Breakfast at the Wolsely

Ibs and I will have been married for 1 year on Monday and we'd decided to do our celebrating today with a day out in town. We started with one of our favourite things and places, an 8.00 breakfast at the Wolsely. We both had the English but Ibs upgraded her eggs to ducks and swapped her bacon for extra black pudding.

We then had a quick look down Cork St while we waited for the White Cube, in Mason's Yard, to open and see The Chapman Brother's fantastic new work; 'If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy We Would Be'.

We also saw their monumental new version of 'Hell', destroyed a year or two ago in the Acme fire, now retitled 'F**king Hell'.

After that, we walked to the South Bank and had a play in this brilliant water sculpture.


At the Hayward, we took a look at the Phycho Buildings show.

The highlight is this installation on one the gallery roofs, which has been turned into small boating lake . Ibs rowed while I took pictures. Such good fun.

After our row, we shared pizza and salad at Strada.

We then went to the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road to see the 'From Atoms to Patterns' exhibition. A really enjoyable show. This is their description and some images from their website.

This exhibition explores the intriguing creations of the Festival Pattern Group - a unique project at the 1951 Festival of Britain involving X-ray crystallographers, designers and manufacturers. At the instigation of Dr Helen Megaw, a leading Cambridge scientist, diagrams of atomic structures inspired an eclectic array of patterns on curtains, wallpapers, carpets, lace, dress fabrics, ties, plates and ashtrays.

At home, we had a very leisurely evening, gave Georgi a quick walk, had a steak supper and Ibs gave me a new dressing gown for my anniversary present. She also gave me a beautiful hand written love letter, very apt for our 'paper' anniversary, I'll treasure it for ever.

We'd been up since 5.30 so I think we were both asleep on the sofas by about 10.00.

One of My Favourite Things

Friday night and I treated Ibs and I to one of my most favourite things: a Chicken Tikka Masala from the Acton Balti House. No where does it quite like this and I wouldn't have one anywhere else but there's something about this CTM that's powerfully addictive to me. I've been going here for years, sometimes travelling miles, by car to get one and latterly, carrying them home on the back of my bike. I try not to get one too often but keep as a special treat and as we were just about to start our 1st Wedding Anniversary weekend, I thought that was good reason enough.

I was very happy to receive this postcard from Stephen and Christophe this morning. I love receiving postcards, especially from my nearest and dearest. And I particularly love this one for the Fiat 500's.


That reminded me, I also received this one from Uncle Jim and Auntie Pauline, currently on board the Queen Mary 2.

Day Out in the Country

On Friday I took a trip with work colleagues, out of London, to visit a decommissioned military munitions store, now used to as a sculpture storage facility. It was an eary and fascinating place, not least to see the sad sight of fine pieces of art, which know one wants to see, hibernating within a hollowed out hillside. But also that the site, built between the wars, had been on the front line of Britain's nuclear deterrent and still doesn't appear on any maps.

London Stock Exchange

Stephen and I watched the final 3 episodes of Sopranos Series 4, last night and they were as high calibre as ever. Carmella got a telephone call from Tony's Russian girl and kicked him out. Chris got out of rehab, Uncle Junior nobbled his jury and let off and Tony has decided to stop stopped seeing Dr Malfi. Can't wait to start series 5 next Wednesday.

On Thursday I went to a Publishing Industry conference at the London Stock Exchange called 'Digitise or Die!'. Turned out to be a really enjoyable and informative day. In essence it told the delegates to learn from the mistakes of the music industry, be strategic and 'follow the market not the format'.

The most interesting and provocative speech was given by Andrew Keen, who calls himself a entrepreneur and author. He was practically vitriolic about Web 2.0 and seemed very bitter that he'd not invented Google and Blogging himself.
His angle is that 2.0 is now nothing more than a feudalistic oligarchy, owned not by a democratic base of all encompassing, participating communities but by a tiny few multinational conglomerates.
Despite his cynicism he's still very much a digital evangelist. His Wikipedia entry has him calling Web 2.0 a "grand utopian movement" which "worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer. He suggests that everyone — even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us — can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves. Web 2.0 'empowers' our creativity, it 'democratizes' media, it 'levels the playing field' between experts and amateurs. The enemy of Web 2.0 is 'elitist' traditional media.

I warmed to this neo-marxist perspective and was incredibly impressed by the confidence and self-belief in his address, talking for an hour and without notes.
He's the author of a book called 'The Cult of the Amateur' and makes his living, apparently, on the conference circuit. I must check out his blog.

Work No.850

I had a quick look today at Martin Creed's new work in the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain.

The work consists of people running, as fast as they can, through the gallery. This will go on from 1st July until 16th November.

I'm really not sure if it's any good or not (and I need to see it again) but I think I quite like it?

I took a few snaps on my phone (awful quality) and got told off by the gallery assistants.

Week 18

We've started Week 18 with the results of the blood tests, taken a few weeks ago, which provides a probability for Downs Syndrome. The results were that there's a 1 in 42,000 chance so Little One has a very little to no risk.

Sunday BBQ

On Sunday afternoon we had our very special friends Stephen, Christophe, Pete, Karen and Mark round for a BBQ.

I'd lost the key to the doors which lead onto the garden which meant we couldn't hear any music so made do with sounds provided by the local area; strange, intermittent drumming, the ominous tolling of the church bells and an ice cream van playing the 'Harry Lime Theme' from the 'Third Man'.

The weather held off and we had the kind of wonderful, summer Sunday afternoons I absolutely love; time on our hands, people we love, good food and booze.

The food went down well and everybody really liked Georgi. She was on particularly adorable form. We consumed plentiful amounts of beer and wine and I think we were all quite sozzled by the end.

The highlight of the afternoon was Karen's magnificent chocolate fudge cakes and ginger cake with creme fraiche. Absolutely yummy - thank you Karen!

This was the rest of the food; Ibs' squash and flagelotte bean salad

Cous-cous

BBQ sausages, drumsticks and burgers

Followed by afternoon coffee and tea with Karen's cakes

After everyone left, Ibs and I took Georgi for a walk in Roundwood.

The Grand Union

Saturday 28th: A full day of house chores and cleaning but had a lovley walk with Ibs and Georgi in Roundwood Park. The flowerbeds are in full bloom and look wonderful.

We also managed to have an hour's late afternoon snooze, on the sunbeds, in the garden at home.

On Saturday evening we'd been invited to the Grand Union pub for Kim's 50th Birthday party. We bought the house off Kim and have kept in touch since. The wonderful thing about the party was that so many people there had, at one time or another, stayed and even lodged at Caple Road. One person had lived in our spare room for 6 years and met and fell in love with her partner, the legendary Dr Fischer! Everyone had nothing but great things to say about the house. For Ibs and I this made us feel that there must be a very good Karma about our house and made us love it even more.