O hai

Veeeeery swift update – last couple of weeks or so (I say couple of weeks, it wasn’t that organised) has been mostly rediscovering the art, or at least discovering the art of writing essays. I’ve mostly been going down the argumentative, nitpicking route, which I think I’m supposed to.

So not much of the old blogging, but hopefully now I’ve found my feet I’d like to be a bit more organised a blogger. We’ll see. Probably that just means avoiding reading lengthy articles on postmodernism and marxism, which is nice. I have a new favourite geographer for now as well, which I never thought I’d find myself saying.

I’m writing this on a tiny computer – an eeePC from amazon – £118? Thank you please. I’m catching up after my day off spent cookshop shopping in Dulwich and Blackheath,but until next time, tara for now.

This week I have mostly been reading.

It’s fairly standard practice for bloggers to apologise on a regular basis for not posting enough, so I’m not going to bother really. I’ve got better things to do than blogging at the moment, and they mostly seem to revolve around reading. Also, there’s reading and some more reading, then lectures where we’re told that we ought to read more carefully. So this week I’ve been bringing myself up to speed on the world/global city hypothesis of John Friedmann and Saskia Sassen, and a bit of Doreen Massey; gentrification in Barnsbury and Wandsworth, via Loretta Lees (who was supposed to be teaching my course, but is on sabbatical. I don’t feel I’m missing out though, her replacement is a dude); the environmental justice movement courtesy of David Harvey (I’ve decided I ♥ Marxist geographers) and the philosophies of science via Chalmers and Sherlock Holmes.

It’s been a full week so far, I think it would be fair to say, but it would be also reasonable to say that it’s been really great fun. I never got to do the proper university business first time round, so this time I’ve been stowing myself away in little booths in the Maughan library clocktower, and downloading journal articles left right and centre. This morning I even hacked it to Wood Green library and installed myself in their (somewhat chilly) quiet study area with Nick Cave for company. It’s been great. I love having the excuse to buy/read/borrow piles of books – representative samples this week would include Doreen Massey’s World City, Chris Hamnett’s (who is teaching me) Unequal City, and my latest acquisition, Owen Hatherley’s Militant Modernism, which I shall be reading on the way down to a field trip to the Ferrier Estate tomorrow to put myself in the mood for some blasted brutalism. In a few weeks I can get away with going to a lunchtime lecture on the death of neoliberalism by Slavoj Zizek as well (so cool he not only has a movie about him but also a journal of Zizek studies), the world is truly my lobster.

My head is squished full

I’ve completed a week of my Masters now, and I’m knackered. My head is more full than I can ever remember. It’s nice being able to think though – it’s not something I’ve had a lot of opportunity for in recent years.

But tell me this: does every MA need this much reading? Good grief! I don’t know what I was expecting exactly but I’ve got to read somewhere in the region of 15 articles, chapters etc. per week: critically of course, with understanding, to be able to contribute to a debate. I need to write a little essay each week then there’s another couple of actual assignments due by the end of October. I’ve got field trips to, um, Kidbrooke, and you name it. All sorts of laffs. I’ll make no usual blogger-style apologies for not posting much – if you want to know when I update the blog, just subscribe in an RSS reader.

stovold’s 2nd amendment to the standard convention (1972)

I had the opportunity to go and watch the recording of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue on Saturday. It was hardly round the corner, entailing a trip to Cheltenham but that at least meant that I could tie in a visit to the Lickey Hills for blackberrying (and one bilberry) and to Six Ways to watch some rugby. I came to the conclusion that Philippe would approve of all the hugging, and it’s a bit fascinating the shhh-ing that goes around the stadium just before a conversion. Fascinating.

Anyway, on to Cheltenham - as Jack Dee says, it’s the gateway to Cirencester. The show took place at the Centaur theatre at the racecourse – we all herded in and took our place in some distinctly uncomfortable seats, and then proceeded to laugh solidly for about two hours. For the most part, I was laughing whilst rubbing my cheeks to stop them aching, and that’s no word of exaggeration.

Jack Dee hosted, and while he’s not Humph, he’s at least a consummate professional and there was no need to rerecord any lines for seven hours. Alongside was my favourite, Barry Cryer (who gave a wonderful rendition of Purple People Eater while trying to sync with the original track), Jeremy Hardy (who’s rock-starish introduction to Come On Eileen was the height of absurdity – though as he said, music is his life), Graeme Garden (I originally wrote he and Tim off as filler, but really they were the best bit) and Tim Brooke-Taylor (another former Goodie, and one who had to bow his head in shame at the lack of subtlety in his own innuendos at times).

Worth an admirable mention of course was Colin Sell on piano, Samantha keeping score (or not, exactly) and the wonderfully BBC Jon Naismith producing, introducing and operating the hi-tech laser system which tells the audience what to hum into their kazoos.

It’s all utterly daft, but utterly wonderful. While it’s such a shame that I never saw it with Humph, still it’s retained everything else that makes the show so much fun, and this is a fond memory.

It’s Not Like The Movies

I’ll make this clear at the very beginning: I never disliked Kid A. It was a good record, I just wasn’t really in the right place to make the most of it upon its release. OK Computer I devoured, just as I did when I first heard The Bends, and just as I did when In Rainbows came out; but there’s an unaccountable gap in there. When Kid A was released in 2000, I was more likely to buy a Therapy? album, or Metallica, or NoFX, or something of that ilk. I certainly wasn’t looking for a dense, intricate burst of digital noise and wailing.

And so I gave the album several cursory listens – I tried, I promise – but I just couldn’t get into it. So when Amnesiac followed, I paid little attention, and Hail To The Thief also failed to capture my attention. But yesterday, I was walking alongside the Brunswick centre to Skoob with How To Disappear Completely approaching its finale, and it just clicked. The surreal, martian façade of the shopping centre, with cars appearing from underground in my peripheral vision, the bright white of the apartments sparkling in the bright sun and bright blue sky, with things happening at every angle at which I could look, to a soundtrack of synthesized, beautiful cacophony… It was a little epiphanous really.

I think it’s more of a build-up to a point, really – a few weeks ago I spent an enjoyable evening being taught the various beauties of Radiohead videos, and they really are beautiful. The music fits in so much better with abstract visuals. The album is all very lovely and subtle and not bombastic, not nearly as pretentious as I’d thought, and every bit as gorgeous as Radiohead have always been.

**************

Today’s my last day on the job. I’ve just been taken for lunch, where I had to pay for my own food – somewhat different to when I first started and they seemed to be buying me dinners at every opportunity. I guess now’s the right time!

I have the card to prove it.

My work this week (that I have assigned to myself in order to avoid even duller) is to pick through a 5000 record Access database and pull out records from it by essentially counting them manually. And still I don’t care: from today, as mentioned on Monday, I am officially a postgraduate student and studying for an MA (or maybe an MSc) at King’s College, London. I’ll be back to posting various tidbits sometime soon no doubt, but for now, I’m taken up with various tying up of loose ends at the office (I have two days to do this. Two!) and organising myself for next week. Tis all extremely exciting.

Master of all I survey

I’ve just returned from my very first session at Kings for the Masters degree I’m starting. It’s pretty exciting: there was slabs for dead bodies, and men with animations of sand dunes, that sort of thing. I’m really in the mood for this now: my last day of employment for the next year is on Friday, and then on Monday I’ll be starting lectures on subjects like conceptualising the city, urban sustainability and the like.

It’s far removed from what I’ve done before, a rigidly linear progression through a curriculum of sound engineering that taught me few transferable life skills, but did ensconce me in an industrial chic styled bunker in the butt end of Islington for two years. Compared to that, this is a completely separate thing: whereas before the written references were from a library one shelf long, I now have the Maughan library at my disposal and all the expertise of an actually really good university at my disposal. I have the choice to tailor my course to my interests, and to use my brain for the first time in about eight years – I was especially cheered by the expression that the masters tutor used, that there’s nothing descriptive, all critical. It’s thinking!

I suppose this is a bit first-step-of-the-rest-of-my-life, which is interesting. Presumably I’ll soon be waffling on at you about the new urbanism, gentrification, housing policy and the like, you lucky people.

Local history

Doing anything this weekend? You should. If you’re local to the Tottenham, Wood Green, Edmonton etc. area, Brook Street Chapel on Tottenham High Road is having an open afternoon to look around the historic building. It’s a fairly rare opportunity, and should be very interesting, linking as it does Dr Barnado with Hudson Taylor, Luke Howard and other local celebrity types.

Full details here.

And after that fear, could we be guaranteed that we would never be returned to a state of loneliness again?

I was pretty much cracking up reading the Telegraph’s list of Dan Brown’s 20 worst sentences, pointed out by d4d. It is frankly hilarious. I’ve never read Dan Brown, nor do I plan to, and this only encapsulates why. I quote:

17. Deception Point, chapter 8: Overhanging her precarious body was a jaundiced face whose skin resembled a sheet of parchment paper punctured by two emotionless eyes.

It’s not clear what Brown thinks ‘precarious’ means here.

My usual thought is always, when Foucault’s Pendulum exists, why would Dan Brown even bother?

Edward Carey

I’ve just finished Observatory Mansions, by Edward Carey. It’s apparently not that well-known a book, and it certainly wasn’t for me, but it really should be. Eery, calm, gentle, disturbing, all apply. Carey’s style is clipped and short, with nothing superfluous, yet the characters are just as rounded by revealing scraps of information, as other writers manage by overloading the description (Brown). Highly recommended by me. Not sure what’s next, but see the RSS feed on the side of the page there, that’s to a new tumblelog to catalogue what I’m reading, so have a look there.

Reviews of Observatory Mansions here, here, here, autobiography here, interview with Carey here.

Thrift

Alongside becoming a student, there are certain attendant lifestyle changes, and the bulk of these are fiscal. I’m not talking about Raskolnikov levels here, but there’s going to have be a few changes. The car is the big one, of course, but as significant is changing my eating/shopping habits.

We’ve recently overhauled these things round my gaff. Before, we did what we saw as our best, which was doing a weekly shop in Aldi (c.£35-40 for two people, per week) then supplementing from other shops what we couldn’t (or wouldn’t) get there: meat particularly, but also more standard things towards the end of each week. There’d usually also be a takeaway or two in there, plus snacks to bulk out a packed lunch. Totalled up, that’s maybe £70+ per week on just food.

Obviously, this couldn’t last. Now we’ve instituted a weekly menu: i.e., what we’re going to eat is decided on Saturday and our shopping is done accordingly, and exactly. We make big, big panfuls of deliciousness, so adding to bulk buy economies of scale. So, we’ve now got the weekly food budget down to £40 for everything. This means: occasional trips to the supermarket to take advantage of special offers, but we have to remain strict – juice, tins etc., and no treats; a trip to the veg stall at Wood Green market for salad and our 5 a day; butchers at the market for a big pile of meat; and that’s about it. The range and diversity of our cooking is no less, it’s just all cooked on Saturday or Sunday, tubbed up and labelled and frozen, to come out for lunch or dinner every day.

Besides the saving, there’s also fringe benefits: no cooking every night now, much diminished washing up, and I can even afford to buy meat from my affable Tottenham butcher (with who I’m now on first name terms, which is odd). I also have a pile more time in the evening, which is good, as I’m also taking steps to become generally more organised in my time-management skillz. Good times.