Dear Owner,
Yesterday my cat fell out of the window and ran up to your car where it proceeded to climb into your engine. It is a new cat and is very timid and nervous of people. I beg you not to start your car before you open the bonnet or before you open the bonnet please could you phone me at my work which is just around the corner… The cat may have already disappeared but it is better to be safe than sorry.
I’ve never done any ‘Live-blogging’ on this site, primarily because I’ve never been in a situation where I thought my presence at a computer provided anything new to an event or news story in progress.
Anyway, I happen to be sitting in the Qupi Café on Leith Walk, and it seems a carnival procession is passing me by. I have my camera-phone, and I have a Bluetooth internet connection. Allow me to present The Great Leith Festival Carnival Procession LivePhotoBlog!
First up: A big yellow bus promoting Corona Beer.
One of Anthony Gormley’s Blind Light iron statues, silhouetted against the green grass of the National Theatre’s fly-tower, as sown by artists Ackroyd and Harvey.
An overfull service from Kings Cross to Edinburgh yesterday.
Despite the fact we were packed like sardines in a tin, I found the journey passed quite quickly. Probably something to do with everyone being in the same situation, which breeds a certain camaraderie. One kind family from Portsmouth even shared their chapattis with the other passengers.
Layers of sponge, layers of meaning: My mother does a fantastic line in meta-cakes. Last year, we had the Famous Blog Cake. This year, we have a representation of the theatre production I have been working on, rendered in the medium of icing and lego.
The show combines film and live performance, where the characters conjure “seventeen scenarios for the theatre”. So my birthday cake is, in fact, a rendering in icing of a rendering on film of a rendering on stage of an imagined story. That’s at least four layers, which works out at two-per sponge tier.
I particularly enjoyed the inclusion of the little man with the beard and computers, standing off-stage/cake. It is meant to be me.
In fact, I was presented with the cake by means of a short video, e-mailed to me while I was at work. Given the context, it was the perfect combination of medium and message. It is unfortunate that the sublime wit might not be apparent to anyone other than myself, but I sincerely believe it was a very clever creation.
It was the rejuvenation of London in the late seventeenth century, after the Great Fire of ’66, which moulded the character of Westminster, The City, and West End through which I now walk. But to celebrate this mess is not to say that the London of today has become stagnant. The public, authors of the city, find new uses for old spaces.
The skate park underneath the Hayward Gallery has become a much photographed hang-out for youths on two or four wheels. “That fabulous painted cavern” as a friend of mine calls it. In many respects it is just like the other venues along the South Bank, drawing audiences from out of town for a regular showcase of talent, visual and kinetic.
Nothing quite says “affluence,” like an old Burger King restaurant that has been converted into a jewellery store.
There seem to be quite extensive renovations going on outside the Royal Festival Hall at present. In past days, the Mandela sculpture had disappeared from its plinth on the South Bank.
It has now been reinstated, albeit behind a wire fence for the moment.
It’s a bit chilly out there at the moment!
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Ah, Edinburgh! This Athens of the North, this home of the Enlightenment. What perfect Sundays you provide for its denizens. Snuggled beneath a warm blanket of idleness, a shroud of irresponsibility, I am free to sit in the re-vamped Cameo Cinema Bar and take advantage of their gratis wireless, and complimentary newspapers.
And for a blogger, a 21st Century gentleman-pamphleteer, what could be a more perfect afternoon than this? I scythe through The Observer, and the myriad possibilities for unsolicited opinion leap out at me. I am spoilt for choice. I could muse on Scottish Independence, perhaps? Or comment on the USA’s relentless march towards totalitarianism? It is, in a way, surprising that Blogistan becomes so quiet at weekends. Isn’t everyone else making electronic notations on the Sunday papers?
Jasper Gerard caught my eye, with a short piece on the Countryside Alliance:
And while I opposed banning hunting as I oppose banning anything without overwhelming reason, I also suspected those who enjoyed killing for its own sake were tossers. Like deposed dictators, perhaps foxes need to be killed, but huntsmen seem to snuff out life with all the tearful regret of the Iraqi prison service.
This precisely captures my feeling. I don’t care particularly for the fox, which is a pest. But killing things for fun seems an affront to nature, and if one is going to do it then you should have the decency to eat what you have killed. This is possible when you shoot game birds, deer, or when you go fishing. But since the hounds rip up the prey beyond what is edible, I do think “hunting with dogs” is a sensible distinction to make.
Should we have banned it though? Reconciling this “illiberal liberalism” (as Gerard has it) will no doubt occupy my thoughts for the rest of the afternoon (I suspect my answer would have something to do with our laws on animal cruelty and bear-baiting). With my back to the window and the outside world, I sink deeper into this leather armchair, and philosophize.
