradition of a male gaze directed at a naked female body. In addition to her focus on gender, she painted individuals affectionately and honestly, often including normalising details such as body hair. In this way she implicitly critiqued the idealisation of the human body in art, aiming to combat its objectification. Sleigh’s female gaze still has a powerful impact and the formal qualities of her painting seem poignantly contemporary.
Reproduced without permission from the Tate Liverpool. You have to ask yourself whether Sleigh would have written this herself. I may be wrong but she probably “just painted”.
I like a spud: baked spud, chips, pommes Lyonaise, mash, shepherd’s pie, pommes Boulangere, gratin, fried, sauteed, steamed, plain boiled, Jersey Royal, King Edward, Maris Piper, Desiree, Charlotte, Pink Fir Apple, Dauphinoise, roast, crisps, salt and vineegar, plain, ready salted, cheese and onion, beef, roast chicken, jacket, skins, Fondant, Gallette,crushed, Rosti, Parisienne, french fries
There is something dark about the mask on the wall outside the Drill Hall – especially as dusk is approaching and you can see the light through the eye sockets
A collection of videos, once treasured, now consigned to history. Unwatchable though once unmissable, I found little difficulty in discarding. No wistful last looks back, metaphoric glance over the shoulder. Just cold emotion.
There’s something WI flower show about this image or maybe even the Chelsea Flower Show. It would be a hugely expensive display to put on at Chelsea because of the cost of creating the artificial snow and stopping it from melting in June, or whenever they hold it. I’m not so bothered about the WI. They could arrange a flower show to suit. Not that I’m a member, obv. It would be quite easy for them to say “lets have another cake competition ladies” and to sling on a frozen flower exhibit/competition at the same time. They must have lots of baking competitions. That and knitting. It’s what they do, how they roll. That and calendars but we won’t go there…
There particular flower pots are better presented frozen and covered in snow because that way you can’t see that they have had the proverbial stuffing knocked out of them by footballing kids (also rugby and cricket – whatever the weather and time of year).
I will leave you with a message of hope. I hope it starts to get a bit warmer, melts this now and lets the flowers start growing again.
Ciao
I like a bit of rope. Not the synthetic plasticky stuff you get these days. You know the good old fashioned rope they used to use in the days of sail. Good old fashioned rope is the sort of rope you want to own just to have, just to say you’ve got some in the garage or somewhere. Somewhere safe anyway. I don’t think I’d want to leave it in the shed. If she’d let me I’d probably have it coiled up in the corner of the living room, tidy. It can look very tidy coiled up in a circle on the deck of a ship. The rope in this photo isn’t coiled up nicely I know but there’s a time and place for coiling and obviously this wasn’t one of em. Anyway, like I said, I like rope.
17h32-18h45, 27-March-2013
Meant to head out to some writing perch or other today, however circumstance conspired to keep me from doing so. Thus, I am coming to you today via my usual keyboard from the desk in my home office, a cozy cave measuring roughly 12 meters square, surrounded by books and ever mindful of the dangers posed by various flotsam and whatsum that has found its way to the floor and into the corners over the 11+ years that have passed since La Famille Kessel first took up residence at 57BB.
On Monday the Internet rocked with the release of the first real trailer for World War Z, a tent-pole Summer 2013 sci-fi flick starring Brad Pitt. Having only clocked a scant awareness of the film, due most likely to having my “Blockbuster” RAM filled with the likes of Star Trek: Into Darkness and Iron Man 3“, I clicked through and soon found myself staring agape at some remarkable CGI.
Zombies. Again. And this time tuned up to the absolute nth degree of their power to stimulate the apocalypic imagination. Dozens, hundreds, thousand, millions, TENS OF MILLIONS of zombies! Zombies jumping from rooftops, zombies rolling over buses, zombies grasping helicopter undercarriages, zombies crawling over zombies with the intent and will to make more zombies. And these zombies aren’t your typical everyday run-of-the-mill zombies, aching through every shuffling footstep at roughly the rate of a speeding turtle. Oh no, these zombies have got game!
So being as much a sucker for a well-produced trailer as anyone, I finished my first run-through and immediately fired that puppy up for a second look. Zombies. YES!
Faithful readers already know that I have something of a jones for The Walking Dead (the serious comic book, not the comical TV series), and I have certainly enjoyed many a zombie film over the years, beginning (probably) with George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and moving through more recent ghoulish quality offerings such as 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead and 2009’s utterly terrific Zombieland. Yup, I suppose it can be said that I draw significant entertainment from all-things-undead, a satisfaction that could be rooted in a deep fascination I have with Judgement Day scenarios or that perhaps ties to some penchant I have to always root for the underdog against forces deemed insurmountable (been a Chicago Cubs fan since birth, yes I have). This World War Z thing managed to scotch right by me, though, until the trailer hit the other day. And finding myself delighted and excited by it all, I began binging (googling, whatever) and instantly learned that I have a huge zombie-culture blind spot! World War Z is based on Max Brooks’s best-selling book? And that best-selling book was preceded by The Zombie Survival Guide, yet another best-selling book by Brooks (and the likely title of a WWZ sequel that is already in development)? How can I know about such zombie coolness as Colson Whitehead’s Zone One and the Jane Austen (yes, THAT Jane Austen)/Seth Grahame-Smith collaboration Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and yet be completely brain-dead on World War Z?
“Zombies on ice..that’s nice.”
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