February 20th - February 26th 2006
Sunday Limehouse
Saturday Securitas
Friday Tom Malin
Thursday Glamis Place
Wednesday Delirious
Tuesday Cartooned
Monday Bosh!
Sunday 26th February
Limehouse, Winter 2006
Saturday 25th February
Joy blossoms in the hardened hearts of British journalists as another bunch of loveable villains armed only with sawn-off shotguns makes off with massive amounts of - more or less useless - cash.
Rely on it: much like the villains themselves, this one will run and run, as the press shamelessly raids the Ealing comedy vault for barrow-loads of British crime clichés (a pound for every mention of the Old Kent Road).
Nets will close, arrests will be made, but flinty-eyed criminal masterminds will remain at large, tracked by "broad-shouldered, square-jawed" Assistant Chief Constables with comic surnames.
Lessons will be learned - not least from the example of Mickey McAvoy, who, following the £26m gold robbery at Heathrow in 1983, promptly vacated his council house in favour of a mansion in Kent, protected by a pair of Rottweilers that he christened "Brinks' and \Mat'.
And inside-jobs will be suspected.
Colin Dixon, the manager of the security depot, whose wife and child were (somewhat redundantly?) held hostage as part of the raid, has already rushed to express his indignation:
"This horrific experience angers me beyond belief. We are a normal, law-abiding family and no one should suffer as we have done..
"I mean, how would you have felt? All that is precious to you - your family - placed in unimaginable danger through no fault of their own, entirely because of someone else's greed."
Mr Dixon volunteered his side of the story as part of a statement read out to the press by his boss. In doing so he substantially devalued the considerable fees one can safely assume to be on offer from the tabloids.
But then again, perhaps he doesn't need the cash.
Friday 24th February
One of the more common reactions to recent revelations regarding Mark Oaten's occasional visits to a male prostitute has been to smite the forehead and cry "I don't know what he was thinking! To stand as a leadership candidate for a major political party, knowing that you had that in your past..!"
Another week, another country, another candidate, another crop of smitten foreheads: Tom Malin is continuing his bid to join the Texas state legislature, despite recent revelations about his previous choice of careeer - in which role (as Todd Sharpe) he was endorsed as having "..a great smile and attitude. He's also extremely sexy. And, he's probably the best bottom I've ever had. He has a wonderful thick cock and a fabulous - FABULOUS - ass you could just worship, rim and fuck til your cock is ready to explode."
Which is probably more than you could say for Mark Oaten.
Thursday 23rd February
Glamis Place, Winter 2005
Wednesday 22nd February
By way of a thank-you note:
The designer Calum Storrie has just published a book called The Delirious Museum. His starting point is the belief that the museum should be a continuation of the street - as easy to enter, as amusing to pass through.
This concept is possible in Britain where we have no museum charges, but the notion that streets have a lot in common with museums - and that the pleasures and interest streets offer may be greater - has a history which parallels that of Modernism.. Primary texts are those in which Baudelaire and Benjamin describe the flâneur's disengaged observation of the city's unfathomable complexity..
Paris is generous to people finding their way round with maps. Here (as is not the case in London) street names are abundant. You can find them at almost any junction.
Later, looking on the internet for something about the form the signs take, I came upon an electronic magazine, Ruavista: Signs of the City, in which the street as museum is celebrated very much in Storrie's terms.
Its editor, Marc Voelckel, offers a quotation from Balzac: 'Strolling is the gastronomy of the eye.' He says he 'strives to promote a new form of urban tourism based on visiting ordinary streets and paying attention to details rather than famous spots and beautiful architecture'.
His page about Paris street signs is excellent: evidence, if you need it, of what the uninformed eye misses
- Peter Campbell in The London Review of Books
Tuesday 21st February
I've avoided sounding off on the issues surrounding The Affair of the Danish Cartoons because it's all so complicated, and yet, at the same time, so simple.
(Simple because it's all a question of free speech - a principle which, sadly, has to apply with similar force to David Irving, Ian Paisley, Fred Phelps and Abu Hamza as it does to stupid Danish cartoonists; complicated because Freedom of Speech is an essentially Western concept, and there is no natural law or logic that makes it incumbent on non-Westerners to subscribe to it, even when living in The West.)
There is one snarky point I'd like to make though, and that concerns the widely-praised refusal of the British press to re-publish said cartoons.
Prior to handing out kudos to our press for their restraint, good taste and general good manners pray consider one simple thing: uniquely amongst Europeans, British readers buy their newspapers in newsagent's shops that are predominantly owned and managed by Asians.
Monday 20th February
Cartoon violence erupts around the world
(Biff!? Bosh!? Yaroo!?)
......previous week
