ramblin’ – Page 34 – EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

The Night Market

St. John's College. It was lit by a cycling colour wheel. I happened to catch it at it's bloodiest.

Yesterday saw Oxford light up, as their annual Night Light festival ushered in the Christmas season. The town was heaving as the colleges and museums opened their doors to the curious, and markets filled the labyrinthine corridors around Oxford Castle and filled St Giles’ wide boulevard.

It was great fun to wander about and catch unexpected moments and photo opportunities. Mummers wandered through the throng. A drum troupe set up on the Monument and shook the air. Belly dancers gyrated in the halls of the Ashmolean, the sinuous music a fitting soundtrack to the new Egyptian galleries. TLC and I sat in the great hall at the Bodleian Library, and felt 2 IQ points smarter just by osmosis from all the learning that had soaked into the narrow benches we sat upon.

The entrance to the quad at the Bodleian Library.

I had been there earlier in the day, looking at an exhibition of some of the Library’s greatest treasures. I stood wonderingly in front of an original page of Mary Shelley’s manuscript for Frankenstein, complete with corrections and additions from Percy Bysshe. An edition of the Koran from the 15th century glowed in gold-leafed perfection, and I could see where Craig Thompson’s obsession with Arabic calligraphy came from. An illuminated Gutenberg Bible, one of less than 20 left in the world, came close to giving me the chills. The fact that these documents still exist is amazing enough. That they are such beautiful artifacts in their own right is nothing short of a miracle.

At its best, Oxford is a magical place, filled with history and wonder, with new delights down every narrow alleyway. Yesterday it shone, lit up like a beacon of civilisation and knowledge in the darkness.

The Friday Foto: Rules Of The Library

“I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, nor to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library, or kindle therein, any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.”

All sounds fair enough to me. This is the Radcliffe Camera, part of the Bodleian Library. One of the oldest in Europe, the main depository for the University Of Oxford, and one of those buildings that gives Oxford it’s Harry Potter vibe. The quote above is the formal declaration for new readers, which has to be recited out loud in a ceremony at Michelmas before they’ll let you near the books.

And people wonder why I get swoony about libraries. I’d happily swear an oath of fealty to mine!

The Fursday Photo: Palace

The Regent Palace Hotel, just off London’s bustling Piccadilly Circus, was a place that was part of my early life in Soho. Sadly, three years ago it was discovered to be riddled with asbestos, and the venerable building was condemned.

The land is now part of the new Quadrant development that’s in the final stages of completion. The tangle of streets and shops that tuck in behind Regent Street and Piccadilly have always been something of a hidden treasure, so it’s nice to see a new attraction to draw people in. I’m also pleased to see that the old facade has survived, and it’s scrubbed up well, doncha think?

And yes, it has been cropped and framed to look as much like a Victorian spaceship firing up it’s main engine as possible. Couldn’t help myself.

The Limits Of Science

Sometimes you just have to take the opportunities that are offered to you. Thus, I found myself escorting TLC and MadamWDW to the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, to hear Lord Rees of Ludlow deliver the annual Romanes Lecture. I am, apparently, cultured.

Continue reading The Limits Of Science

Joy Unconfined

I love a wedding. Any excuse to get dressed up and drink too much and dance like a fool. Friday saw us at a lovely hotel in the heartlands of the country, at the nuptials of TLC’s mum and her long-time beau.

It was one of the most joyful occasions I’ve ever been to, and I’ve not laughed so hard or so freely at a social occasion in a long time. The bride was consumed in fits of giggles through the ceremony, and I’m still not convinced that she repeated all the vows. Once the papers were signed, the bride and groom danced back down the aisle (I’m taking the blame for that; I did, after all, show them the JK Wedding Dance). The first dance was livened up by the bride going a-over-t during an attempt at a pirhouette. And I don’t even think she’d been drinking that much up to that point.
And yes we danced and yes we drank and yes we laughed. And yes we chased off a bunch of wedding crashers and yes we all had headaches the next morning. But oh my word, you want something like that to be memorable, and this is a wedding that will live on for quite some time. You sometimes forget that a solemn occasion doesn’t have to be without joy.

Pam, Joe, the future is yours. That’s one hell of a way to kick it off.

Paint Under Skin: On Becoming A Graffiti Artist

Making graffiti is like playing the guitar. It’s very easy to pick up and do very, very badly. Getting it right and creating something that people might find pleasant to the eye takes a lot of skill and practice. I discovered this for myself when that damned elusive DocoBanksy lured me down to the free-spray zone at Leake Street, near Waterloo, to do a bit of promo work for his film.

Turns out he had a much more realistic idea of his skill level and the likely end result than I did.

Continue reading Paint Under Skin: On Becoming A Graffiti Artist

Tales Of The Beeranauts: Very Merry Men

The Beeranauts have been pretty quiet this year. The Great British Beer Festival had to manage without us, and it was a minor contingent that made it to the London Drinker gathering back in the spring. Apart from that, nish since Battersea. A bit of a poor show, frankly.

We made up for that on Friday, with a trip up to Nottingham for the Robin Hood Festival. Held in the grounds of lovely Nottingham Castle, it’s perhaps the biggest British Beer Festival after the Earl’s Court spectacular. And it’s far and away the best.

Continue reading Tales Of The Beeranauts: Very Merry Men

Legacy

I’m really not sure how I should be feeling today. I’m sad, of course, as anyone should be where they hear of a life cut too short, when there was still so much left to do. But at the same time, I have to say the sadness is tinged with admiration. The legacy that he has left is one of the most influential on the planet. Even if you don’t own one of the products that made the company that he founded, left and then resurrected, you’re pretty likely to have used devices that he had a major hand in popularising. He didn’t invent the Graphical User Interface, the mouse, or the tablet computer, or the hard drive music player. All he did was make them easier and more intuitive to use. And in doing so, he changed the technological landscape of the late 20th and early 21st century.

His influence is everywhere – in the design, colours and finish of hundreds and thousands of products that he had nothing to do with. In the way we consume music, TV and films. He is the driving force behind one of the most innovative and consistently surprising film studios on the planet. His company could make headlines not just by launching a product, but by allowing rumours of those products to circulate.

I find it impossible to write about him in the past tense, because he’s still around – when I lift the lid of my laptop, when I pick up my phone. He’s part of the technological, social and artistic landscape, and always will be. That’s a legacy that we should all wish for.

The point is, I can write this piece without mentioning his name once, and you all know who I’m talking about.

From Here To Hilversum

I try not to talk about work on X&HT, which is in general a solid rule for most bloggers. But this is too cool not to share.

That cool chunk of Lego is the Beeld & Geluid (Sound and Vision) building, in a leafy town called Hilversum about a twenty minute train ride from Amsterdam. It’s the home of Dutch radio and television, and contains all the archives of getting on for 100 years of broadcast history.

The building is just as remarkable on the inside – five stories high and five deep. As well as the archive, it’s home to a huge multimedia museum. The glass wall here has imprinted pictures of Dutch stars of stage and both big and small screen.

These pods contain the contestants of Last Man Watching, a competition where you watch TV until your brains leak out of your ears. It had been running for about 30 hours when I visited. Loads of people had dropped out at the 24 hour mark. Not a sign of the limits of human endurance – if you make it that far you get a free TV.

It’s a fascinating place, and well worth a trip out if only to marvel at a building that’s like a supervillain’s lair if only they were really into Dutch film and TV.

Of course, it was important to find time for a spot of refreshment before we headed back…

Two Mornings

In the South of France, docoDomsy sets up a time-lapse shot before a day on his promo project for Mas De Calage, a local winery.

Meanwhile, I take my place amongst the flood of people pouring through London Paddington, facing another day at work.