Russell Davies

I'm Ben

This is the first time that my Starbucks name “Ben” has failed. pic.twitter.com/hD2ney0BQe

— Andrew Hart (@AndrewProjDent) July 17, 2018

I do this too. I didn't realise it was a common thing. Coffee shops must think there's a lot more people called Ben than there are. That'll mess with their big data.

I do it because saying 'Russell' almost always gets a 'sorry?' from the name-taker. Saying my own name is most often when my accent comes back, and since a Derby accent mostly involves muttering gloomily into your chest people are inclined to hear it as Ross or Throttle.

I've always thought Ben was fool-proof, it's always worked for me. Short. Unambiguous. But I guess it's also pretty generic and easy to swap out for another Default Man Name.

This Week 2

I seem to have written some actual blog posts this week, so I may have burned all my blog calories already. But, still, that's the point of weeknotes - persist.

Inspired by Pete Ashton I have started something on blot. I like it. I'm using it as a way of taking notes for things I might blog about, but might not. Only RSSists will be able to follow, so it's always going to have a tiny audience. Hurrah.

As you'll see from the notes on there I have a blog post brewing about energy monitoring. Maybe that'll be next week.

We went to see the public sculpture which always precedes Freize in Regents Park. Some we liked, some we didn't. We were, however, captured by the language used in the descriptions, somehow even more fruity than usual.

I'm always intrigued by the little language tricks that writers use to get this stuff flowing, to get out of the literal and into the metaphorical / nonsensical. Here it's "drawing on X, Y exposes the limits of Z"

"Alludes to..."

"Invite viewers to.."

"Explore" "Confront"

"Explores the psychological resonance"

"Investigates notions"

This sort of thing reminds me of what I think of as 'the Ackroyd Turn' - that ability to slip from talking about something being like something to talking about it actually being that thing. To go from saying the Thames is like a Mother to the Thames Is A Mother, without us noticing the shift. (And making it easy to get another 6 pages of lyrical nonsense away.)

Here's a classic example from Iain Sinclair: "But just as estate agents treat edgeland artists and warehouse communalists as pilot fish for fresh territory, so alphabet-soup quangos plot major regime change for the land beneath London. The shielding fences around the Olympic site, the giant construction projects in Shoreditch and London Bridge, are aped by the shacks knocked up to hide the scooping out of bigger and better basements."

Just as X, so Y - textbook. It lets him imply that it's somehow sinister that the fences used around construction sites are similar to the fences around other construction sites. 

Applause hammer

The stand-out moment, for me, in the History of Jazz podcast, was the little aside about the 'applause hammers' at The Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic. It just seemed so odd and inventive.

Without much hope or expectation I stuck some relevant search terms into an eBay watch and then after a year or so of waiting up popped a hammer.

Of which I am now the proud owner.

I'm not sure what to do with it, obvs. Maybe take it to Ronnie Scotts.

Whole earth fashion

I'm increasingly stuck in my own bundle of interests. Not noticing new things, but noticing connections between the old ones. I don't really know how to write about those things, so I'm going to start noting down the fragments and then maybe do some sort of cyber crazy wall essay later. This might be for a bit of wall labelled - Fashion & Authenticity

These are two moments from the splendid Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style by W. David Marx:

“IN AUGUST 1969, JUST DAYS AFTER THE WOODSTOCK MUSIC festival, illustrator Yasuhiko Kobayashi and Heibon Punch editor Jir Ishikawa walked into a Doubleday bookstore in New York City, where they came upon an entire wall covered with a single magazine. Its cover photograph showed a “blue marble” Earth floating above the moon in the blackest of outer space. The title read: “Whole Earth Catalog, access to tools.”

“Unbeknownst to the two men upon their first encounter, this magazine would not just shape Japanese fashion for the 1970s, but forever change the look of all Japanese magazines.”

Here's an example of that sort of thing:

Not as catalogue-y as some of them but you can see what it's like. I love these magazines. I used to buy all the US/UK mens style press but I never read the articles or looked at the photo spreads. I just loved the little pictures of things that had been deemed by someone the best example of that thing. Japanese people apparently took inspiration from the Whole Earth catalogue and made whole magazines out of those pages. And you feel like they really do their homework. They've actually chosen the best thing.

It reminds me of a William Gibson quote from You Can Find Inspiration In Everything. I can't find it now, but it's something like: if you want to know what's good about what your country makes, look at what the British and Japanese import. 

Sol not coal

An odd connection to coal and its cultural decline. Louis Vuitton have filled their windows with solar panels.

This Week

Matt seems to be saying I invented weeknotes. Yay me. (Or maybe I incepted* them)

Probably means I should write some.

And Phil made a good point somewhere, that I can't now find, suggesting it's a good way to make blogging easier - bundling your week up so it amounts to something bloggable. I like that.

So, this week:

I had a week off so we started in a cabin in Wales. Well, on the border. It was lovely but the bed was way too small so we migrated to a fancy hotel in Bristol.

Then to Weston Super Mare and a brilliant cafe

Thursday night we had an Old Fitzrovian's game. It was excellent though my knee begs to differ. I'm so broken down that even Walking Football is too much for me now.

And then, on Thursday night, it finally rained

Blessed relief

*Remember when people said that?

Shift

My observational habits seem to have atrophied, or at least shifted.

It's probably age. Or complacency. Or maybe I've built a life full of familiarity. But I don't notice myself noticing things any more. I don't spot new stuff like I used to.

I don't mind, especially, though it might make me less employable, because I find I have a new mental itch now - the urge to catalogue the connections between the things I've already noticed.

I find myself building enormous mental mind maps - this connects to this connects to this!

I'm entering my crazy wall phase.

Post de l'escalier

Yesterday's blog post reminded me why I do it - because as soon as I hit publish a million things I should have said immediately occur to me.

(Like how most workwear* is probably as troubling as 'coal' but it just doesn't strike me because I have no connection with those industries or communities**)

Sometimes I have to hit publish a few times before I know a thought is finished. And that's easier to do with a blog than a book.

*And, you know, camo.

**I'm sure this is not a new or original thought.

Coal

I used to be in a band that practised several nights a week above a pub in Coalville. Coalville was a mining town, the clue's in the name. It was built by the National Coal Board and they had huge facilities there. There's not much coal stuff there now.

Myself, I'm from Derby, a long way from coal fields. Derby in the 70s and 80s was all about Rolls Royce and British Rail. I only really thought about mining during the strike. Miners raising funds. The Communards. The Style Council. The extra attention the police paid to lads in vans as we drove around the East Midlands going to gigs.

But perhaps that slightly distant relationship is why I was so intrigued by this range of gear from Garbstore. Intrigued enough to buy some.

Obviously you can see how they got there; workwear is everywhere, they don't just want to do US workwear so they're investigating British industrial heritage. And they end up with the NCB.

Random thoughts:

I'm old. This is more evidence. Stuff I remember is now being resold to us as heritage.

This must be odd to see if you're actually from a mining town. Those hard, hard jobs, central to the life and livelihood of your community turned into a hip, nostalgia graphic like an old chocolate logo or a forgotten baseball team. Is it somehow inappropriate? How would you feel wearing this stuff in Coalville? I guess it's fairly minor compared to the heart being ripped out of your town.

Though, of course, it's a good logo. Stark. Brutal. Appropriate. Though I'd be surprised if anyone's working on a Unit Editions, er, edition, of the graphic work of the NCB.

And, as someone with an interest in the future of energy, I like how this underlines the fact that coal is not the future. If you were making an Adam Curtis documentary about the decline of coal you'd have shots of these shirts around the beginning of the third act - as an eerie foreshadowing of the irrelevance to come.

('Cultural' irrelevance only, of course, we're still burning a hell of a lot of it, we're just making non-British people dig ours up)

Anyway.

World cups and euros

RSS readers will be glad to see the end of the World Cup and my annoying habit of taking pictures of me watching / listening to all the games. I don't know why I do it but I do. I think it started in 2004 when I was on sabbatical during the Euros. Watched / listened to every game.

I like looking back at previous entries. It's a like a core slice through domesticity, focused on the radios and TVs we've owned.

This one's still around, though the laptop's gone:

Phone cameras were well bad back then

Not sure where this one's gone:

And then in 2012 there was a lot of mucking about with projectors:

Phone cameras were well bad back then.

Anyway.