Assistant Blog

Posted 16 May 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Observations

I might compile a list of the places in Brighton that I feel ashamed of having never visited, and just get them all done. It’s utterly ludicrous that I could have lived here all those years and never, until Friday, visited the Brighton Toy and Model Museum, which is an absolute treasure trove of joy and pseudo-nostalgia. Not only was the Muesum, as part of the Festival season, open late specially, but the marvellous 0 and 00 guage train set was up and running.

Me, Sam and Dan circled it hungrily, wanting to reach out and touch, while Laura looked tolerantly on and scribbled in her notebook. I like the furniture best, I decided, the level crossings, roadsigns and brick red pillar boxes. Through one window I admire a model landscape more reverently than I do the rolling downs on my daily commute.

I hear Sam talking loudly. He and Dan have stopped by a cabinet containing a model helicoper. “Why does it have twin rotor blades?”, Dan is wondering. And Sam is off. “Well actually”, he says, “the vast majority of Soviet helicopters had twin rotors. The second was introduced to counteract the effects of torque on the single blade…”. I can’t bear it. I don’t care if Sam is right or not. I denounce him as a bullshitter, loudly. Behind him a couple of children, who were listening attentively, look disappointed. Sam is now a pariah in their eyes.

They eye him angrily.

Our enthusiasm for the toys is not infectious. After a while – when we’re on our third lap of the exhibits – Laura announces that she’s going to head off and leave us to it. She does. The men are left to their toys. We grin at each other.

“Pub?”, we muse.

“Pub”, we agree.

Tags: Brighton, brighton toy and model museum, drinking, friends, hornby, museums, Observations, toys

77 Million Paintings

6 Comments

Posted 03 May 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General, Reviews

We’d all appreciate our home-towns a lot more if we had guests to visit more often. I almost always have my most pleasurable weekends in Brighton when people from elsewhere come to visit. It makes me wonder at all the weekends I spend listlessly – having no-one to impress – instead of taking advantage of the fact that I live in this lovely place

Of course, at this time of year – the Brighton Festival has just started – I’m normally starting to get a little busier (and there are a bunch of local things happening over the next month or so which I’ll hopefully be blogging about), but my nice weekend over this Bank Holiday was less a consequence of that and more prompted by the arrival in town of friends. So I spent Saturday having a lovely lunch in the Dorset in the North Laine and relaxing down by the beach, and most of Sunday mooching around Town buying records, doing Festival stuff and sitting in the pub, pretending I’d been stabbed through the neck with a plastic straw (long story).

The highlight – well, the cultural highlight – was a trip to Brighton’s lovely Fabrica gallery, which for the duration of the Festival is hosting an exhibition by the season’s curator, Brian Eno. Rather misleadingly titled ’77 Million Paintings’, the show actually focuses on one piece – a large, evolving graphic up on a large screen at the far end of the dark church.

The same aesthetic which drives much of Eno’s music is apparent in the work; it is neither instantly rewarding nor demanding, but instead a kind of slow, transformative experience for which the term ‘ambient’ (traditionally used to characterise much of Eno’s music) remains the best descriptive term I can conjure up.

It’s essentially a series of locked geometric shapes which move through a range of patterns and colours in a sequence determined by ‘generative software’ which is capable – as the title of the piece suggests – of 77 million possible permutations (which would take, apparently, over a thousand years to unfold). The transformations are slow but remarkably evocative.

Sat concentrating for ten minutes I was only dimly aware of perceptible changes, but when a conversation with Deb and Will distracted me from the screen for no more than sixty seconds and I returned my gaze to the ‘painting’, I found it had changed hugely. Such is the effect of the slow process of gradual change – I thought of the face of someone you love and see every day, which seems unchanging, and the shock of encountering friends with whom you’ve lost touch, and who you find much altered (as altered, presumably, as you are).

It’s hard to describe a work of art without showing it, and pointless to show a still of a work of art without being able to demonstrate the very movement which gives it purpose. So here’s a proposal, instead.

Imagine yourself sat in a church, half-dozing, glancing down at the cobbled floor. As the sun progresses slowly across the sky outside, light catches panes of the stained glass windows high above, and casts a reflection down on the floor in front of you. The light shimmers and shines, ducks behind a cloud, comes up for air. The quality of light changes, and different parts of the window are alternately obscured and revealed. What plays out on the floor in front of you is the combination of chance, nature and design, and it is playing only for you.

If you can imagine that, you might be able to picture Eno’s work. If you like the sound of it, the exhibition is running until the 23rd May.

Co-incidentally, I spent much of the time in the Church sharing a seat with Toby, a mischievous toddler who ultimately ordered me onto the floor so he’d have more space. He told me – and I trust his opinion – that the exhibition was ‘lovely’. He also made me take his socks off and at one point handed his Dad an empty food wrapper and yelled ‘rubbish, rubbish’.

I hope Mr. Eno wasn’t around, mistaking him for a high-voiced critic.

Tags: art, Brian Eno, Brighton, friends

friends in other places

Posted 22 Feb 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General

Laura, over on her lovely Make Do And Mend blog (which always makes me feel bad for never sending her any post) has some good news; after what seemed like the end of the road for the traditional polaroid camera, the re-invigorated company are now preparing to launch a new range of cameras and a return of the classic Colour 600 film. As Laura says, here’s hoping that the film is less expensive than it was last time round.

In the meantime, here’s a glimpse at one of the new models. More here.

polaroid

Meanwhile, I was pleased to see that I’m not the only one who looks forward to seeing Siobhan’s lovely drawings – here she is being written about on a German website, in some incomprehensible foreign language. Yay. And here’s one of her drawings, which I like.

3 Good Things

Lastly, I’m really starting to miss Anne-Sophie and Rich now that they’ve moved out of the country. Although I like the fact that my friends are a pretty egalitarian, European lot, it’s sad that this sometimes means they move away. London, Melbourne, Barcelona, Paris and Alsace have all robbed me of loved friends and drinking buddies, for which I am most resentful.

However. I am delighted that AS and Rich are blogging regularly from their new home, and recommend you bookmark their blog – I envy them having a whole new life to write about. Mine trundles on, punctuated with occasional flurries of sneezing.

Later on, as we had stopped to enjoy the quietness and the sun glaring on the snow, we heard noises coming from the bushes. A deer emerged from nowhere, only about 5 meters from us, quickly to disappear into the forest. A few seconds later, its foal passed even closer, looking absolutely terrorised: we could not believe our eyes! Suddenly a dog that had been chasing them through the trees appeared, stopped, stared at us (I got really scared it might attack us for a moment!) and finally, luckily, realised that it had lost the track of the deers and went away in the opposite direction. What a magical moment!

Tags: blogging, friends, Links, photography, polaroid

december

Posted 18 Jan 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Video

Loping carefully down snow-covered pavements; watching My Sad Captains play a set of melodic, fine tuned indie rock; playing with my friend Claire’s cat; watching the trains negotiate through the bad weather; Curly Hair live at the Freebutt, everything perfumed with Xmas; constructing stop animations from the window at work; watching adults and children throw snowballs; gasping at the lovely, sonorous sound of Foxes! live; admiring cat-leaps on Boxing Day; talking shit at parties; lunch with my friends; housebound in Brighton; surrounded by my favourite people; watching the new year land.

This was my December.

Thanks to Claire for the idea!

Tags: Brighton, friends, nostalgia, Video

money makes the world go round

Posted 14 Jan 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General

Strange going ons in the world of football. For those of you who have no interest; you’re missing out – this is a peculiar and interesting season for a number of reasons – the big clubs are struggling, the smaller clubs are contracting and expanding, playing rich, rewarding football on the one hand and spitting out managers on the other. Adapting to face new commercial realities, and creaking under the weight of the grim hold that capitalism exerts on the game.

And old certainties are no longer quite so certain – I can no longer find it in myself to hate Sol Campbell for leaving Spurs all those years ago, for example, and I find myself inwardly applauding the dreadful Joey Barton for claiming that footballers ‘are knobs’ on Radio 4, of all places. Grand old clubs like Man City, Portsmouth and Notts County, meanwhile, have futures which are suddenly, truly, completely unknowable. Glory or bankruptcy.

This isn’t the prelude to a review of the year in football or anything; just a few notes before I sling off a couple of interesting links I’ve encountered in the last few weeks. The first concerns the afore-mentioned Portsmouth, for whom every moment seems a drawn-out agony, for all that (actually) they have an OK team, who play nice football. Their problem is not that they look dead-certs for relegation (actually, that’s the least of their problems) but rather that they tried to compete with the big teams financially and messed it up, before taking the hand of the first person who promised to clear up the mess without checking him out properly first.

If anyone wants to formulate an argument about capitalism ruining football, they should board the train to Fratton. Jamie Jackson, writing for the Guardian, delivers a damning indictment of Portsmouth’s profligacy.

John Utaka was Portsmouth‘s record signing when he joined from Rennes in July 2007 for £7m. In two and a half years, he has become their record waste of money.Utaka has started 31 Premier League games and scored seven times in all competitions. Since claiming five of those goals in his opening season the Nigerian’s form has declined disappointingly. This season his highlight was scoring against Hereford United in the Carling Cup five months ago. Despite Portsmouth’s well-documented problems – Avram Grant has only 17 outfield players, and is operating under a transfer embargo – Utaka has started only twice in the league, back in August. Not only was Utaka rejected by Nigeria for the Africa Cup of Nations that starts tonight, he did not even get into the 32-man preliminary squad.

Portsmouth are debt-ridden and threatened with administration. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs served a winding-up petition on the club just before Christmas, and Portsmouth cannot find the £10m required to lift the transfer embargo. Utaka, meanwhile, continues to enjoy the rewards of his four-year contract on a barely credible £80,000 a week. If he stays to the end of his term, the total cost to Portsmouth will be about £23m. That would be enough to secure their immediate future.

If that tale of excess isn’t enough to momentarily divert you from the small pyre of wicker bankers which you are absent mindedly building at your desk, a slightly more jolly tale from Manchester, where at Man City, meanwhile, things could not be more rosy since they shacked up with their own – somewhat more credible – Saudi sugar-daddy, and made the decision to sack Mark Hughes.

Football being football, they elected to do so in an entirely dishonourable fashion, and earned the condemnation of many in the game for their methods, but, football being football, they’ve won every game since (under the stewardship of the handsome Roberto Mancini), so everyone has forgiven them. Except for Mark Hughes, presumably.

Even I’ve fallen under the spell of Mancini. He’s just so sophisticated. Look, here he is bemoaning the food culture at his new club. He wants the players to eat better before they run out onto the pitch.

“I will calmly make corrections to what they eat before matches,” City’s manager told the Italian newspaper Corriere dello Sport. “You need more chicken, pizza, carbohydrates. As well as a glass of wine, which isn’t being served.”

Brilliant! He wants his players to eat pizza and drink alcohol before they play!!! I love this man. When his time comes, I hope his petty, fickle, nouveau-riche employers treat him better than he did his predecessor.

And, more importantly, last night’s game between Liverpool and Reading was just fantastic, fantastic stuff – a genuinely deserving smaller team, a huge team in a state of crisis, and a great finale. Here’s Dan, rather pleased with Reading’s performance.

Tags: football, friends, journalism, Observations, Tottenham Hotspur, unfettered capitalism

xmas high-jinks

Posted 26 Dec 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Video

Had a totally brilliant Xmas in Brighton so far; it’s been great. Some random highlights:

- Managing to actually cook my contribution to the Christmas lunch well; somewhat of a surprise. Almost messed up the chicken by accidentally putting it at too high a heat, which meant it was browning with alarming speed after just twenty five minutes. Some frenzied adjustments ensured it was a success. Yay!
- Watching Lyndsey getting really angry as it became apparent that she wasn’t going to win the first party game of Christmas. She settled down once it became apparent that I’d come last.
- A glorious wine and spirits contribution from Sam and Laura, which ensured that the food was never for a moment unaccompanied by fortifying alcohol.
- Singing and dancing in the small hours; sorry, Brighton, if we made an unforgivable amount of noise.
- Just being able to spend the day with my lovely friends is a real treat. Had a brill time.

Our soundtrack for the day was a Xmas CD courtesy of local label One Inch Badge – fittingly, then, the video below, which shows us tucking into Christmas lunch, comes courtesy of one of its contributors; ‘Christmas Song’ by The Hornblower Brothers.

Tags: animation, friends, Video, xmas

a song on the shoreline

Visit Dan’s YouTube channel here.

Posted 14 Aug 2009 — by Jonathan
Category General, Video

Funny how after years of living in Brighton, myself and a bunch of friends have started falling in love with the sea all over again. We’ve mostly been going down there at low tide, admiring the beauty of our horizon, the city’s vista, and the fading skeleton of our old Pier. I’ve been taking photos and writing – the results of which will be posted here shortly. Dan, who is fast developing his movie-making skills, has been shooting video and editing things together. Here, then, is a short film he’s made to accompany a song by Hauschka. It captures something still, and beautiful, and fleeting, about our city’s shoreline.

Tags: Brighton, friends, Video

michael jackson, strange creature

Posted 26 Jun 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Observations

This morning, waking up to find that Michael Jackson has died, feeling a small impact, like the sort of punch a small animal might administer, in my gut, I thought of Maria, who was my next door neighbour when I was growing up in Barnet.

I was never a Jacko fan, although I think I’m right in saying that the first ever album I bought on vinyl (I’d requested a turntable for a birthday and was stocking up in advance) was his ‘Bad’ LP. But Maria, who was a few years older than me and a cherished companion in my pre-teen years, was – in a way that only Michael Jackson fans can be – absolutely obsessed with him. Rightly too, as well, because he was at that point, with the possible exception of Glenn Hoddle, by far the most interesting and important person on the planet. Or so it felt at the time.

For me, Michael Jackson truly was Peter Pan like, but not in the sense that he would have us believe. For me, he simply stopped ageing in something like 1989 because the Jacko that existed after that point seemed to be a different person altogether. So the Michael Jackson of my imagination has never ceased to be the strange, exotic, alluring creature who made ‘Thriller’ and ‘Bad’ (and, best of all, ‘Off The Wall’, which I didn’t discover ’til I was in twenties). The Michael Jackson that followed, the Earth Story Jacko, the baby-dangling Jacko, was someone else entirely, and I felt no interest in him, and feel only a passing, regretful sadness at his death, and the way he lived his last years.

The world has, however, subsumed to Jacko-grief. It’s hard to know what to make of it really. I think I feel sad, and uncomfortable, and relieved, all at the same time. It was a strange, unsatisfying life, one feels. I’m very sorry for those who are upset though, and particularly for Maria. Nevertheless, I was pleased to note that however gripped the world is, Guardian readers still have their priorities right – just.

UPDATE: There’s a really rather beautiful, terrifically sad article about Michael Jackson by Danny Baker in today’s Times: it’s well worth a look. Extract below.

“I remember watching the video to the song Bad some time later, the one Martin Scorsese shot as a gangland fight in a subway station. In the film Jackson was at his peak, a cutting-edge pop star playing the coolest member of a streetwise gang setting the pace and breaking the rules. Everybody wanted to be Jackson at that point — especially Jackson. Instead here was a confused and frightened boy who though totally comfortable, assured even, headlining Madison Square Garden, had not the slightest idea how to walk to the corner shop and buy a loaf of bread. In the real world he was a sham, and the worst thing about that was not only did he know it, but he wasn’t allowed to forget it by those once close to him”

Tags: friends, obituary, Observations, pop

reflections on the move

Posted 26 Mar 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Observations

I helped Dan and Vic move house at the weekend. As I mentioned previously, I feel quite settled in my current flat, and I certainly don’t crave for the ultra stressful moving process again – but seeing the blank slate of their new flat made me feel a bit envious. I’m sure that if it were me moving I’d be intimidated by the amount of work needed to turn it into a home, but from the outside looking in it seems like a nice project; the slow unfolding of possessions into their new homes, or conversely the careful folding of a plain piece of paper into a complex origami pattern.

Reading this, if they do, Dan and Vic will doubtless feel a kind of numb rage, indignant at my implying that moving is fun when they know all too well the flip side of the coin. But there is something rather magical about the transformation. On Saturday myself, Ant, Vic and Dan spent several hours in the morning moving stuff into what seemed at the time like a fairly inhospitable environment – it hadn’t been cleaned fully and each large white room seemed like an invitation to lots of hard work, and a million miles from a home. By the time, many hours later, we’d transported everything in, it seemed less like a home still and more like a warehouse or a distribution centre; tons of boxes everywhere and large rooms suddenly feeling overstocked and claustrophobic.

Yet when I returned the next day it was strange and extraordinary to see the progress, the way that Dan and Vic were steadily imposing themselves upon the rooms, which were in turn coiling and stretching and responding to the demands of their new inhabitants. Vic – who works like a dervish when duty calls – had pulled off a particular miracle, transforming in the space of a day her room until it was warm, soft and hospitable – and the mirror of the room she’d moved out of just 36 hours earlier. Dan’s progress was slower but just as interesting to watch – his priorities are apparently more straightforward. Bed. Stereo. Computer.

I’ve not been round in a few days now but I’m looking forward to my next visit. I’m not trying to make out they have had the time to do all that much, but I find it interesting and exciting watching them imprint their personalities and position their belongings in their new home. And a part of me – the part that is ignoring all the work and stress and cost – is a bit jealous.

Time to move some furniture around, perhaps.

Tags: friends, Observations

blog round-up

Quietus Album Cover Mime quiz.

Posted 27 Feb 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Uncategorized

Thought I’d provide a quick overview of bloggy things I’ve been looking at this week:

Debbie, of the lovely Kept In A Jar blog, is collecting shopping lists and storing them at a new location – Shopping List Hunt. Like Debbie, I’ve always been faintly fascinated by the lists I’ve found in shopping trolleys, or abandoned on bus seats – but they’ve never been quite interesting enough to collect. Debbie has solved that problem by drawing over them. This is a particularly good example.

More visual pleasure can be found over at Quietus.com, which Ben has alerted me to over at his Silent Words Speak Loudest blog. He’s spotted an album covers game there which is well worth five minutes of your time; it’s nothing like the usual, fairly boring routine – instead it’s a series of videos, where album artwork is acted out by mime artists trained at the Paris Conservatory of Contemporary Mime and Interpretive Dance. Brilliant stuff – and bloody difficult. Link below:

Elsewhere, my own social life has taken a kicking courtesy of my purchase of the first box set of The Wire. I know that everyone already knows this, and knew it long before me, but I can belatedly confirm that, yes, it’s simply staggering. So all of a sudden I find myself throwing off invitations to the pub so that I can feast myself on another episode (or two). Brilliant stuff. And I’m also enjoying Being Human, BBC3′s latest drama, and thinking that, despite my earlier misgivings, it might be the best thing on UK TV so far this year.

Over at her Breakfast In Bed blog, however, Rowan does not agree, and has abandoned the show, as well as her enthusiasm for TV in general. I’ve used the comments box to urge her to give it another try, and she has quite reasonably promised to hold me personally responsible should she do so and remain disappointed. Although fearful of her conclusion, I still think the show is worth a look – which is why, like Richard over at his Grey Area blog, I’m very happy to hear that a second series, comprising eight episodes, has been commissioned.

A couple of other things: there’s an interesting post on the notion of ‘home’ over on Swiss Toni’s Place. He writes:

“My wife informed me the other day that I would be on my own this weekend because she is going home. It’s an odd turn of phrase, isn’t it? We’ve lived together for something like eight years, and we’ve been in the same house together for a little over six of those years… and yet when she goes to visit her mum and dad in France, she says she’s going home. She hasn’t lived there for fifteen years or so, and it’s not really the house that she grew up in, but it’s still home; it was the place her parents were living when she moved out.

Home. I’m not really sure what that means. I was born in Northampton and my parents lived in the same house a few miles outside that town for something like thirty-four years before they moved last year. Does that mean I should consider Northampton my home town? Did I think of that old house as my home? Was I sorry when my parents moved down the road? Not really.”

I’ve lived in Brighton for over ten years, on and off, and I now pretty much think of it as home – I certainly don’t feel that I am a Londoner per se any more (except when fucking idiots like Boris Johnson get elected, and I feel suddenly fiercely protective of the place). That said, when I go to visit my parents – who now live in a house in which I have never lived – I still say that “I’m going home”. It’s odd. That said, when they finally moved out of the house that I’d grown up in, I didn’t feel a sense of loss. So I think the notion of home, for me, is elastic. Anyway – take a look at Swiss Toni’s post – there are some interesting responses in the comments, too.

Lastly, back at Silent Words Speak Loudest, Ben’s written a very interesting review of Richard Herring’s current – profoundly rude – stand-up tour. Extract follows – go and read the full thing. Ben asks:

“Is it simply a matter of deliberately pushing the boundaries of taste for cheap laughs, or is there something more going on? The latter, inevitably. As much as he discomforts the lily-livered and offends liberal sensibilities, he still elicits plenty of laughs and, crucially, at one point suggests he’s performing comedy “just like Bernard Manning, but in a postmodern way – I know what I’m saying is wrong”. Cue chuckles – but then the question that, for me, cuts to the quick: “But does that make it better – or much, much worse?” That seems to reveal the whole show to be a clever critique of the sort of comedy that pleads irony as a defence for saying the unsayable – albeit while at the same time effectively performing the same trick – as well as a robust challenge to audience attitudes and complacency: think for a moment what you’re laughing about – you shouldn’t be finding it funny.”

Thanks as always to the many bloggers who keep me amused one day to the next…

Tags: blogging, friends, Links

moving with pride

Posted 25 Feb 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Observations

Yesterday I accompanied Vic on a bit of flat-hunting, as she and Dan are about to move house and dragging themselves through the awful, frustrating process of haranguing letting agents into showing them suitable properties, and half the time ending up with something entirely inappropriate. Yesterday’s contribution was actually rather lovely, a large, high, even two-bed in one of Brighton’s nicest roads, and possessed of a wonderful, light lounge with a sea-view. Of course it had a single, bitter flaw – where it was ideal in every other respect, the bathroom was just hideous; a tiny, decrepit booth with a miniature hand-basin, 70s toilet and a shower-cubicle that seemed, somehow, to be leaning to one side.

I tried to make the best of it, romanced by the large bedrooms and the beautiful lounge.

“You won’t find somewhere that has everything for the money you want to pay”, I said. “There’ll always be something – a small bedroom, a crap kitchen, an outdated bathroom. At least in this instance the rest of the flat is lovely. It may be worth it”.

The words didn’t sound quite right coming out of my mouth. The truth is that the shower room was just awful – the sort of thing you might expect to find in the backroom of a filling station alongside a motorway. It came down, Vic pointed out, to pride, as much as anything. What would so-and-so think, we wondered, thinking of a particularly discerning friend. If he wouldn’t compromise, why should anyone?

I’m starting to feel really cosy in my flat – having moved in about six months ago and made the initial, perfunctory steps in home-making back then, I’ve rediscovered my home-making instincts recently. I don’t want to live in a scruffy flat, like a student. This means I need to rein in my natural instinct towards hoarding junk, and try to rationalise my possessions. So this week I’ve been chucking things out, getting stuff sorted. And I’ve been doing other things too; pruning houseplants, arranging bookshelves, organising paperwork. When I was a bit younger I noted my general messiness with tolerant amusement – when I was a bit older, I thought, I’d be much more organised.

As it happens, I am more organised than I was as a student – but I’m aware that the transformation hasn’t been automatic; I have had to discipline myself into becoming more methodical and ordered. Mostly, it’s been pride that’s motivated me. When I did move last year I upgraded from a studio, and did so because one night, lying in bed, I thought, “Why can’t I have a dinner party? Why don’t I have enough space? Other people do, so why don’t I?”. It was a sense of inadequacy, in part, which made me start looking.

There’s a part of me that thinks that if the decision, yesterday, had been mine, I would have been bowled over by the bedrooms and said to myself, no, the bathroom doesn’t matter, the rest would be adequate compensation. And I would have taken the flat. It would have been the wrong decision, I think, because it would have been an acceptance that I had to compromise on something that others wouldn’t think of giving away.

Sometimes, just as you have to remind yourself to be organised, you have to remind yourself to be proud.

Tags: friends, Observations

new year in paris

3 Comments

Posted 11 Jan 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Observations, Photos

Sam and Laura live just south of Montmartre, on Paris’s most dogshit-strewn road. It doesn’t sound like a glamorous address, put like that, but they have a lovely flat, just off Barbès-Rochechouart (the site where the first shot of the armed French resistance was fired), not least because Paris is such a walkable city and their location puts them right in the middle of things. We spent much of the period over New Year circling the nearby streets, admiring expensive produce in Patisserie windows, or, as often as not, walking off a hangover.

New Year, is, of course, the purpose for being there in the first place. It is shortly before midnight, and Ant and I have sealed off the lounge for our own private disco (noting that the Crass mix of ‘Yeah’ by LCD Soundystem is just the best dancing song EVER). The rest of the flat throbs with conversation, and at some point a decision is made that we should clamber up to the top of Sacré-Cœur, Montmartre’s beautiful Catholic basilica, to watch the fireworks exploding over the city, launched in one year and landing in the next. The basilica is one of the most beautiful landmarks in Paris, so it feels like a real privilege to have the option of heading there. Interestingly, Sacré-Cœur is made of travertine stone, which constantly exudes calcite, apparently, which ensures that the basilica remains white even with weathering and pollution. True to form tonight it is hauntingly pale against the black sky, like an undimmed apparition seeing in the new year.

We pile out of the flat and begin climbing into Montmartre, although we don’t really need to do much climbing at all as most of us board the Funicular up the hill, which tonight, like the Metro, is free, and enjoy watching Dan Chequers and Ant run up the stairs to beat us to the top. They succeed, impressively, for we find them at the top smiling and scanning their eyes excitedly round the vista, something we swiftly join them in. We’re at the roof of Paris, and although it’s shockingly cold, the collective good spirits of the huge crowd of people cheering and yelling seem to warm us through. It’s a crowd which seems to be comprised of hundreds of small groups, so there is a constant multi-lingual chorus of voices calling out to people who have been separated in the throng.

We find a suitable vantage point, Sam happily taking on the role of group leader, pounding through the crowd with one arm raised. We glance at each other, amused. It appears he wants us to follow him. We do. Finally settled, we encounter a slight problem. It’s hard to ascertain exactly when 2009 actually arrives. There is no collective countdown, no organised display and countless contrasting times on our mobile phones.

We wait a while, confused, before Sam finally shouts “Right, I’ve had enough of this”, and ejects the cork from his bottle of champagne. Hooray, we shout, and cheer and kiss and swig from the bottle, and over the next few minutes pockets of friends scattered over the hill do exactly the same thing. Some fireworks are loosed, zinging over Montmartre at precarious angles, and at some unspecified point, to our delight, the new year begins. Kier has brought a tray of Ferrero Rocher which he begins dispensing to the crowd; I glance at Dan, who is visibly wincing every time Kier manages to miss a chance to give one to a pretty girl. He reminds me of the football fan whose foot moves involuntarily in the stands, playing every kick.

Afterwards we wind through Montmartre’s narrow streets and end up in Sam and Laura’s local, where it’s many hours before, shattered, we return to the flat and, sobered by the walk, pick up the drinking again.

Tags: friends, Observations, paris, Photos

fireworks for obama

7 Comments

Posted 05 Nov 2008 — by Jonathan
Category Uncategorized

Whose idea was it to schedule Bonfire Night the day after the American election? Really bad timing; I think after staying up ‘til five o’clock last night any participation in the festivities tonight would be bordering on suicidal. Ordinarily I watch the fireworks at Hove Cricket Ground, which are always reliably ace, and do so from the considerable comfort of Dave and Eleanor’s balcony, but this year the option is nixed as Dave has rather inconsiderately moved out and I keep meaning and failing to catch up with the elusive Eleanor. I did weigh up the thought of watching it on the cold grass inside the stadium, but after last night’s excess and excitement, that appeals rather less. So tonight the emphasis is on warmth and an early night, possibly with a few fireworks glimpsed through the skylight.

The election, of course, was wonderful. Dan, Sam and myself convened on Ant’s new flat for a delicious Roast dinner and wiled away the pre-election hours by listening to Throbbing Gristle and watching the telly on mute. Adverts, in particular, were a delight; no matter how bucolic or serene it may otherwise be, no advert can survive a soundtrack of the Gristle’s ‘His Arm Was Her Leg’ without being rendered impossibly sinister.

That done, we dashed over to the Shakespeare’s Head for a few drinks before retreating to the flat to watch Obama romp home. Of course, it took a bloody age, and we ran so completely out of alcohol that we were driven to contact Brighton’s own Booze Brothers (men who deliver alcohol to drunks in the middle of the night) who, sadly, were otherwise engaged, leading Sam to make the desperate decision to race back to Compton Avenue to get some more wine. By about half four or so it was unarguably clear that Obama had won, and we watched with glee as the last States fell. It was a genuinely amazing, delightful thing to witness and watching I felt privileged, as if I were an actor in the drama unfolding, simply by virtue of being able to look on and cheer. Hurrah for Obama.

Have a lovely Bonfire night.

Tags: america, drinking, friends

birthday fun

Posted 06 Oct 2008 — by Jonathan
Category Books, Observations

- It’s two o’clock in the morning the day after my birthday, and I am standing in Dan’s bedroom with my arms flailing around. To my right, Dan is doing the same. Victoria stands opposite, and she is bent double with laughter. Eva is shouting “Now!” at me. At that moment an inflatable globe hits from me, as if from nowhere, square in the face. The room flashes repeatedly from dark to light.

- My birthday is passed now, and my hangover fully faded, so I can look back objectively on another really pleasant anniversary spent in the company of my friends. On Friday I went for a quick drink with AS and Rich, which was ace, and met up with Dan, Morgan and Ant too before I dashed out for dinner with Siobhan, and then on Saturday night pretty much my whole group of friends accompanied me out to the Crescent for a night of drinking and cheering – and lots of lovely and extremely well-chosen present-giving, too.

- Lots of bird-related presents this year, which is wonderful. I appear to be fast developing a reputation as the bird-man of Brighton, although I think it vital that I point out that my love of my feathered friends is primarily aesthetic and cultural rather than ornithological; but Ant hit the nail on the head exactly with his present, Graeme Gibson’s ‘The Bedside Book Of Birds’, which is the most beautiful anthology of poems, stories and illustrations pertaining to the amazing little animals. That may sound boring to some, but it’s not, so anyone with an interest should scurry to the bookshop in search of a copy immediately. Elsewhere, I got a host of amazing pressies, including wonderful books from AS, Vic and Andrew and a CD from Dan which I’ve been listening to all evening; ‘Nigeria Rock Special’, which is a bewildering and brilliant compilation of psychedelic afro-rock and jazz-funk from 1970s Nigeria. Ace.

- At the end of the night we raided the late-night shops for cheap beer and repaired to Dan’s; from which point on I only remember so much – fetching Ant a glass of water when he’d drunk too much, Ant throwing a tube of pringles at me, dancing to Blur with Ant in Dan’s room. And lots of other cool things which didn’t involve being drunk with Ant.

- And now we discover the strobe lights. Dan bought them for a party, so we position one at either end of the room, turn the effect to slow and switch off the lights. What remains is just a series of stills; four or five of us throwing a ball around and watching it shudder across the room, one moment visible and the next obscured. Perhaps three times out of ten someone will catch it. We holler and whoop and laugh, and miss again. I don’t mind getting older one bit.

Tags: birds, Books, friends, Observations

overtired speculation

Posted 12 Sep 2008 — by Jonathan
Category Uncategorized

I stop being impressed by temperature once it goes above 100 degrees centigrade. Any hotter is just boastful, don’t you think? It’s like when footballers get paid £150,000 a week; I just blink, uncomprehending. The train which caught fire in the Channel Tunnel apparently reached temperatures as high as a thousand centigrade, I just read. But I can’t imagine there could be anything hotter than, say, 500 hundred centigrade. It’s surely just showboating. You can tell I didn’t excel at science at school.

My friends Sam and Laura moved to Paris on Wednesday. I thought something was up with Sam when we said goodbye, and he was shouting “come and stay anytime, whenever you like, tell your friends!”. That’s funny, I thought – he really does want us all to come and stay with him. Weird.

I didn’t know then, of course, that he was planning on shutting the tunnel behind him, so now there’s no way through.

Tags: friends, paris

the thoughtful left

Posted 23 Jul 2008 — by Jonathan
Category Politics

Just a quick post to voice a bit of praise for some really excellent posting over at the Bloggers4Labour site recently; a year or two ago Andrew seemed mired in the recriminations over Iraq and the Euston Manifesto, unable to air his thoughts without being barracked by unfriendly critics on the one hand and unable to resist provoking more approbrium on the other. Thoughtful posts were slagged off mercilessly, and deliberately provocative posts flamed the tension. Towards the end of last year the site suddenly went quiet and Andrew turned his attention elsewhere.

Since his return a month or two ago it’s been evident that the break did him good. He’s always written well on complex political ideas, and he’s always shown an instinct to swim against the tide, but he seems to have found a way to express challenging ideas more evenly and less confrontationally (for the most part), widening his focus and thinking to Labour’s future in increasingly creative ways. There are a still a few trolls lurking in the comment boxes, but it’s getting harder to pigeonhole his ideas and harder still to find a better or more open-minded Labour blogger. He’s well worth a vote in Iain Dale’s competition to find the best UK political blogs.

Anyway, the purpose of this post – and yes, he is a friend, and a birthday boy today to boot – is not to big him up but rather to link to a few of his recent posts, not all of which I necessarily agree with, but all of which have given me much pause for thought in recent days. I think – and Andrew may correct me if I’m wrong – that his purpose in blogging is to force people to think carefully about what it is they believe, and confront the possibility that they may be wrong. If I’m right, then he’s doing his job perfectly. Even if he is still wrong about Iraq!

Here a few choice examples from recent days and weeks:

Here he is, defending secondary action, where one union goes on strike to express support for another:

Let’s put it this way: in the UK, the right to join, and campaign within, a trade union (or any group) is a right due to all individuals. The rights of a trade union come through being a vessel for individuals to exercise their rights, providing the union acts democratically, and providing also that individuals who don’t agree with their union’s actions are not penalised – for example, by being coerced to support a strike that the majority have approved (unions must adhere to this latter provision, I’m less sure that members always feel bound by it.)

So the individual’s right is to enjoy a relationship with a union, with individual secondary action simply an application of that existing right. Though they will be affected in practice by individuals’ actions, employers are irrelevant to the question of individuals’ rights, as are the employers of the friends and “comrades” the individual chooses to support for whatever reason. The union’s secondary action rights are plainly an aggregation of the rights of their members, democratically expressed.

Critics might say: “where will it end, if unions can strike on the basis of sympathy with others, rather than distinct disputes?” This sounds very much like a “rights, but only so far” argument. Rights are there to be pushed as far as they will go. If they can’t be pushed, they’re worthless, and at the very same time, they cease to be rights.

Here he is again braving the contentious waters of foreign affairs, saying ‘death to sovereignty’.

Screw solidarity, and screw sovereignty. What I look forward to is a world where the level of power one exerts over a population is proportionate to the level of punishment due to that person when the population suffers at their hand, or due to their neglect. A world where politicians (almost literally) live in fear of their people, not vice versa; and where sovereignty is invested in populations, not in greedy, corrupt, murderous, propaganda-wielding regimes.

I’m not condemning patriotism, or suggesting that ‘national identity’ is on the wane, just that the price people pay for their state operating a distinct set of political values, for politicians who look and sound like them, and for restrictions on their moving from one state to another, varies from the merely expensive at one end to impoverishing and brutalising at the other. State sovereignty is simply too high a price for people to pay, even if they did have a choice.

So I propose powerful international institutions that have precedence and authority over all national governments, that adhere to universal values, offer universal human rights, and which are prepared to use all means at their disposal – those of their member (ex-?) states, and the international corporations present within them – to overwhelm and subsume those states that defend their own rights over their people

And on ‘nudging’ people towards voting:

The argument here is that if the electorate believe that others are not bothering – for any of the myriad of good/explicable/plausible-sounding reasons that politicians have proposed – it’s easier to justify not voting either; voting seems less and less like part of one’s responsibility to society, and more like something exceptional – the action of a political activist, for example.

So if you believe that society is healthier if turnouts are very high (I’m sure I’d agree) then don’t:

- Bleat about the electoral system or the nature of the political parties (which are not uniquely bad in the UK).
- Simply appeal to civic virtue, expecting people to look at their consciences.
- Punish non-voting.
- Devise strategies to make it ‘cheaper and easier’ to vote.

And lastly, going against the grain on the issue of closing the pay gap between men and women:

Before we look at the evidence, what about the principle? To be honest, I don’t think I care whether men and women – across the entire economy – earn either the same average wage or income. Though the kind of people who audit companies don’t have to be so crude, us lot use average income as a statistic to guide us to instances of exploitation, injustice, and thwarted ambitions. Those are the things we care about, not the average itself, surely?

There’s loads more challenging, interesting, unarguable and occasionally maddening comment at the site – go take a look.

Tags: blogging, friends, Politics

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