OK so the lighting is shoddy and I really need to sort how I photograph my random scribbles but...
After we had a few comments from our house guest (my sister) Heather and I were alerted to just how many odd nic-nacs we have round the house. Many are from my mother's yearly foray into insanity for our Christmas stockings which are both a perpetual horror and an endless delight. In a way she is a gift innovator. In a way...
However, especially with a Birthday coming, I thought I'd chart some of the odder presents I've received in the last few years. I do have a correction though... that vibrating miffy is actually a vibrating Studio Ghibli critter. The Miffy does have a loop on her back for hanging up though and sits with the critter. I think both quality as odd...
I do like most of the gifties btw but it's just baffling to work out why or how they were picked for me. I *do* like shoes so in theory the shoe pressies make sense... in practice though a study pair of man size birkinstocks would be far more useful than a ceramic hollow yellow shoe. The former would also probably have a better designed contour than the latter. Worryingly....
The big question is less "why was I given this" than "who the hell makes this and why"?! That particularly applies to the ceramic shoe tealight holder. For all those times when you've really wanted to think about your shoes on fire. er...
Wednesday 20 August 2008
Monday 18 August 2008
Cake Buffet
This is my little interpretive piccie of the amazing cake array at Mimi and Tom's wedding this weekend in Konstanz, Germany. Not only were there immensely impressive puddings but also a really lovely blessing ceremony, some excellent speeches (I only wish I spoke German as the one getting all the belly laughs was pretty much impossible for me and Heather to fathom), a german ceilidh band and lots of catching up with Sarah & Dan and Janna.
On the way back I had my most surreal airport experience in Zurich airport. A giant shiny shopping centre with mammoth advertising hoardings and, er, the occasional plane, also has a little underground train connecting the gates. And it's an advert for Switzerland replete with barely audible tweetings and mountain wind noises that build as you flash past a psychadelic 20 screen alp-based experimental visual bombardment before hearing the squiffy cowbells and yodelling that only partly prepare you for a loud moo as you pull into your gate... Bonkers....
On the way back I had my most surreal airport experience in Zurich airport. A giant shiny shopping centre with mammoth advertising hoardings and, er, the occasional plane, also has a little underground train connecting the gates. And it's an advert for Switzerland replete with barely audible tweetings and mountain wind noises that build as you flash past a psychadelic 20 screen alp-based experimental visual bombardment before hearing the squiffy cowbells and yodelling that only partly prepare you for a loud moo as you pull into your gate... Bonkers....
Sunday 3 August 2008
Fringe Phobic
Today I finally saw Anna's play "The Exquisite Corpse" and was really pleased that I really liked it and it prompted lots of discussion about what all of the four of us who saw it thought was going on - the concept is that 15 scenes, not necessarily at all related, are shown in a randomly selected order which changes their meaning, tone and connectivity. Not that I was expecting any less of course - the show's already received a 4 star review from Three Weeks and I think it's likely to do at least that well with other reviewers over the coming days.
Unfortunately, as happens every fringe at least once the combination of theatre and unusual levels of cabin fever (houseguests!) came to a (relatively benign) head in the sort of conversation that leaves me irate that anyone who does not live in Edinburgh thinks that a visit every August equates to a knowledge of what the city is like the rest of the year. I get into this vortex of frustration at least once a year whether with my houseguests or strangers around town who consider a regular visit to the festival to equal residencey.
I do reserve a special anger for the small subset of people who insist on over dramatic greetings in the streets as if the whole city is a little London-on-holiday theme park. If the red bellied fry up eaters on the Costa del Sol are a working class embaressment to Britain I would suggest that the Londoners air kissing and slumming it with baffling superiority in Edinburgh in August should be seen to exhibit just the same sort of tunnel visioned shame for anyone living in the South of London.
Obviously this frenzied sense that everyone owns a piece of my adopted home is one of the more predictable side effects of living in this city with a World famous festival. It can obviously be fabulous but there are lots of negative side effects ranging from virtually unusable buses (depending on the route), raided shelves at Tescos (leading to scenes resembling the bread lines in the old Soviet bloc), dubious tap water (several times in recent years the drinking water has been declared "safe" but closely resembled a sample from a grotty pond) to a perpetual and extreme sense of extreme claustrophobia (even outdoors - the meadows looks like a particularly unruly mass barbeque when the sun comes out). And that's before you even touch the weird appearence of poor quality but expensive food and drinks venues, the booking out of all your favourite (and usually drop in friendly) restaurants, 20 minute queues for bathrooms... And the excreble (and humourless) street artists.
I'm not saying I can't deal with my home's freaky flipside but every year it takes me most of the month to get used to it. At the same time I get, somewhat inconsistently, enraged that each year the festival seems to get less and less national coverage - which seems odd since there is no qualm about covering local music and arts events elsewhere especially when they are in or near London. Scotland rarely gets arts coverage at any time of year so it seems especially sad that the reporting seemingly peeked with the Perrier and stand up glory days of the mid nineties. At least online coverage is now starting to gain in respectibility - a pleasant change since my earliest EdinburghGuide days when internet journalists were only just starting to make a mark on the press offices. Although something about the festival must be appearing on BBC2 on Tuesday night's Culture Show as they were filming (and substantially delaying) last night's patchy but mostly funny and charming Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre show.
The problem really is just that I picked such a lovely and (normally) equisitely middle class and interesting but discreet place to call home. I'm very happy here all damn year so I think it's understandable that I get rather overprotective and hacked off by the fair weather friends that flock for the month of August and a few days at Hogmany. At least I get a super birthday pressie come September 1st... They all fuck off home and leave us to our happy all year round menu of culture, classiness, usable wifi and just the few handfuls of japanese tourists and hen nighters to deal with...
Unfortunately, as happens every fringe at least once the combination of theatre and unusual levels of cabin fever (houseguests!) came to a (relatively benign) head in the sort of conversation that leaves me irate that anyone who does not live in Edinburgh thinks that a visit every August equates to a knowledge of what the city is like the rest of the year. I get into this vortex of frustration at least once a year whether with my houseguests or strangers around town who consider a regular visit to the festival to equal residencey.
I do reserve a special anger for the small subset of people who insist on over dramatic greetings in the streets as if the whole city is a little London-on-holiday theme park. If the red bellied fry up eaters on the Costa del Sol are a working class embaressment to Britain I would suggest that the Londoners air kissing and slumming it with baffling superiority in Edinburgh in August should be seen to exhibit just the same sort of tunnel visioned shame for anyone living in the South of London.
Obviously this frenzied sense that everyone owns a piece of my adopted home is one of the more predictable side effects of living in this city with a World famous festival. It can obviously be fabulous but there are lots of negative side effects ranging from virtually unusable buses (depending on the route), raided shelves at Tescos (leading to scenes resembling the bread lines in the old Soviet bloc), dubious tap water (several times in recent years the drinking water has been declared "safe" but closely resembled a sample from a grotty pond) to a perpetual and extreme sense of extreme claustrophobia (even outdoors - the meadows looks like a particularly unruly mass barbeque when the sun comes out). And that's before you even touch the weird appearence of poor quality but expensive food and drinks venues, the booking out of all your favourite (and usually drop in friendly) restaurants, 20 minute queues for bathrooms... And the excreble (and humourless) street artists.
I'm not saying I can't deal with my home's freaky flipside but every year it takes me most of the month to get used to it. At the same time I get, somewhat inconsistently, enraged that each year the festival seems to get less and less national coverage - which seems odd since there is no qualm about covering local music and arts events elsewhere especially when they are in or near London. Scotland rarely gets arts coverage at any time of year so it seems especially sad that the reporting seemingly peeked with the Perrier and stand up glory days of the mid nineties. At least online coverage is now starting to gain in respectibility - a pleasant change since my earliest EdinburghGuide days when internet journalists were only just starting to make a mark on the press offices. Although something about the festival must be appearing on BBC2 on Tuesday night's Culture Show as they were filming (and substantially delaying) last night's patchy but mostly funny and charming Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre show.
The problem really is just that I picked such a lovely and (normally) equisitely middle class and interesting but discreet place to call home. I'm very happy here all damn year so I think it's understandable that I get rather overprotective and hacked off by the fair weather friends that flock for the month of August and a few days at Hogmany. At least I get a super birthday pressie come September 1st... They all fuck off home and leave us to our happy all year round menu of culture, classiness, usable wifi and just the few handfuls of japanese tourists and hen nighters to deal with...
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