Writing.

I spent the last few weeks taking in various cultural activities, everything from a Tea and Coffee Festival, to Ice-Skating in Hyde Park. I was fortunate and unsociable enough to write reviews for a few of the shows that filled one particular week (interesting fact, at least 88% of each review was drafted on my iPhone using an app entitled 'Enso Writer').

It started with seeing Leon Michener and Seaming To at The Forge, followed by a visit to Yuri Suzuki's latest exhibition at Village Underground, swiftly followed by a night of music courtesy of Robert Glasper's Trio at Kings Place and finished with a brief seminar by Robert Glasper (yes, again) at Southbank.

You might enjoy some of the reviews however it's quite feasible, that you might think they are filled with the flowery language and idiosyncratic ramblings that fill my previous posts. Either way, business as usual will resume once I manage to tear myself from my current Skittles addiction.

Moderation

I'm learning that it's possible to overdose on anything, from fruit to feelings, there comes a point where nimiety begins to incur more harm than good. Even features that we're told are virtuous, in excess, can be harmful.

However moderation, is boring. Being moderately drunk, or moderately in love, or even moderately depressed is an offensive bootleg of something that is meant to be experienced in the extreme. Imagine if Noah had built a 'moderate' ark, it would be little more than the contents of the Ikea reduced aisle stacked two storeys high - with enough standing room for a gazelle and an otter - not the biblical combatant that braved one of the earliest documented cases of global warming.

As of today, I will try to step away from my comfortable and moderate existence and dabble in the world of extremes because if we are honest, it's the extremists who make historical differences and potent memories. I'm sure if Jesus was only prepared to be reprimanded with a 5-minute timeout on the Naughty Step for the sins of mankind, instead of dying for them, he probably would have been a footnote in God's lineage.




NB: Today is Sunday, hence the biblical references.


- I write in order to avoid talking, for you see as a human, I suck at talking

Location:On the receiving end of a bad phone call.

Training Days.

Public sector training days are bound by universal law to have the following:

1) Vile coffee. Not sub standard or passable coffee but vile, gut wrenching coffee. Instant coffee so traumatising you would have thought you were pouring scolding water onto a sachets worth of dehydrated dog turds.

2) Death by PowerPoint. Not only do trainers insist on using templates that have been psychologically proven to bore yet provoke homicidal tendencies in adults, they then cram them with every morsel of dialogue the day contains. But that is only the ailment. The slow spiral of death begins as the speaker begins to read the text to you in a voice that induces multiple toilet breaks, a voice so void of character and interest you wish it were possible to have it subtitled with emoticons just so the speaker can gauge the audience's perception.

3) An average luncheon. In this particular case I was spared the delectable spread of imitation Digestive biscuits and margarine heavy tuna sandwiches cut into triangles. Why triangles I've always wondered? A cucumber sandwich cut in the shape of a dodecahedron, now that would ensure positive feedback on the day's evaluation form.

This training day however provided no such luncheon, another casualty in the public sector bonfire that is austerity? Or the burning effigy we all long to become cinders. You decide.


- I write in order to avoid talking, for you see as a human, I suck at talking

Location:Several leagues below content.

Notes from the author.

"Most of us don't know what autonomous thought is. The world strips it away until all that's left is the intuition you are told to ignore." (K, 2011)

Art I like #5

Good morning.

Somedays I make a habit of staring at something interesting before I leave begin my commute.

This is today's something.



- I write in order to avoid talking, for you see as a human, I suck at talking

Location:In between sleeps.

Reading

The Telegraph has been my newspaper of choice lately. The editorials are usually dense layers of confusion and adverbs but I find them informative. There was a pretty powerful piece this week about the ticking time-bomb that is Britain's personal debt, which is valued at £1.5 trillion - more than the country's GDP. You can read it here.

The Frankie Boyle romp 'Work! Consume! Die!' (yes there are that many exclamation marks) is very entertaining. He casts his bottomless cynicism and taboo humour over many a topical issue, while interspersing one of his own short stories. One fond memory I can recall, was when he commanded me to imagine Cheryl Cole as a judge at The Hague. His phonetic interpretation of her accent had me laughing out loud, much to the discomfort of the other passengers on the 41 bus.

The book about surviving a baby's first year was my Halloween spine-chiller. Learning about colic, bonding and the importance of adult time, sent me into a frenzied spiral I hadn't felt since watching Saw at the cinema. I'll return to it one day, I hope.


- I write in order to avoid talking, for you see as a human, I suck at talking.

Location:Staring into my iPhone.