August 28th - Sept 3rd 2006
Sunday Tate Modern
Saturday Airfixed
Friday Baker Street
Thursday Toby jugged
Wednesday Spitalfields
Tuesday Cankering
Monday Regents Park
Sunday 3rd September
Tate Modern, Summer 2006
Saturday 2nd September
Cue dewy-eyes, from gents of a certain age, at the news that the Airfix kit is no more.
(To be accurate, as is our wont, Humbrol - the parent company - has gone into receivership. It's still possible, though surely unlikely, that some other manufacturer will pick up the Airfix banner. And it's not as if all the thousands of existing Airfix kits languishing out there on dusty retailer's shelves have vaporised overnight: expect a mini-boom market on eBay starting soon.)
But what on earth, cry readers under thirty, is an Airfix kit? Foreign readers too, perhaps - was Airfix an entirely British phenomenon?
A early lesson in disappointment, is one answer: did anyone under twelve ever get to complete a project to the polished standards implied on the box?
A temptation to perversity, is another: once you'd finished a project, as best you could, there was only limited fun to be had from sitting back and looking at it; far better to, for instance, stuff the thing with cotton wool, soak it in lighter fluid, take it out to the garden and set fire to it.
A encouragement to creativity, is a nicer way of putting it: we had a craze at school for cannibalising several kits to create rogue mechanisms entirely unknown to science; happily for our future mental health, perhaps, (and unlike the Chapman Brothers) we never thought to come over all Frankenstein on the ubiquitous figurines.
Still don't know what on earth I'm on about?
Check out this testimony from, gasp, a one time girl modeller.
Friday 1st September
Baker Street, Summer 2006
Thursday 31st August
Dedicated to loathing Toby Young as this blog is, you'd expect us to bring you news of his latest theatrical endeavour, A Right Royal Farce, which opened at the King's Head at the beginning of August (and closed at the end of it).
We are only too happy to oblige: here are some extracts from the reviews:
An evening of laughter-free desperation...leadenly unfunny...limp punch-lines and an idiot's-eye view of the royals
- Guardian
Uninventive and clumsily choreographed farce...extraordinary feebleness...meandering dully on to its nonsensical yet unsurprising end...waste of an evening - Independent on Sunday
Howlingly unfunny and incompetent...puerile garbage...gobsmackingly inept - Independent
Very silly - Times
The good news, for young Toby at least, is that someone called Peter Gruner thought the play as a fine exercise in knockabout humour, with 'lots of lovely royal jokes'.
And guess which notice appeared in the King's Head window?
Wednesday 30th August
Spitalfields, Summer 2006
Tuesday 29th August
I was a trifle disappointed by the headlines subs chose for recent press reports of 'bleeding canker', the disease that threatens Britain's horse chestnuts.
And then it struck me: they're keeping their powder dry, against the day that scientists discover an effective cure.
Then, and only then, will we read: Conker canker conquered
Monday 28th August
Regents Park, Summer 2006
......previous week
