Murder by Music

Some bastard in the flat above ours got himself an electric guitar and his girlfriend is now jumping up and down to the sound of his sad plonking. You might soon be sending me parcels to jail...

London rush and riots

Last week I dragged my poor husband all the way down to London to work on a portrait commission for The Photographers Gallery. I have managed to wriggle in the Victoria and Albert museum as my photoshoot's location (hence we spent most of our time in West London though I went on a brief venture into the East end of the town, still troubled with the recent riots - I had to pick up studio keys for the second part of the working day and on my way in the underground I heard an annoucnment about Brixton station being on fire...).

It was a great stay though (this time we booked a room with a window, a permanently sealed one but let's not be picky) a bit stressfull (it was a work trip after all but as one fellow photographer friend commented London is always good to go to for work reason) and rushed (so not time to meet family or friends - sorry guys!) but I met many friendly and helpful people (special kudos to a lovely press officer from V&A and my charming subject who proved to be extremely photogenic and patient and I seldom work with complete strangers so it was an enigma how the cooperation is going to look like).

I had at least 3 passers by asking me if I need any help when I was flicking thourgh my London A-Z outside of the Euston and Hoxton underground stations trying to arrange map along East to West directions thus shattering a myth of uncooperative Londoners.

And of course it would not have been all possible without Simon's help and support. He is not just a voice activated light stand (as we jokingly call his duties patiently executed during working with me on my portraits) or just my London guide. His presence and encouragement are sometimes the only things that stop me from running away screaming with utter fear from the photoshoot that took several weeks to arrange! It would simply not be possible without him.

It was lovely to come back to our smaller in scale, calmer and slower in pace Scottish capital. Especially after waiting for 40 minutes at King's Cross train station's mail hall right in the middle of the rush hour. The sheer amount of passing faces can make one dizzy.

So here is the visual material. Oh, if you would like to know - I have just picked up my negatives from processing and they are all waiting to be scanned. So far at least they look correctly exposed and some of them look like they have some potential...

An authentic notice on a house railing in one of the main streets in Kensington. I hope it comes from the 1940s (judging by the font):

We have spotted this plaque on a house in Cromwell Road on our way to hotel. Is says that Albert Hitchcock lived in the house! Poor chap, no wonder that our hotel window was sealed completely, this road is extremely busy!

My better profile at the V& A's outrageously decorated cafe:

I hope I will one day have enough time and money to actually go to London for a couple of days just to dive in the richness of its museums collections (we have managed to squeeze in a couple of photo exhibitions - one in Tate Modern and one in Purdy-Hicks gallery nearby, as V&A was visited mainly for scouting best locations at the Hintze sculpture gallery).

So when are you coming, Monika?

Stripes

Our favourite pattern - stripes! The obsession continues with a purchase of a stripy rug from the Habitat's closing down sale (yes, they went into administration poor sods). I have to actually give it a good hoovering when I finally have some spare time! So far the dishes are winning in the urgency stakes as they actually start to stink when left too long to their own devices...

Remembering important things in the frenzy of everyday

It is way after midnight while I am writing this so technically the whole thing happened yesterday but for Simon and I, the 4th of July is our marriage anniversary!

Except that... I have completely forgotten about it! And my husband, who is usually the forgetfull one, got it absolutely right and when I returned home last evening this GORGEOUS bouquet was waiting for me on my work table (hence all the mess in the image's background). Oh, and I was also treated to a lovely meal in Brown's, which is where we had our wedding reception feast the next day after the ceremony in Oxford, now two years ago. Gosh, time flies indeed.

Wow, I must say I am VERY impressed and very much in love *blushes and jumps around the room, ups it is after midnight and I will annoy our neighbours* and I just hope that all our close friends and family who came all this way to participate in our nuptials, spared a thought about us yesterday. Let's meet all again in Brown's in Oxford, let's say, when Simon and I, we reach the 20th year bracket!

Sunnies

Weather ramble coming again, sorry - just when I got myself some super nice sunglasses (unfortunately I looked like c**p in all ubercool Ray Bans that I was trying on, unlike Simon who looks very good in his ones), here we are:

The Scottish wearther has to be of course more like this:

Food!

We have recently been introduced to the M&S Food Hall and since then we try to divert from shopping in a nearby Sainsbury's and Tesco which shelves layouts we know by heart now. As 'the other' Kate stated once 'nothing tastes as skinny feels', I am officially going on a diet trying to resist British invention of ready meals. Keep your fingers crossed for my progress of shedding some fat off my butt to be able to fit in my Simple's trousers again, trousers which I must add, used to be LOOSE around my waist before I moved to Scotland.

Actually I hope that my weight gain is connected not so much with a change in geographical location as my change in age (I remember my friend Agata telling me that past the age of 30 one starts to gain weight in strange places like upper arms and ones chest seems to broaden as well!) and prohibition of any exercise after my eye surgery. So I am doing things gently but I must say a daily fast walk around Meadows (I cannot run) is going to bring desired results as I am sweating like a pig just before a heart attack.

So hi to my fellow joggers - Malgosia in Netherlands and Liska in Haddington! Tomorrow I am walking down for a lecture at SNPG in my Camper heels which equals quite an exercise as they are made of rubber and weight a ton. I will have to leave at least 45 minutes earlier than is normally required!

Meanwhile some images of food - cupcakes in St Andrews day before the Royal Wedding and Simon at Wagamama in Glasgow.

Work space now - it WORKS!

Work space

We have since this picture was taken, made some tweaking to our workspace (and finished filling in our tax return applications!) and Simon's new sofa, ups I ment to say, new work space is arriving tomorrow! We might even consider inviting some guests for a drink since they will actually have someting to sit on...

P.S. To my previous post: Philip Glass will be performing during the Edinburgh Festival this summer; tickets go on sale on 2nd of April.

Organising

Floor in our appartment last night. I love a bit of organising and getting rid of all that paper junk accumulated over last months:

Snowbound

Scotland is still blocked by snow and courrier companies with the Postoffice in tow refused to take on more packages to be send before Christmas. Therefor some of you will not be able to get your Xmass greetings from us on time - I will add some New Year greetings as well, to keep the cards more appropraite especially when you receive them after Christmass...

Here are several images to give you an idea why it is actually difficult to get out of the house: shops scare you with their empty shelves as even big retailers are not getting their stock on time, buses are runnung even less reliably than ever, underneth the snow there is a black ice hiding - a Scottish weather invention which is basically a very thin layer of ice on the tarmac which you cannot see untill you actually slip on it dramatically, people who have never heard of winter tyres and are still driving, a runner on Meadows who jogged by barefoot in the snow (my first though was that somebody must have stolen his shoes! but then I spotted white cable of his iPod, so maybe just Shackelton was his idol), a hot chocolate that does not keep you hot for too long, a high heating bill, not being able to crawl out of bed in the morning, a threat of a photoshoot in the snow far away from home and with frozen models...

Scottish Autumn, 12:05

Autumn 1 : Sylwia 0

Scottish Autumn, 12:04

Fellow photographers

Joe and Dave in action (on the way to the WPP exhibition in the Scottish Pariament building) last week. Joseph was explaining something vividly to David, I think:

Francophile strikes back

If you are one of my Parisian friends reading this, look away now! I went today to see a French comedy L'Arnacoeur with superkooky Romain Duris and gaptoothy Vanessa Paradis, which I enjoyed very much, though I have a strong feeling that the bag of the main female character was not by Hermes as stated in the film but by some other designer, well - nevermind.

The Edinburgh Filmhouse offered a lesson in a French vocabulary featured in the film so I have ended up with a bunch of eldery Scots speaking French literaly like that:


Interesting experience nethertheless.

Tiptoeing

We are having unusual guest (or rather guests), therefore the whole family in Haddington is tiptoeing around this bit of the house:

Iceskating

Not that we would need much of a cooling off these days! Our holidaying children simply needed some entertainment so we went to do some iceskating in Murrayfield. I have never seen a place like that before: the building itself has an art deco outside combined with Thatcheresque era interior decorations in an unchanged shape, just like time have stopped in 1970s . Their cafe area is worth of a photoproject!

In the image below Simon presents a difference in the shoe sizes of Liska and Lyovka - Liska with her size 2 feet on the right and Lev with his L shape silhouette of a proud owner of a size 10 at 12 years old:

R.I.P. Beyond Words

My life recently revolves between work and sleep without much time for anything else, so when I spotted that one of our favourite Edinburgh bookshop is closing down, it did not improve my already grumpy mood.
Beyond Words was a very special photographic bookshop where one could spend hours browsing (let's face it, I have never managed to leave empty handed...) through the latest photo publications of classics like b&w Paris by Doisneau but also the same Doisneau book full of colour photographs from his road trip through America. If I have not flicked throuth that book I would have never known that he took brilliant colour pictures as well!

And I think that is the point - flicking through first 5 pages of a publication on Amazon does not give you the same flavour for it as it would if you were doing it in a bookshop. Simon and I, we actually made a conscious effort to buy our photography books from this particular bookshop, not from Amazon or big highstreet retailers. They were 10 £ more expensive there than on line, so what? You got the pleasure of seeing them all in real life, appreciating the quality of paper and print, comparing them with the other publications, having a reason for a little trip into town, to be dragged out from in front of our computers.

Pity that even people who worked for BW could not sometimes understand what is the purpose of such business. When I asked a guy who worked for them if he buys his books from BW after being able to browse through them at work (well, I was secretly hoping that maybe he has some kind of dicount I would be able to join in) he replied that no, he gets them from Amazon as even with his work discount they are still cheaper on line. Yes, but you would not have even known about them you fool, without having a place like Beyond Words as a reference point!

Our last buy at Cockburn Street shop premises was a beautiful book of Jeff Wall's work, now Beyond Words could be accessed on line, HERE.

A Coco a day keeps bad mood away

Soapdish that says a lot about a culture of a country

My Korean friend Sejin, pointed recently a strange Scottish phenomenon - one is not able to buy an interesting (or actually ANY whatsoever)...soapdish in the Scottish shops! In fact since she mentioned this I have started to notice a weird absence of soapdishes in Scottish homes and institutions. In fact our previous home soapdish came from Paris. Now we have a latest addition to our bathroom sink brought to us by Sejin from her latest Korean trip. Thank you so much, girlfriend! Now I am thinking about your kindness everytime I wash my hands!

Summertime

I cannot believe how quickly weather has changed from one that would allow out only wearing autumnal coats to barefoot and almost boiling! After some work meetings this Friday we went to chill out in Haddington. Simon wearing his 'Marcello sunglasses' and shorts! I hope he is going to put on his blog a little video I did of him skateboarding on Lyovka's equipment, it was absolutely hillarious.

Colours of the warm lateafternoon sunshine were just amazing!

Here we are resting a bit on a warm bit of grass, Lyovka a bit redfaced as he was practising some headstands (he has so much energy he could lit up his grandparents house!) :