Emma – Page 7 – A Note On a Rainy Night

Bognor Charity Shop Finds

Here’s the best stuff I got for very cheap in the excellent charity shops in Bognor Regis (the only entertainment there). The reasons for so many good finds is fairly grim- lots of old people in the area who die and have house clearances of all the 60s and 70s stuff they were hanging on to. Everything cost less than £5.

Robert Smith’s Cabbages

A couple of years ago I went down to Aldwick, near Bognor Regis for the summer to house-sit a relative’s house. I ended up being stranded there due to a lengthy train strike. Robert Smith of the Cure is probably the only famous local resident. The owner of one of the local shops told me where he lived, and I went along to see it once out of curiosity. The house was dull and expensive looking, but the beach it stands next to was much more Robert Smith like, with windswept shingle like Dungeness and rare sea cabbages. I never bothered to look at Robert Smith’s house again, but I made many trips to the beach because I liked it so much. I was usually the only person there.

Fanzine Ynfytyn 27

I’ve done a new zine about that time in 2006 I accidentally spent a whole summer alone in Bognor Regis. For £2.50 you get both the zine and the mini zine I made at the time for the 24 hour zine challenge. Find them here.

Mushroom King prints

I now have prints of this Mushroom King artwork up for sale. A5 is £6, A4 £12 and A3 £24. Find them in the shop.

60s slides: Costiera Amalfitana

Here’s some more 60s tourism slides from my grandparents’ house (you can see others here). This time from the Amalfi Coast in southern Italy, now a UNESCO site. Again I have posted all 36 images. It looked pretty much the same when I was there about 10 years ago, minus the annoying coach party of loud Texans who kept appearing everywhere you looked and complaining there was no Taco Bell and you had to walk places. Further along the coast in Sorrento I bought a very fancy waffle-knit towel that still serves me well for travelling. The shop assistant seemed very confused that I wasn’t buying a whole matching set of them like the majority of their customers. Afraid I could only afford one small one.

Planetary Urbanisation

Yesterday I went to a talk at Well Projects from anthropologist/sound artist Dimitrios Bormpoudakis from the University of Kent as part of A Cut From Sharp Grass, “a visual art exhibition & series of public events developed in response to the increasingly urbanised, networked & technologically integrated landscape of Kent”. Here’s my sketchbook notes from the talk.

60s slides of Herculaneum

When clearing out my grandparents’ house a couple of years ago I found seven packets of these 60s tourist slides of various places around the Mediterranean. I’ve been scanning and restoring them. First up, these from Herculaneum.

Herculaneum is a smaller coastal town near Pompeii that was also destroyed by the volcano. It’s not as well known, but there are some magnificent villas there in a similar but smaller archaeological park to the one you can visit at Pompeii.

Cake Exploding

I had a dream that Cake Exploding was a popular hobby, with world championships and dedicated YouTube channels. Here’s the comic version. Available from the shop for £1.75

Cadbury’s Novelty Cookbook

I got this late 70s/early 80s book from a charity shop a while ago. A lot of families in the UK had it when I was a kid I think. I got it out because I promised to make my friend a really ludicrous birthday cake from inside. The recipes are fine, various flavoured sponge cakes with buttercream icing (albeit with gratuitous Cadbury’s product placement in every recipe). It’s the choice of cake themes in the book that’s a bit odd …

Cambridge Botanical Gardens

I was sorting out old folders on the hard drive and have found a lot of photos from the past couple of years that I never got round to sorting out. Here are some from the Botanical Gardens in Cambridge two years ago. I was working teaching on a summer course there, which was stressful mainly because they hadn’t actually hired enough staff to cover all the hours, so we were doing some extreme overtime. So a stroll around the gardens while the students completed their activities was a nice respite.

Feral Practice

Earlier this week I went to a free art workshop hosted by Open School East. Open School East is a combination art course/residency and students are required to organise public art workshops. This time environmental artist Fiona MacDonald aka Feral Practice was the visiting artist. There was a talk about ants and fungi and the aim of “meeting with animal/plant/place through the processes and reflexivity of art”, and then we went out into a local park with a woodland area to do some classic sensory/location art activities. Here are my sketchbook pages and some snaps from the day.

Diana Wynne Jones conference notes

A couple of weeks ago I went to an academic conference in Bristol focused on the works of Diana Wynne Jones. She is probably best known for writing the book that the Studio Ghibli film Howl’s Moving Castle was based on, but she has around thirty other books aimed at a variety of ages. Even the ones aimed at children have a surprising amount of psychological and literary depth, and a willingness to explore very dark issues not usually found in books for that age group, giving her work a huge appeal to adults and academics.

Lunatraktors

Last week I went down to Pegwell Bay in between Ramsgate and Sandwich to take some press shots for my friends Carli and Clair- aka the Lunatraktors. They describe their work as “broken folk” and combine folk, ambient vocal overtone work and choreography into it (Carli is also a choreographer and clown by profession).

Oh with your eyes of blue, I want to drink rice milk with you

Today’s song- Rice Dream Girl by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. Longing and sadness captured on nothing but a microphone and a cheap Casio keyboard.

Infrared print

I liked one of the images I got from the Lomochrome film so much I decided to offer it as a print in the shop.

Lomochrome Purple

Shortly before I left London a couple of years ago I got a roll of the Lomochrome Purple film, a new formula designed to mimic the surreal colour infrared film you used to be able to buy.

I found the fragrance separate from the flower

Today’s song is Black Cat, by Broadcast, from Tender Buttons, one of my all-time favourite albums (I was torn between choosing this or I Found the F). I really wish I had seen Broadcast more times than I did. There seemed no hurry.

Solar on the rise, solar on the keel

Pig- Sparklehorse

So another song- Pig by Sparklehorse. I was considering picking Tears on Fresh Fruit, which is my other favourite song by them, but this won out.

Midsommar

Last night, I saw Midsommar, a film I’ve had my eye on for a while. It’s received very mixed reviews in the press, but I loved it. I felt it was pretty much what you’d get if you got Alexander Jodorowsky to direct the Wicker Man

Ghost Fang

Kevin who I run Connect Nothing With Nothing with has an improv group called Ghost Fang. Each performance includes whatever musicians want to take part…

I don’t know what to do with your clothes or your letters

The Song is the Single

Here’s another song for you- The Song is the Single by Barr. It originally came out when I was at university, and then ten years later, Brendan did a show at Power Lunches out of the blue, because he was in town for an art event anyway…

Nuns contemplating Dog

I took some press shots of “”pineal-poking punked-up psychedelic speedfreaks” Casual Nun at Dreamland when they came down to Margate to play a gig recently. While everyone’s back was turned, Iraklis won a huge toy dog from a sideshow on the first attempt.

Tumbleweed

I’ve been out of action for the last ten days after a stage light fell from a shelf onto my head and I was left with concussion and back injuries…

HI STRANGER

This is the creepiest animation I’ve seen in a long time. I love it. The youtube comments are split between people being creeped out and finding it soothing. I’m in the creeped out camp- stop trying to glom onto me with your love, sneaky plasticine man. I don’t know you. Here’s some other interesting links too: