Notebook

Little Things

Saturday morning breakfasts, made all the sweeter by the luxury of a newspaper delivery. No more fretting about whether to make a dash to the dairy in my jim jams.

Egg printing, explained! The simple illustration really appeals to me.

Birdcage Walk mosaic, outside a local primary school.

Got this sweet walrus from Oxfam Dalston for .29p – bargain! I also scored a pair of jeans (black, the perfect fit) for £ 2.99. It was a happy op shop adventure indeed.

Nothing makes me happier than long, clear evenings. Here’s to many more…

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Mini life update: I dyed my hair red.It’s been a while. And now I feel like a 16-year-old with exotic plumage walking down the street “They’re alllllll looking at how crazy my hair is,” when actually nobody gives a toss. Still need a hair cut.

London is still waiting for the promised sunshine and clear skies of late spring. It reminds me of this old saying: “April showers bring May flowers. May showers bring RAGE.”

I want to post more lifey things on this blog. so I shall. PS. CFS is now four years old. Whoop.

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Caught My Eye

Polaroid Camera

Parrot

Cupcake

Chairs

Shoes

It’s funny how you can start collecting images without realising. I looked at my desktop and was surprised to see it filled with mint and pink. A refreshing combination.

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More Beautiful Barcelona

You’ll find the owl perched on top of the Rotulos Roura Company building. It’s an old luminous advert for a company designing and installing neon lighting. Its eyes even used to cast out hypnotic beams of light, all night long! To see the last photo in all its glorious detail, click here.

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Ohla! Barcelona

This Easter I took my first trip to Spain. Just three days was enough to dent my heart.

Waking up on a train, and brushing my teeth as well rolled past the ocean; my first sight of the sea since August. Sipping sangria and scoffing dainty tapas at a cozy bar. Drinking cheap glasses of fraught beer in a courtyard, the pavers ruptured by trees. Taking an elevator to the top of a monument and seeing La Sagrada Familia from afar. Making friends with an elderly German couple over paella. Walking through narrow alleyways and ending up exactly where we started. Eating a fat churro, filled with dulce de leche. Looking up in wonder at all the gloriously decorative buildings. My spirits raised by the warm sunshine. Seeing oodles of adorable dogs, including one particularly fetching Afghan hound. Eating patatas bravas for the 5th meal in a row.

More photos to come…

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Paris In One Day

1. Good morning, beautiful buildings 2. Fresh fraise 3. A wonderful optometrist’s sign 4. I always love the bold graphic deign of Metro posters 5. A bit of grit down by the Seine 6. Lock-hunting, seeing if ours still might be there (ha!) 7. Café crème to start the day. Don’t look foolish by asking for café au lait – that’s so 90′s 8. Shakespeare & Co., style-stalking the girl in the mustard tights 9. Marvellous meringues 10. Have you seen this cat? 11. Nice typography 12. Un éclair pistache – soooo good. 13. A couple of silly-faces.

More Parisian adventures:

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Easter Yellow

A few good things:

The sunshine! It has been fantastically sunny in London the last few days, making it an utter joy.
Thom bought me a desk for £10 at a charity shop in Dalston, then carried it home. What a guy.
I met up with Johanna for breakfast and a seriously good coffee.
Visiting Lounge Bohemia, a bookings only Czech themed cocktail joint. It was amazing, like being in someone’s chic grandmother’s living room, only you’re served Lavender Creme Brûlée cocktails and absinthe. The highlight for me was a Bubble Bath Martini, that came with a little yellow ducky floating on the foam.
Brick Lane on a Sunday afternoon – I just love people watching.
Only 3 days of work, then it’s Easter, which means an adventure to Paris and Barcelona by train. Muy bueno.

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March Is Pretty (Nice)

Just popped in to share this photo, taken outside my flat.

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A Hint Of Spring

Blue skies and warm spells at last! On Saturday I even walked past a guy with his shirt off. While it’s not that hot yet, it’s certainly a pleasant change. May it be noted for the record, I am never doing a double winter again. That sort of thing is majorly soul sucking, and did not play nicely with my homesickness at all. But it’s all looking brighter, and I’m so much happier (No joke, I’m actually a lizard).

Viz, glorious spring:

On Saturday we went on a walking tour of London’s old coffee houses, lead by Dr. Matthew Green. It was really fun; we filed through minuscule alleyways, peeped through pub windows, and learned how the humble bean shaped our world. Care to guess how much profit Starbucks made in the UK last year?

The bar Thom works at has something like 140 Belgian beers, or more! I think he’s drinking his way through them, and collecting the caps like Pokemon:

Meanwhile I am collecting protective amulets, channeling the power of love, the jaguar and the Third Eye. The little gold one is a Merci-Merci/Liberty trinket, which reminds me of special times in Paris.

I cycled all winter, rain and snow – which I consider a personal victory. But I can’t wait to go out when it’s nice, and ride fun places with my friends. I’m even thinking of doing the London to Brighton race…

I hope you’re all having wonderful week!

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Taste: Making Creative Work As Good As Your Ambitions

This is Ira Glass. You probably know him from NPR’s This American Life.

Ira Glass on creativity

This is what he said about creativity, production, and good work:

What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

This is the video the quote comes from, it’s loosely about film production, but really about anything CREATIVE:

(Ira Glass on Storytelling: parts one, two, and four.)

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February Photography

Every month that passes in England I do a little dance - ‘Wahoo, this my first January in London’. Monumental! But February is different. I have been here before. (It’s strange to think that my first trip to the UK, and the wonder of Alt Albion was only 3 years ago). In any case, this February is zipping along jauntily. American diners in Shoreditch, art exhibitions, friends arriving from far and wide, pancake day, bike rides, writing-writing-writing-trying-to-finish-my-novel.

A) 2012 calendar from Labour & Wait.

B, C, D) Visiting the Yayoi Kusama retrospective at the TATE Modern.

E) A view from my bedroom.

F) A typewriter installation, as seen at Selfridges’ Words, Words, Words .

G) I bought this guidebook in anticipation of Barcelona. I feel like I have dreamed of visiting Spain forever.

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A List Of Nostalgia

A list of interests from my livejournal profile, circa age 16:

alice roi, andy warhol, architecture, art, bikes, black tutus, cinematography, city stealing, climbing, coffee, commander keen, concerts, creme eggs, dancing, design, director vision, drawing, dresses, electronic music, fairy floss, fake citizen watches, ferris wheels, fiction, filmmaking, flocked old style wallpaper, goldfish in bathrooms, haruki murakami, imax sushi, impromptu art, japan, laurence aberhart, le chat noir, lee hazlewood, literature, love, ma higgins cookies, missing limbs, movies, mushrooms, nan goldin, nein das ist verboten, new york snow domes, novelty, paint spray, photocopiers, photography, pigeon murder, robin morrison, rocks, scripts, slide film, sofia coppola, sour bears, sushi, tattoos, the zipper, twister sheets, typography, vintage, waynes world, william eggleston, writing, zines

Most of it still is very relevant! City stealing refers to my (then) habit of snatching dust and fragments from meaningful-to-me buildings. Somewhere in storage at my parent’s house is a small blood-red tile, stolen from the front door of the Vegas Girl strip club in Auckland. It seemed like a radical idea then. Here’s a photo of the place that I took in 2003, from a pool hall across the road, when it was the SEEDY part of town. The pool hall is now a million dollar apartment.

Also, I don’t draw enough nowadays. What did you like when you were that age? Do you wish you were still doing those things?

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The Neighbourhood

The last week in three words was busy, nerdy and cold. It even snowed again on Thursday evening. So I haven’t left the house too much, except to cycle to work. Here are some photos from the times I did venture outside the house:

A) A fox on Brick Lane. Thom sees lots of foxes wandering the streets late at night on his way home from work, but I have to make do…
B) Shoreditch Grind. We go here a lot for coffee every weekend. The interior is very raw – I love the factory look.
C) Arnold Circus, with a smattering of snow still on the pavilion’s roof.
B) Savoy cabbage braised with garlic butter is delicious! My new role involves a lot of writing for two food brands (perfect, right?) so I am learning a lot about new-to-me vegetables and techniques.
D) Virgina – a school’s ironwork gate in the middle of Shoreditch.
E) Yinka Shonibare’s HMS Victory at Trafalgar Square. If you look closely you’ll see the sails are made of African patterned textiles!
F) Lovely typography at Milkbar in Soho.
G) The Alexandra Trust Dining Rooms. A beautiful building near my house… I wonder what it is used for now?

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Snowy London

Last night was one of the most memorable nights of my life. Reasons include:

1. Being asked to work on an interior design project for a bar.
2. Seeing Stephen Fry in said bar.
3. Annnnnd SNOW!

Indulge me for a bit, I’m from New Zealand and we don’t get urban snow like this. It was one of the most magical things I’ve ever seen – cars, trees and houses all dusted with the white stuff.