Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Thursday 28 October 2010

Not long now

One more day to get home from work in the last of the daylight:

Sunday 24 October 2010

Is there no limit to our beloved Mayor*'s enterprise?

*sarcasm alert

Or is this shop in Hackney Road his Eulalie?

Not bad for £7

My window-boxes have sat indoors for far too long, while the exterior was being repainted and indecision about replacing the summer plants set in, but a sunny Sunday morning encouraged a re-stocking trip to Columbia Road.

I think I may have stumbled on the secret of shopping here (at least for someone impatient, like me) - approach from the eastern end. It's less crowded, and I suspect the eye-catching offers may appear a bit earlier at this end. Within about 15 minutes, five cyclamens, a dianthus and five violas were mine for £7. Now all I've got to do is clear out the casualties and make room for the new arrivals:

Tuesday 19 October 2010

More solutions

On my way back from the Post Office (why is the person in front of me in the queue always the angry one with the complicated grievance?), I noticed yet another "solutions" merchant: a van on a building site, advertising "progressive fenestration solutions" (=they put in the windows).

Just the sort of thing to make me contemplate a progressive defenestration solution of my own.

Friday 15 October 2010

I have become a work of art..

..and I have a certificate to prove it.

As part of this year's Frieze Art Fair, Gavin Turk brought his "Bikes de Bois Rond" to Regent's Park. The bikes are sturdy three-speed models, the frame wrapped in a decorative cladding in a style borrowed from a Polish artist. A brief escorted ride around the park's Outer Circle, past the Rose Garden and the back end of the Open Air Theatre, costs a mere penny charged to a credit card, though anyone absconding with one of these colourful machines would find a charge of £5000 appearing pretty soon. That you can indeed spend a penny and call it art these days may, no doubt, be an additional hommage, to Duchamp.

On return, a tear-off slip confirms that I am "to be considered an authentic work of art for all intents and purposes". Don't all genuflect at once.

This was just one of the exhibits in the open air Sculpture Park, a scattering of sculptures and installations in the English Garden (looking splendid in the autumn sun). This part of the fair was at least free: I didn't bother with the exhibition marquee, which cost a cool £25 (I may have been certified, but I'm not that certifiable). It was enough to enjoy the return of the sunshine and wander through the collection, which included what looked like dilapidated statues of Darwin, a distorting mirror that swang this way and that in the breeze, a couple of stone eggs, a maze made of water hyacinth root, and an elevated pile of German rubbish (literally) complete with smoke and sound effects.