Got on a ferry to the Isle Of Wight. Good framing device, ferry windows.
Then to sunny Ventnor for classic beach fun. Beach hut and two deck chairs, £7.50 a day.
Stayed at the Luccombe Hall hotel in Shanklin. Not great to be honest. But it had these splendid in-room radios tuned only to Radio Solent. And a very nice outside pool.
There is simply nothing like chucking stones in the sea.
The sea is this big.
Decided to walk round the congestion zone. It's further than you'd think, about 15 miles. And
a lot of it is kind of unregarded bits of London. Biggish roads, not much happening. But there's interesting stuff in the detail.
I've always liked this block on the Euston/Marylebone Road. The flats with the garage on the ground floor. I can imagine Lord Peter Whimsey or Bertie Wooster pulling in to refuel before heading down to Blandings or somewhere.
The Dorchester Plane.
This is that strange construction at the south end of Vauxhall bridge. A huge rocket launching device pointing straight at MI6. Surely our intelligence failures aren't that dramatic that we can't spot such an obvious Smersh ploy?
I thought the Richardsons ruled South London.
Good sign on a disused bike shop.
Hairdresser windows are like museums of hairstyles. Why don't they ever get updated?
I like this. Layers and layers of information all leaving faint traces but no meaning.
I love this place. Sitting on the Kennington Lane a restaurant that thinks it's at the seaside. It's mad and it knows it is.
I think I remember the shopping centre's on its way out. I don't supposed it'll be hugely lamented by anyone, but at least it was a useful landmark, and it had an insane kind of ambition.
A great sign.
Two shopfronts down by Spitalfields Market. Shame they're just fronts now. At least, I've never seen Dino's open.
Do you think he's really called Peter?
Just urban stuff.
This is probably by someone famous.
The Castle Snack bar. Going in agoodplaceforacupofteaandathink shortly.
Ended up at the VG Snack Bar, Great Portland Street.
Visited the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square. Great place. And free. Arthur's into swords at the moment because of Peter Pan so we thought he'd like these:
He took his notepad to do some sword sketching.
They let you try on helmets.
This is a good step in the expansive cultural canon plan. None of us know nothing about greek myths, but this book is the answer, and Arthur loves it.
Can you believe it? Greece won.
Nice, simple day spent with friends in Wandsworth. Four boys all of roughly the same age having a ton of fun together. Finlay, Arthur and the twins. Get them a dog and they could be an Enid Blyton gang.
Arthur and Finlay in scary masks from the British Museum.
Urban pooh sticks on Wandsworth Common.
Looking for trains in the crack on the railway bridge.
Getting breath back with Jen and Steff.
Tried my aquapac with my old ipod while swimming this morning. Relieves the tedium a bit. Been swimming every morning this week. Pleased with that.
Then coffee with Neil. Made some more ringtones and then made some t-shirts on cafepress.
Here are some of the ringtones. They're small, quick to listen to:
We bought Arthur this great Miroslav Sasek book yesterday as recommended by i like. He loved it. And today he wanted to go and see the mummies it describes. So after nursery we got on our bikes and went around to the British museum, book in hand. Very enjoyable. Slavsasek shows you a London that's gone. In fact that probably never was. But it's a London that Arthur's starting to really like - from books like this and watching the Disney Peter Pan and stuff.
Went to see Russian Landscapes In The Time of Tolstoy at the National Portrait Gallery with Anne. Mostly because Anne wanted to. Nothing in that title appeals to me really. But it wasn't bad. We both wanted the pictures to be a lot bigger. And you could tell they were good because they were exactly what you'd expect to find on a cafe wall. I liked this sign too. Couldn't have taken my mum to this then.
Burnt off some male shopping calories at Motor Books around the back of St Martins Lane.
Tobacconists seem to be the last bastions of retail tradition.
Spent the rest of the day messing around with cubase, trying to get everything wired up again, make it all work.
Greece 1 - Czech Republic 0
Great day. Arthur and I went to Legoland.
Lego seems at its most convincing when it's doing really ancient stuff. To me anyway.
Portugal 2 - Holland 1
An aimless day of flaneuring (that's probably not a word) around St. James and Victoria. With some good cafes through in.
Starting with a look around the new asprey store on Bond Street. Didn't like it much, they're doing a similiar thing to Ralph Lauren around the corner - a stately home where everything's for sale - but it's much less appealing. I do like this bike though. Where would you have to live that you could just ride around town on one of these? Monte Carlo?
Then I went to see the FIFA 100 thing at the Royal Acadamy. Wasn't expecting much. Interested to see it as a further demonstration of football's complete cultural dominance. But it was actually pretty good. Big rooms. Big art. Nothing overly clever.
There was quite a lot of constanation when I was there because someone had just vandalised the Beckham shot. (I particularly like this report in the Mirror - speculating that the scrawl of 'you loosers' was a reference to Rebecca Loos. Yeah right.) All the guards/attendants were glaring at me most suspiciously. Perhaps they realised that my spelling ain't that great either.
Then down to Victoria and lunch at the delicious Wilkins vegetarian cafe. There are load of great untouched cafes in Victoria. It must be because the place never changes - all those institutions and government departments mean that the same kind of people have always lived and worked there. So the patterns of need and demand don't change. And there's not huge gentrification booms and rent hikes and stuff. Or not. I dunno. I just know that I'm going to be exploring the cafes of Victoria/Pimllico.
Then to Tate Britain and the brilliant Michael Landy house. I love the way this looks in the venerable old Tate.
I went around the Art Of The Garden thing too, which was alright. This was the best thing - The Gerrard Winstanley Radical Gardening Space Reclamation Mobile Field Center and Weather Station (European Chapter) 2000 by Nils Norman. What's happening to me - vegetarian cafes and radical utopian art? I work in advertising for God's sake. This sabbatical is lasting too long.
Then off to the Regency Cafe - a fantastic art deco place. Then we dropped Arthur off at Alfie's because me and Anne both went to the launch of the same thing - We Are What We Do - which we've both been contributing our efforts to. Anne more than me.
Then, as a treat, we took Arthur for tea to Yo Sushi! (which he calls Lunch Go Round and Round, which is a much better name.)
Started the day with a delicious bacon roll at Bar Italia.
Outside the chippy on Old Compton Street. Looks somewhat disreputable, more like a Dutch chip enjoying a joint. And the severed limb doesn't help. Still, I think there should generally be more large scale personifications of your product.
Then to Bon Appetit on Cleveland Street which is fantastic.
That's basically what I need to know. Hangovers and heart health.
Then Arthru and I went to the RAF museum at Hendon. A suggestion of Steve Bowbrick's. Had a great time.
I'm a big fan of RAF information design. More businesses should try and get lots of information on one big board that everyone can see. Too much crucial stuff is hidden in Powerpoint documents on hard-drives. Big, phyiscal information display. That'll be the saviour of British industry.
A bringing a helicopter in to land. Got a little dicey up there for a while.
Sometimes it must have been hard for the RAF to look impressive. Especially if there were Americans looking.
Fun catching parachutes.
Ace cafe on the way home.
We started the day with a drive around the living room.
Then off to the Derbyshire County Show, traditionally a huge disappointment. Not so bad this year. There were some tractors.
And the JCB dancing diggers. Arthur liked them afterwards, but at the time he was worried by the bangs.
Czech Republic 3 - Denmark 0