1 May 2019, London
At the Guardian Archive today Box 22 of Don McPhee opened with five sets of negatives labelled 'Gay Weekend/Manchester'.
2 May 2019, Somewhere North Of Rugby
The speaking toilet on the Virgin train to Bangor tells me that, although she soldiers on being a bog with relative ease, it could be worse. "I used to be a public toilet," she chirps.
3 May 2019, Penllech Farm, Bryncroes, Llŷn Peninsula, Wales
Jane has borrowed a pair of my longjohns. She thinks there might be something wrong with us townies because none of the natives seems to feel the cold.
The garden at Penllech Farm has walls with small cavities cut into the stone. These, I am told, are "goose holes", a safe haven from predatory foxes. Hard to believe a wily fox would not identify it as a place to trap unsuspecting bird.
7 May 2019, Gwynned, Wales
The way K&K talk about T's hopeless situation shacked up in a filthy HMO in Litherland with no sense of a future, it is like hearing about a new species of human, Homo Alienus.
Later:
5 May 2019, Gwynned, Wales
Some pictures from today.
6 May 2019, Gwynned, Wales
A trip to Plas yn Rhiw, the National Trust house and gardens formerly owned by "three unmarried sisters", the Keatings. The woods rang out to the noisy cackle of crows or rooks.
7 May 2019, Gwynned, Wales
The way K&K talk about T's hopeless situation shacked up in a filthy HMO in Litherland with no sense of a future, it is like hearing about a new species of human, Homo Alienus.
Later:
8 May 2019, London
There have been some feisty words in the Morning Star over the past few days about "internationalism" and how its definition has been hijacked by the neoliberals
There have been some feisty words in the Morning Star over the past few days about "internationalism" and how its definition has been hijacked by the neoliberals
11 May 2019, London
To 'Avalanche - A Love Story', starring Maxine Peake, at the Barbican last night. When the burden of obsession gets to a critical mass, your whole world caves in. Mike Leigh got out of a taxi as we arrived.
14 May 2019, London
Naively, I of had always thought of academics as Enlightenment types, and I'm sure that can be true. But not always, and maybe even not very often at all. This came to me as my brain was being examined by a Trinidadian researcher at the National Hospital in Queen Square.
15 May 2019, London
At the Guardian Archive today, I logged Don McPhee photo envelopes from Box 22 with the titles 'Single Parent, Salford' and 'Oasis, Lapland'.
15 May 2019, London
Does Art always follow the money?
16 May 2019, Glasgow
We are in the Merchant Quarter in a big serviced apartment. To The Pot Still for a quickie before supper at Gamba.
17 May 2019, Glasgow
Visited Project Ability on Trongate next door to TJ Hughes. Was greeted kindly by director Elisabeth and given a tour of the studio/workshop space (huge and very light) where we met a few artists, including stroke survivor John McNaught. He used to be a painter/decorator. Then off to Scotland Street School (I cheekily asked an actor playing fierce Victorian school teacher with leather strap whether she had ever appeared in Taggart), and House For An Art Lover for lunch. In the evening on the bus up to Hyndland we saw a fight at a bus stop and lots of red sandstone buildings. Glasgow is a lot like Liverpool, especially in centre around George Square. My Freedom pass does not work on Glasgow buses.
18 May 2019, Glasgow
In the Guardian today, Marina Hyde describes Boris Johnson as a "Frankenstein assemblage of all the rejected personality disorders of the minor Greek gods".
A man in the Ubiquitous Chip tonight told us he had us marked out as "theatre types" then went on, with little prompting, to rattle quickly from Brexit to Me Too. Maybe he was pissed.
20 May 2019, passing through Lancaster railway station
There is a Short Cuts article about Brexit in the London Review of Books, Volume 41, Number 9, in which the author, Tom Crewe, concludes: "But it's also possible to see the vote to Leave in another way: as a moment when reality triumphed over storytelling. The referendum was an opportunity for a section of the population to signal that they didn't believe in the existence of the country they were told they lived in - a land if high employment and opportunity, a prosperous and just nation at ease with itself - and that the gap between everyday life and everyday rhetoric had become too great. That disillusion is now, happily, general. Brexit, whatever the dangers, is forcing Britain to get to know itself better. Not all countries are given that opportunity."
This chimes with the happiness I felt seeing David and Tim, father and son, deep in earnest Brexit conversation alongside the sandwiches and cake during Mike's 70th birthday party in November last year.
Sketch done on train, stolen from the background of a photo by Therése.
And here's one I did earlier of Christ at the Renaissance Nudes exhibition at the Royal Academy.
May 22 May 2019, London
This one is called 'Another Bloody Nude'. A theft from the RA exhibition.
May 22 May 2019, London
Some of the Don McPhee pictures from the late 1990s (Box 22) I catalogued at the Guardian Archive today were titled: ‘Euro launched in Rotherham’, ‘Peat bogs in Yorkshire’, ‘Euthanasia conference in Telford’ and ‘Cliff Richard lookalikes’.
May 23 May 2019, London
'By the time she was prepared to speak the language of compromise her capacity to deliver it had shrivelled to nothing.'
Guardian editorial on Theresa May's failure at Brexit
May 23 May 2019, London
The William Eggleston picture I was supposed to talk about at Tate Modern today had been replaced, so I had to wing it. I survived with my dignity intact.
May 24 May 2019, London
'These elections are not for a government. They are an answer to a stupid question, asked incessantly by Nigel Farage: do you approve of how the big parties have handled Brexit? It would take a strong stomach for anyone to go to the polling station and put a cross against that.'
Simon Jenkins on the Euro elections, the Guardian
May 25 May 2019, Brighton
I am prompted to recall the names of two former local councillors, Jason Kitkat and Nimrod Ping.
27 May, 2019, London
Hi Connie
Just had a look at that picture and if you can flog an image of a woman with a massive set of male genitals up her long, floaty skirt as 'God Is...' you are a bloody genius.
May 23 May 2019, London
The William Eggleston picture I was supposed to talk about at Tate Modern today had been replaced, so I had to wing it. I survived with my dignity intact.
May 24 May 2019, London
'These elections are not for a government. They are an answer to a stupid question, asked incessantly by Nigel Farage: do you approve of how the big parties have handled Brexit? It would take a strong stomach for anyone to go to the polling station and put a cross against that.'
Simon Jenkins on the Euro elections, the Guardian
May 25 May 2019, Brighton
I am prompted to recall the names of two former local councillors, Jason Kitkat and Nimrod Ping.
27 May, 2019, London
Hi Connie
Just had a look at that picture and if you can flog an image of a woman with a massive set of male genitals up her long, floaty skirt as 'God Is...' you are a bloody genius.
Just found this one hiding in my Autodesk gallery.
28 May 2019, London
A bit corny in places, and it’s always squirmy when actors sitting at the kitchen table suddenly break into song. Many of the songs carried a poignant narrative thread. 'Tiny Dancer’ was a standout for me. It made me like the Bernie Taupin character even more.
29 May 2019, London
Latest City Matters column. Disappointed to not be on a page with the puzzles, but happy to see Chris’s ‘Venus’ picture used so big.
31 May, 2019, Brighton
I can find something to like in most things.
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