Back Tuesday

See you later.

Motherland

The photographer Simon Roberts has a new book of this title coming out in March. I happened upon some of the pictures in a discarded copy of the Telegraph Magazine on the Tube home last night - some are entirely predictable, but the slideshow is enjoyable nonetheless.

How are you? My name is Ekaterina.

"Hi!

How are you? My name is Ekaterina. I from Russia, city Cheboksary. To me 28 years. I shall tell to you about myself a little.

I corresponded with the man from the your country before. His name Mark. He is from your country. We had a long correspondence and Mark wanted, that I have arrived to him in the your country that I have seen what life there. We have together submitted the statement on reception of the visa in your country! Mark spoke, that will help my in our meeting. I thought, that have met on the Internet the love.

I and Mark made the big plans for the future, but in a flash all has changed. From the moment of submission of the statement for the application of the visa has passed 5 months. For these five months there was for what I least waited. Mark informed, that his former wife has returned to him and lives together with him. Soon they should get married. And now in Mark plans there is no me. I wrote to him some times after that, but Mark have wished me only good luck in the further searches worthy men and have told, that our ways miss. And in October to me there has come the invitation in embassy behind reception of the visa.

In the beginning I wanted to throw out the invitation in embassy. To me it was sad, because my dreams were failed, I have nobody to fly in the your country. But my uncle have dissuaded me from resolute actions and have told, that else there is a chance to find worthy the man and to use the visa to a meeting with him. I well know English and practically I have visa your country. My uncle speaks, that it really solves many problems.

Approximately in 7 days the visa will be ready, and I should go to Moscow behind reception of the visa. I write to you because in my heart there is an empty seat. I do not search rich or poor. I search careful and responsible man which wants to enjoy a life together. Is this person you? I think, that I ask not much. I have told to you a little about my life. I have told not all about myself, but it will be easier to me to write about myself if you will ask questions which interest you. I have told to you my history, and now I shall look forward to hearing from you with impatience. Write to me! I shall send you more photo in the following letter. I wait you answer. Ekaterina.

P.S. I shall answer with pleasure if you write to me."

Funny, in the previous 463 e-mails I received like this, her name was Natasha...

The 08.44 to London Paddington

and the subsequent Bakerloo Line journey to Oxford Circus were punctuated by the following tunes this morning:

Dirty Old Town - The Ian Campbell Folk Group
Tighten Up - The Bamboos
Capuchin Swing - Jackie McLean
Whatyagonnado - Jeru The Damaja
Gypsy Queen - Gabor Szabo

Tourism

Today I have mostly been visiting:
Waterloo Station
Tower Bridge
The Tower of London
The Number 15 bus
Notting Hill
Ping Pong on Westbourne Grove

Otis Redding

In imperious form from the 1967 Stax European tour.

Geburtstag

Arbeit. Bis spaeter...

Chrome Children Volume 2

Free download over at Stones Throw - unusual and woozy hiphop and nu soul for your listening pleasure...

Coffee of the Month

Guatemala Huehuetenago from Algerian Coffee Stores. Mmmmm.

Sounds From Luke's Hifi February 2007

The CD is now done. All the regular suspects will receive a copy (despite their protests). If anyone else wants a copy, speak now or forever hold your silence... Here is the tracklist:

Carlos Alberto Goal From The 1970 World Cup Final - Brazilian TV Commentator
Procurando O Caminho - Coisa Nossa Featuring Salome De Bahia
Flautira - Ocho
Una Música Brutal - Gotan Project
Briu De La Craiova - Fulgerica & The Mahala Gipsies
Moldovan Song - Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Band
Od Yeshoma - Oi Va Voi
Heart Beat Sexual - Jimmy Edgar
Ol' Crew - Mr. Lif
Minister For Ganja - Rappa Robert & Jim Brown
Away With the Bad - Glen Brown
The Message [Twelve Inch Version] - King Sunny Ade & His African Beats
My Favourite Things - Mark Murphy
You Have Got To Have Freedom - Pharoah Sanders
Aftershower Funk - Joe Bataan
Les Fleur - 4Hero featuring Carina Anderson
At The Dark End Of The Street - James Carr
Mbube - Solomon Linda's Original Evening Birds
The Wild Rover - The Dubliners

I hate Almodovar.

There, I've said it. I should duck for cover now, I suppose. Volver is absolutely dreadful as a film. A waste of nearly 2 hours of my life. Clearly his Catholic homosexual oedipal complex has a great appeal for a great many people - not least the thousands of people who go to see his films each year, then buy them on DVD. He is number 8 in the 50 men who really understand women - as Penélope Cruz states: 'Pedro loves women, he is very curious about the way we think, the way we feel. He finds us complicated and he likes that complication.'

No, he doesn't - his women may be complex, but the complexity is an almost cartoon style, in which the most feminine traits are amplified to hyperreal proportions - his characters are as paperthin and as far removed from real women as the heroines of comic books, or silent films, or Dostoevskii novels. He paints them with poster colours, even the promotional material for the films echoes this. All About My Mother, Talk To Her and Bad Education all suggested to me that he was maturing as a filmmaker - despite the occasional lapses (absent transexual fathers, for example), all of these displayed psychological subtlety, but his latest effort has far more in common with his earlier films.

It is a tragic indictment of the Spanish film industry that he is the foremost director - many of the directors are still using the Civil War as a backdrop (even Pan's Labyrinth), and therefore deal with this topic, no matter how tangentially. Where is the heir to Bunuel? Latin American cinema, despite a comparative lack of investment, produces far more interesting and engaging films. Most other European cinemas have overcome/are overcoming the effects of far more strict censorship and repression than Franco's regime imposed and in a shorter period.

Ealing, 08.34 today

Soliloquy of the Solipsist

I?
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
When my eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon's celestial onion
Hangs high.

I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look's leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.

I
When in good humor,
Give grass its green
Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun
With gold;
Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold
Absolute power
To boycott any color and forbid any flower
To be.

I
Know you appear
Vivid at my side,
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it's quite clear
All you beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.

Sylvia Plath, 1956

Eight degrees

today and very foggy this morning. Managed to crawl out of my pit at a reasonable hour to head down to the local pitch and putt - packed with the great and good of Ealing (and an inordinately high proportion of Scousers) - who weren't watching their kids playing football or walking the dog or going to church or whatever else the West London middle classes do of a fresh Sunday morning. Anyway, after several months of not hitting a ball in anger, I think my efforts were not too appalling... My feet are still recovering from the ice cold dew that lay on most of the fairways. Aircooled running shoes are nice, but offer no protection against superchilled droplets of water.

My ITunes quest continues apace - trying to copy over 1,000 CDs takes a lot of time, but it does mean I am (re)discovering a mass of songs I had forgotten I owned. In fact, I am making a concious effort to copy the least heard parts of my collection first, so that by the time I get back to the most popular, I will have forgotten them (most probably due to the onset of Alzheimer's, as it may take a number of years).

My X-box is still very kaputt - as they say in Germany - and I am in denial at the moment about the fact that I will have to send it to Microsoft to get it fixed. This is on top of the fact that I will have to contact the letting agency to sort out the damp problem in my room - they will not be happy, as it seems to be a major structural issue with the building as a whole - missing tiles and mouldy exterior walls. At least I now know it's not my excessively hot showers. Or nocturnal perspiration.