Leonard Bernstein doing the vacuuming with the lights off.

I need a picture to keep things interesting.



From http://www.steroelab.co.uk

Currently listening to Emperor Tomato Ketchup which is true space jazz. I meant to bring the John Peel session recordings of OMD but it has got lost somewhere in the house. I listened to it last night. OMD have become the beacon of my early eighties existence. "Souvenir" makes me cry because of the memories associated with it - a very apt name as well? And Julia's song. It all brings back half-remembered images of rain and college and bedsit blues. I watched all my schoolmates go through fetishes for a progression of various bands from Led Zeppelin to Spandau Ballet via the Sex Pistols but the Kraftwerky electronic New wave was my thing. Julian Cope - go there. Which reminds me - "The Modern Antiquarian" - go there too. The book is a beautiful object - a vital and academic tome. We visited Callanish one summer. We went during the day first and it was very busy, though even then we found it quite spiritual. That maybe just the internal feelings created by the thought of the distance in time between it being built and you actually seeing it but it was there nonetheless. Of course, I wanted to photograph it without all the people there and attempted to take all the pictures when people were hidden behind the stones. In the end I got fed up and we decided to come back very early one morning (we were staying about 20 miles away) and we got there on one of the few overcast days of our entire holiday. I took loads of black and white photos trying very hard to get the exposures correct. I was happy. When we got home and had the pictures developed we had about three films worth of Callanish and spookily, not one of them had any people in them; I had managed to avoid everyone. Maybe that detracts from the real purpose, obviously I thought that loads of 20th century people would not be cool enough for such an ancient monument.

Here is one of the pictures I took. (A Join-up as you can see)





From - http://www.bbc.co.uk/homeground/the_village_in_the_stones.shtm

I watched a program about Avebury called "The Village in The Stones". I knew that some of the stones had been re-constructed but I didn't realise the extent to which the whole village had been re-modelled in order to set the stones in an environment like that when they were erected. Some of the Villagers who were moved just before and after the war are still quite bitter about what Alexander Keiller and, after him, the National Trust did to Avebury.

Just look at the difference between Julian Cope's website and The National Trust's. I support the National Trust - sometimes - but they are a bit old-fashioned. History is about the people who lived in houses - not the houses and definitely NOT rows of supposedly genuine jars of Lavender Oil and Olde Worlde Fudge. Of course, the Elizabethans had nothing better to do than bath with Lavender Oil and eat Fudge. Having said that, "Treats from the Edwardian House" with Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall looks good tonight, though why a firm of solicitors has decided to make a film about early 20th century food is beyond me.

Belle et La Vie