Flowers from the garden

We've never had a garden until now. With our flat we have a small yard attached that I do nothing but Lorna does everything to keep it looking beautiful. This year there has been a great crop of roses and I cut a few to put on our bedroom window, a simple act that I'm shocked at how much it made me happy !

Pig foot scraper

When my two daughters were little girls I used to walk them to school the same way every day, one of the daily excitements was when we walked past one house that had a pig shaped boot scraper in the door step, we used to point and shout "pig! Pig!" as we passed it. A simple pleasure that I had forgotten about long ago until last week I rode past that house on my bike and there he was still, ten years later, hopefully delighting some other young children every day.

"PIG ! PIG!!"

I bought these little lucky cats in Kobe in Japan. Now they live in Rye in Sussex in England where they nap and stretch and wave to people through the window.

Yellow's dead!

My favourite cycling jacket has passed, the zip has finally broken beyond repair. We had some great rides together my old friend, I took you on and off thousands of times and each time was as sweet as the first time. You kept me warm and dry year after year, I am bereft.

David Shrigley at the Haywood

I have been to see this great show twice in a week now. On the second visit I noticed half a dozen things I'd never noticed the first time.
The thing that always shocked me when I went to art school was that the people who were taken seriously by the tutors were the people that acted seriously. The people who were funny and modestly were depreciating about their work weren't. Work with humour always came second to serious work, I thought it all was a crock of shite then and I still do now.


This brilliant and hilarious show is equally as serious as any I have ever scene, it deals with life and death and everything in between in such a fantastically thoughtful and inspiring way that you can't help but leave the show thinking 'I must make my work better' I can't think of a better thing to say about it.

John Ryan - Great name, great guy !

I went to a great exhibition today at the art gallery in Rye showcasing the career of the illustrator John Ryan. To tell the truth I wasn't expecting anything special but it was brilliant ! He was famous I suppose for the children's tv show 'Captain Pugwash' and 'Mary, Mungo and Midge', made in the seventies these programmes were very basic animations, as you can see in the picture above they were more like puppet style moving animations, the cardboard levers at the bottom operating a very simple movement of a limb or a door opening etc.



The show has lots too see in it and even if it wasn't free to get in would be good value for money! He is a brilliant draughtsman and is a wonderful observer of detail. It's not what you would call high art but it's lots of fun (which is much more important!) you can imagine the smiles and laughter that must have accompanied the making of the work displayed here, much as I imagine how Oliver Postgate filled his days.



Lorna said that she always thought that 'Mary, Mungo and Midge' was very exotic because it was set in a tower block and she only lived in a little house.

The exhibition does not allow photography and the pictures here were taken surreptitiously, this is one of my great pleasures in life these days, getting away with a few forbidden snaps - oh the joys of middle age !!!!

On Friday I had a day off work. The previous night I had been to a talk by the designer George Hardie at the Artworkers Guild, George was being made the master of the guild for this year but the retiring master in his speech urged people to visit the John Martin exhibition at the Tate before it closed on Sunday.
There are two Tate galleries in London, the Tate Britain and the Tate modern. I very rarely visit the latter and visit the former quite a lot - I guess mainly because it's within walking distance of my flat, laziness being the foundation of my taste in art. Honestly though, the Tate modern is just too too crowded and the galleries are horrible ! Having said that 'the weather report' installation of a giant halogen lamp recreation of the sun in the turbine hall was one of the best show/installations that I've ever seen.
John Martin was one of those quite obscure Victorian artists that I always felt that I had discovered all by myself, and as such his strange apocalyptic world appealed to me all the more. I went to the show slightly begrudgingly knowing I was going to have to share my secret discovery with the masses. Well they are welcome to him, it was nonsense. Admittedly it was all stunningly realised but still nonsense on an incredibly grandiose scale. Of course you have to put it in the context of his period etc etc but I just can't be bothered with all the heaven and hell stuff, life's too short already. It was good to let him go and clear some space in my head for some other rubbish. Goodbye John !



I went for a further nose around the rest of the galleries and happened upon a small exhibition by the photographer Don McCullin, here was the real apocalypse unfolding before me in my own city, in my own lifetime.


In fact these pictures were taken in a street in London only a few hundred yards were I used to have a studio.



My favourite photograph by Martin Parr has always been this one taken from behind the counter at a ice cream/chip shop at the seaside (I think it might be New Brighton - the resort that services Merseyside) with this poor pissed off girl left on her own to service the relentless, surging tide of ever needy humanity. And there she is now hanging up on a wall in the Tate gallery. The new Mona Lisa.