We are currently revisiting our childhoods, with the gift of a Richard Scarry compendium ... colourful, detailed double page spreads crammed anthropomorphic animals going about their everyday business in a hectic, harum scarum manner. Guaranteed to keep you enthralled for hours. Our favourite character is Bug Dozer, a little green bug trying to shift mountains with his tiny red bulldozer.
Another mainstay from that era: Maurice Sendak's 'Where the Wild Things Are', amazing artwork that draws you into the wonderful nightworld of naughty boy Max. I even (pretentious, moi?) once wrote a paper on this book, drawing on Freudian theory to provide insight and interpretation... but that's Oxford for you.
Having almost given up on TV drama in despair at the apparently unstoppable tide of melodramatic banality (there's a tautology for you) and resigned myself to a life of reruns of Scrubs and QI, I am currently utterly obsessed with one particular show, and an American cop show to boot.
The boy's brother gave him the first season box set, which we cracked open on Sunday and we're scheduled for Episode 5 tonight. Yes, that's an average of two episodes a night, such is the power of The Wire. Totally compelling scriptwriting, powerful performances and narrative pacing to rival Dickens, I am like a junkie searching out the next fix - an apt metaphor given the subject matter.
About to embark upon the Penguin Great Loves boxset that the boy's mum gave me at Christmas.
Penguin's marketing claims it to be 'the most seductive, inspiring and surprising writing on love in all its infinite variety…', and it certainly is an electic and broad-reaching collection with some stunning, inventive cover design.
And the iconic logo has been rejigged into two penguins leaning in for a kiss. What a lovely detail!
At weekends, I relish sinking into the SaturdayGrauniad
Order of attack:
Space - to look at beautiful stuff I cannot afford
Ottolenghi's veggie recipes - for obvious reasons ...
Writers' Rooms - to admire the inevitable creative chaos
Lucy Mangan's Book Corner - I think she might actually be me
Family - high-brow voyeurism
Editorials - strident and entertaining
Letters page - ditto, with added bonus of 101 uses for a 35mm film canister
And I tend to leave the Review as a solace for my weekday commute.
Of course, the paper merely reflects back at me my view of the world - I suppose I should really read the Mail or the Express to "broaden" my horizons and remind myself that the world is not full of sandal-wearing, muesli-eating middle class liberal intellectuals but why on earth would I want to do that?
In praise of Steven Patrick Morrissey: patron saint of waifs, strays and misfits.
"Park the car at the side of the road You should know Time's tide will smother you And I will too When you laugh about people who feel so Very lonely Their only desire is to die Well, I'm afraid It doesn't make me smile I wish I could laugh" That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: Lyrics, Stephen Morrissey / Music, Johnny Marr
Listening to Front Row profile on Radio Four, and remembering being 17. (Listen again until Tuesday 24th February)
Comparing ebook readers for work ... it occurs to me I'd settle for an iPhone and download the Stanza app, last thing I need is yet another gadget to weigh me down! Plus, ebooks haven't quite had their iTunes moment yet, or have they?
Reading Caroline Moorhouse's biography of Martha Gellhorn: one of the first female war correspondents and versatile novelist, what a feisty personality to end up dismissed by history as 'one of the wives of Ernest Hemmingway'!
Delighted to find that Rob Ryan now has a shop at Columbia Road - the wonderfully named RyanTown. Master of paper craft, his pieces are so delicate, whimsical and funny.
Also, splashed out on a Charley Harper lithograph called 'Upside Downside' at Sharon Elphick gallery : two birds on a branch in the minimal realist style, just simple blocks of colour and stylised lines. Bold and charming. On YouTube, Handmade Modern interview Charley Harper, sadly now deceased.
Sunday morning at Columbia Road market in East London is one of my favourite weekend jaunts ... flowers and cakes and art, what more could a girl want?
We are currently revisiting our childhoods, with the gift of a Richard Scarry compendium ... colourful, detailed double page spreads crammed anthropomorphic animals going about their everyday business in a hectic, harum scarum manner. Guaranteed to keep you enthralled for hours. Our favourite character is Bug Dozer, a little green bug trying to shift mountains with his tiny red bulldozer.
Another mainstay from that era: Maurice Sendak's 'Where the Wild Things Are', amazing artwork that draws you into the wonderful nightworld of naughty boy Max. I even (pretentious, moi?) once wrote a paper on this book, drawing on Freudian theory to provide insight and interpretation... but that's Oxford for you.
