I spent the weekend helping out the bro-in-law at a trade show. “Sounds like a bit of fun”, I thought. “How hard could it be?”
Yeah. About that.
Category: ramblin’
ramblin’
An Excuse For Fashion
Readership, I’m sure you’re aware that although X&HT is my home and you are all my dearioes, I do like to spread the love around a bit. For example, I run the blog for Pier 32, a promotional clothing company that deals exclusively in ethical and Eco-friendly items. Writing about sustainable fashion is, to put it mildly, a bit outside my remit. But I like a challenge, and I haven’t been booted off the job yet, so I must be doing something right.
This weekend sees me in Brighton, helping Pier 32 at the Eco-Technology Show. It’s a huge showcase for all things eco and, you know, technological. It’s a good fit for us, as Pier 32 believes in using smart solutions to ethical questions.
It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun, although I’m still a bit un-nerved at the idea of going out and networking. It’s important to stretch oneself as a writer, I suppose.
You can find out more about the show here, and keep an eye on my Twitter feed and the Pier 32 blog for updates from the show.
Back to the usual geekiness next week. For now, darlings, I’m a fashionista.
Guest Post: The Norwich 100
It’s turning into a guest post week at X&HT. This suits me very well – I’ve been up to my earlobes in other writing, and it’s always nice to see what other Team-mates are up to.
With that in mind, I’m delighted to present Doco Domsy’s report on the annual Norwich 100 cycle ride in support of the British Heart Foundation. This is a big event for an important cause which I know is close to his heart and…
Hell, why don’t I just shut up and let him tell the story?
Introducing The Band: Against The Auteur Theory
When you start making film, you come to realise very quickly (or at least you do if you have the faintest scrap of self-awareness) that the auteur theory is bullshit. The very idea of a film being “by” one person is simply untrue.
Continue reading Introducing The Band: Against The Auteur Theory
Always Take The Weather
Like all true Englishmen, I am delighted with the turn for the surreal that the weather has taken. As the safest of every true Englishman’s Default Conversational Openers/Small Talk Gambits (which include The Football, Immigrants, and Bins), the weather has been a tried and tested way to engage in conversation with people in bus queues or dull dinner parties. When it flips between record-breaking heat wave and snow, you know you can depend on all kinds of fascinating opinion.
Me, I just love the skies you get in the mornings when the weather’s all over the shop. Blue skies get dull after a while, and no-one likes the flat grey of a rainy day. The train into work is treating me to some stunning sunrises at the moment, and I’m particularly enamoured of the cloudscapes over Leicester Square as I emerge blinking from Piccadilly Circus tube. Take this beauty that I snagged last week. Enough just to give me a moment of pause before I start my day.
Food In Montpellier
It would hardly be the most mind-boggling revelation to say that the French love their food. It’s intertwined in the culture, part of the national psyche. The French get food at a pure, primal level. In the UK we’ve come along in leaps and bounds in our understanding and appreciation of good food in the past twenty years. I’d argue that English cheese has the better of la fromage francaise, and there’s no such thing as a decent French pork pie. But food and eating are an intrinsic part of French daily life, and our weekend in Montpellier gave us quite a few different examples of that fact.
Welcome To Montpellier
Here in the 21st Century, distance is as much about culture and language as it is about milage. Consider. It takes an hour and a half to get from Reading to Gatwick Airport. It takes the same time to get from Gatwick to Montpellier, and all of a sudden I find it a hell of a lot more difficult to order a coffee.
Un teaser
Bonjour, mon Readership. A little photographic tease to get you in the mood before I talk about the weekend TLC and I spent in the South of France. There’s a lot to show you.
The Saturday Shot: Invasion
You can find them in most big cities, if you know where to look. Tucked away, above eye level, in corners and other points of the city that we render invisible through our blithe in attention. If we fail to notice them, are they even there?
Well, yes, they are. In London alone there are over 100 of the little blighters. I can think of three within 500 yards of where I’m sitting as I write this.
Actually, four, and this is the biggest one I’ve ever seen. They’re getting bolder, daring us to seek them out. It’s too late to watch the skies. Now it’s the buildings that we have to keep our eyes on.
Slowly but surely, we are being invaded.
Be Vewwy Quiet, We’re Hunting Banksys
A call to action hit my inbox last week, from that most damn’d elusive of characters, the pseudonymous documentarian DocoBanksy. “I need cutaways,” he declared. “I need fresh pics and footage of new graf from my namesake.” Like Sancho Panza to his Quixote, I could only respond affirmatively. I packed my go-bag with cameras and memory cards. On a fresh, bright Tuesday morning, DocoBanksy and I set out for an adventure.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 