Skip to main content

Postcard From Home

With the end of the (financial) year coming up it was time for me take my remaining leave so here I am with a week and half off and not much planned to fill it. The idea is to get up at the same time as for work and not waste too much time on the net. Yesterday was the first day of this regime.

I eventually managed to switch off the bloody computer and get out of doors at 4pm! I went to WH Smith on Oxford Street to redeem a voucher I had been given. For sometime I have been hearing reports on Radio4 that this, one of the oldest brands the UK, is having financial difficulties due to poor sales. Well, no wonder they are going under. A friend of mine tells me that this is because they do not really know what sort of shop they are (bookshop, music shop, news agent, none of the above?) but I do not think this is the problem; after all Boots are similarly trying to confuse their customers with a mish mash of food, medications, beauty products and photo lab and are reasonably successful. No WH Smith is just a horrible place!!! Dreary, lackluster, uninspiring and so creepily parochial!!! They have nothing of any interest for sale. Not even the latest releases of commercial brain washing so-called culture. The brand is old and so is its stock. I eventually managed to find Nick Cave's Best of and the soundtrack for Amelie (not really my first choices but marginally better than the rest)...

I then decided sooth my erked sense of harmony by a trip to a museum. Wednesday means late opening at the National Gallery, so I went to see the new John Virtue exhibition. His paintings are monumental landscape of the Central London river banks in black and white. He biggest inspirations are Turner and Constable. The Turner references are quite obvious. I am not sure I liked what I saw. I am certainly attracted by his style and there are lovely little vignettes within some of the paintings but on the whole I don't think the paintings work (apart from one perhaps which really draw you in). The film attached to the exhibition is reasonably interesting.

Today I was planning on (finally) going back to the gym (the last time I went was in June last year!!!). Early. But I fell asleep late last night and did not make it. Tomorrow perhaps... The plan today is to go to the Cumming Museum this afternoon. is me local....
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave your comment here. Note that comments are moderated and only those in French or in English will be published. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog and to leave a thought.

Popular posts from this blog

A Short History of the Elephant and Castle and Its Name

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at
19 comments
Read more

pink sauce | life, with a pink seasoning

As of tonight, my blog Aimless Ramblings of Zefrog , that "place where I can vent my frustration, express ideas and generally open my big gob without bothering too many people" which will be 6 in a couple of months, becomes Pink Sauce . While the URLs zefrog.blogspot.com and www.zefrog.eu are still valid to access this page, the main URL now becomes www.pinksauce.co.uk. There is a vague plan to create a proper website for www.zefrog.eu to which the blog would be linked. Why Pink Sauce , you may ask. It is both simple and complicated. For several years, I have grown out of love for the name of the blog. It felt a bit cumbersome and clumsy. That said, I never really looked into changing it, seriously. Tonight, for dinner, I had pasta with a special pink sauce of my concoction ; single cream and ketchup. I know most people while feel nauseous at the very though of the mixture but trust me, it's gorgeous. Don't knock it till you've tried it. After having had my platte
4 comments
Read more

Review: Park Avenue Cat @ Arts Theatre

As we are steadily reminded throughout the hour and half hour of Park Avenue Cat , the new play by Frank Strausser, which had its "world premiere" this week-end at the Arts Theatre, time is money. Most of the play takes place in the office of a posh LA therapist who charges $200 per hour. So, having sat through the play, I am wondering why the author spent time writing it, why a production team spent time putting it up and why I and any audience member are asked to spent time (and money) watching it. The play, said to be "a triangle with four corners" (!), brings together a therapist (Tessa Peake-Jones), who is probably not enjoying her job all that much), Lily (Josefina Gabrielle - the eponymous Parc Avenue cat) as well as Philip (Gray O'Brien - aka Tony Gordon in Coronation Street) and Dorian (Daniel Weyman), Lily's lovers. In an interview on the play's dedicated website, Strausser (who was in the audience) explains that he thinks comedy comes out of a
12 comments
Read more