G-20

Been at a lot of the G-20 protests in London this week, there are so many cops about its insane. These photos are from the Climate Camp protest outside the climate exchange in the centre of the city- everyone set up tents and blocked off the whole street. There were heaps more anarchist crews than I'm used to seeing and the police were being pretty brutal. Someone kicked my bike and broke it, which sucks cos I've just spent the last month building it up from scratch. I saw brat London celebrities Daisy Lowe and Will Blondelle at today's protest, looking lost and being followed round by a film crew:

This is my baby- I bought the frame for 30 pounds off some guy on Gumtree. I converted it to single speed and it rides like a dream, even though I only have one brake. The only problem is I can't go down any big hills because it takes me about twenty metres to stop, and cycling in London is a bit of a suicidal mission what with all those big red buses trying to kill me.

Dungeness

Last week my Lab group from college went on a massive day trip to Dungeness to see Derek Jarman's garden. It was supposed to be a collaborative effort but I think I was pretty much the only person who originally wanted to go there. The beach was spectacular, all flat stones as far as you could see, with the massive nuclear power station rising out of nowhere, and these huge concrete constructions called 'acoustic mirrors' which were used during the war to magnify the sound of approaching aircraft. There was something super creepy about the actual town of Dungeness- kind of cultish and supernatural. Every garden had strange conrete gnomes with crazy faces and there were no people on the streets, only flickering shadows behind curtains. We were such an oddity that a bus full of school children that drove past had to literally pull over so they could scream and point at us. Then they chased us a little way down the deserted street. Kids in the English countryside are creepy.
We had fish and chips for lunch in the only pub, which was also the local library and tourist information centre. It felt like something out of Twin Peaks, but even more creepy. I was pretty happy since over the last few months I've become uncontrollably addicted to mushy peas, and they gave me a massive serve.
My addiction seems to be spiralling dangerously out of control though lately; I've discovered you can buy mushy peas in a can for 83 pence at the supermarket, so I keep having them for breakfast like porridge. This might explain my unnatural pallor and slight greenish tinge.

Table tennis championships

Spring has sprung in London and I've been celebrating this week by doing some wood work in our back yard among the daffodils. I built a full-sized circular ping pong table for a workshop I helped organise yesterday in a gallery/project space called The Two Johnny's in East London. It works perfectly but its harder than normal table tennis cos there's less table, and every time we've played it seems to descend into a kind of general squash game using every surface of the room. I had to donate the table to the guys who run the gallery though, I could see the look of panic in my housemates eyes when they thought it was going to stay in our living room.

The workshop involved four visiting artists who were invited to discuss their work, a screening of some films we had made, a bookbinding session, some epic table tennis and a massive authentic Korean lunch cooked by my friend Gaeun. It was mostly a success but incredibly stressful to organise, I feel like I've been holding my breath for about a month. Afterwards someone force-fed me about fifteen tequilas and I ended up at a jazz bar in Dalston til 4am, then crashed on a friends couch, so I'm now feeling rancid with only three days til my thesis presentation is due. PANIC.
The only thing thats cheering me up is this plastic sailor hat my housemates friend Blair gave me. He's been staying on our couch for a week, but I've got no complaints since he's a model and likes to wander around in a towel. The cap is from one of his shoots. No offence to Sam but it doesn't look quite as good on him:
Why do I always end up talking about hats? I think my life has become very small. In the hope of extending my range of interests, my new hobby will be photographing odd skywriting instances. I'm pretty happy about this perfect bit of alignment:

The Rat King's Birthday

Its been a month of birthday parties in London, these are the seventy rat-shaped biscuits I made for my friend Lawrence's 25th last week. They're supposed to look like a rat king, all tied together at the tail, but it didn't quite go as planned. I had to take them to school, which was embarrassing, and I ended up being mobbed by academic staff stuffing their pockets with chocolate rats for their kids at home. One university cleaner was so pleased he took me into his little cupboard and showed me his wall of cat photos. Its amazing how many friends you can make when you carry sugar. Lawrence was less thrilled, I've never seen anyone go quite so red.

This month I also:
1) Tore my skirt up to the waist at a crazy Scottish Ceilidh dance for my housemates birthday, at which the dancing was so violent we all had huge black bruises on our upper arms and went home drenched in sweat.
2) Went to Norwich for three days and experimented with a diet of straight whisky and mushy peas (delicious in the short term, disastrous by the fourth day). I went with a friend for an opening at Outpost gallery, where he used to work, and we ended up on an epic drinking and op-shopping binge from which I still don't think I've quite recovered. It was an educational trip really; I learnt that if you put mint sauce on mushy peas they congeal like snot, the best topping for hot chips is apparently a combination of mayonnaise and peanut butter, and if you steal a security guard's walkie talkie and throw it into a canal at 4am it will make a noise like a dying whale.
3) Tried to steal a variety of other people's pets, and learnt that cats (also) enjoy peanut butter, but not olives. This is me trying to lure a neighbours dog into my bedroom. Shortly after this photo was taken it peed on my floor, yawned, and made a wise dash for freedom.
I also went to my friend Sharma's birthday, for which I made her this hat, which is entirely collaged from pictures of rainbow synthesizers. Other than this I have been doing nothing except procrastinating over schoolwork (classes end in two weeks!) and going to conferences. Tomorrow is the beginning of a three day mega-conference with Alain Badiou, Jaques Ranciere, Nicolas Bourriaud, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Slavoj Zizek, which I'm pretty psyched about. I'm debating whether or not to wear the hat, I think it makes me look more academic.

Snow Day!!!

Its still snowing! Work is canceled, trains aren't running, shops are closed, everyone is on holiday! Its like some cheesy American Christmas movie! The parks are full of children throwing themselves down hillsides on improvised sleds made from garbage bags and kitchen trays. I tried to go to the corner store and got involved in an epic hour-long snowball fight with three huge hairy Spanish guys who just didn't know when to stop. My ears are still filled with ice.


These are my housemates Tom and Vanessa trying to use a piece of cardboard and an Ikea bag as a kind of improvised toboggan. The pictures make it look more succesful than it actually was. Shortly after this I was attacked by a tiny pink midget in a ski suit who threw chunks of ice at the back of my head. Snow brings out the best in everyone.

Squats, snow and stupid glasses

I went to this amazing squat a while ago, right in central London by Picadilly Circus, with marble tiles and spiral staircases and so many rooms and levels it was like a maze, all decorated with beautiful hand-painted antique Chinese wallpaper. They cooked us a massive feast and we watched this crazy beautiful film called 'Daisies' in the cinema room (in the photo above!) where they've built a whole big comfy bank of old mattresses to sit on. They run a weekly free-school program there, and one of the rooms was just for painting and drawing, filled with big old easels and paper. Unfortunately they're being evicted soon, which is sad, but London is full of amazing squats so I'm sure they'll find something else. I've also started going to this radical theory reading group in another big squat house, but last week it got so freezing my shivering was making the whole couch shake, which got a bit distracting.

This weekend has been pretty average as I'm in the middle of a massive assessment deluge, but I did manage to buy a huge consignment of old glasses frames from a local old folks home. The general consensus is:
a) Everybody looks better in ridiculous glasses
b) Wearing other peoples prescriptions makes you dizzy
c) Being dizzy is not a good idea whilst driving, especially in the snow.


Which bring me to my final point, which is ITS SNOWING! On my house! Whhooooooooooot!