#145 Wanted

Dear reader,
I'm looking for pics of interesting street inspection covers, a bit like this one. So if you are wandering around in London, Paris, Chicago or Batu Lumbang (or anywhere else that has pavements) and can snap a cover, please mail me. Thanks!

#144 Its a Gross!

Happy Holidays from us.

#143 spot the difference

Four Number One version 2

#142 third four

#141 Gaudi door

Carrie, Jay & Mascha in Barcelona.
(not by Mr Gaudi's front door)

#140 Eight Chairs - all done

Finally finished being a re-upholstery man.
Chair number 8 is done. Phew.

#139 Carrie's Door

From a series of Other People's Front Doors - Carrie's door in Barcelona.

#138 Four Squares - numbers 1 & 2

These are the first two bunch of images that are grouped together in fours.

#137 Tom in Barcelona

[Disclaimer - Nothing to do with me]















Night Time Diving
Tom (in white T-shirt) and some of his work mates before jumping into a swimming pool - the same pool that was the venue for the Barcelona Olympic diving events - apparently it was a bit cold!

#136 Gerry Mulligan

Four of us went to El Vergel to hear some Jazz,
a quartet playing Gerry Mulligan scores.













From left to right:
Francisco Blanco - Valencia - Baritone saxophone
Jordí Vilá - Cataluña - Bass
Jeff Jerolamon - New York - Drums
Paul Evans - London - Trumpet

Little girl - El Vergel - Being naughty
Other girl - El Vergel - Glasses
Régine Dagoret de Boisgisson - France - Our neighbour
Chelo Perez Fernandez - Dénia - Conversation partner
Sally Lillie - Sleaford (Lincs) - Everything

#135 Judy's Door

From a series of Other People's Doors.
Sally's sister, Judy, made the stained glass windows for this interior door in her house.

#134 To London

We went to London for a few days. Here we are in Covent Garden; Me, Sally and my Mum. When I was a little boy my mother seemed bigger than me . . . . she must be shrinking.


















Next day, Sally, Jay and I walked along by the river and came upon a sculpture by a friend of ours, Karen Richmond. You can stand/lie on it and reflect on the travails of modern life, if you want.

Then we had a tour of Tate Modern. The entrance hall is fitted with some twirly slides (I didn't go on - might have been a bit too much fun).













Across the wobbly footbridge you can see St Paul's Cathedral and, back inside, one of my favourite pictures, Picasso's Three Dancers. I once made a T shirt for a triathlon using this picture as the logo. It's also on my Purple Square series - check the Flickr link on the right.










I pressed the fire control . . .
and ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky.

















. . . . . and then we looked at a nice Asian lady in Tooting and her shop full of shoes.

#133 Crevé neuf

#132 Rice Ride

We went for a mountain bike ride around the rice fields in the Parc Natural de la Marjal de Pego-Oliva.

You don't immediately think of Spain as being a rice growing country, but our region of Valencia has plenty of rice - that's why they make so much paella!

#131 Soy Cuba

We went to see Soy Cuba.
It's a Russian film, made in Cuba, in 1964.

It's a bit triste but the cinematography is terrific. One long tracking shot starts with a party and a roof top 'beauty parade', then goes down the outside of the building, passes through sunbathers sipping cocktails and finishes underwater in the swimming pool.

In the story the Castro revolution is just beginning and in one scene a sympathiser's home is bombed. You don't actually see the plane, I imagine they didn't have enough in the budget, but it sounded real enough!

The film is rather long at 2:20 - but, if you like, you can find just the party sequence on YouTube.

#130 I want to live like common people

She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge,
She studied sculpture at Saint Martin's College - that's where I caught her eye.
She told me that her Dad was loaded,
I said in that case I'll have a rum and coca-cola,
She said fine (and in thirty seconds time) she said,
"I want to live like common people,
I want to do whatever common people do,
I want to sleep with common people
I want to sleep with common people like you".
Well what else could I do - I said "I'll see what I can do".
















Words by Pulp. Miss Olympia by Claude Monet.

#129 Mirrorman

I'm sorry to have to admit, but we have half of Australia's Great Barrier Reef decorating one of our mirrors.

Like the pony skin chairs, the tigron and kimono-dragon fur shooting jacket and the ivory chopsticks that we might have in our house, we didn't know they were verboten.

Sorry - we're going to put them all back ;-)

#128 Call that Art?

Crevé wheat

#126 Chairs, Chairs and More Chairs.

I'm just starting to recover our Josef Hoffmann dinning chairs. We tracked down some Hoffmann designed material (couldn't get the original design), bought foam rubber, felt, glue, staples, tape and got to work.

On the left is the first one recovered - only seven more to do!

















I'm a bit worried about the condition of our two Le Corbusier Dossier Basculant easy chairs (they were designed in 1928 but ours are a bit newer). I think they are covered in pony skin, which is, apparently, not permitted these days - are ponies an endangered species?

MANYA: (Angry) When I was a little girl in Poland, we all had ponies. My sister had pony, my cousin had pony . . . . . So, what's wrong with that?
JERRY: Nothing. Nothing at all. I was just merely expressing. . . . . .















Our Charles Rennie Mackintosh Hill House chair seems to be all right - that's 'cos no one ever sits on it :-)


















. . . . and finally, some bird - said her name was Venus - came round and said Diego Velázquez sent her, and could she lie on our Hoffmann sofa for a bit and look in the mirror.