Are you dressed to kill … or merely impress?

My mum’s growing pot (pardon the pun) in the kitchen. Haha. Wasted on me, I know.
“The mung’s coming on really well … and the hemp seeds”
-Hemp!? As in …
“Hashish. Yes. Bit of an experiment”.
-Haha. Nice one mum. Isn’t it damned hard to grow?
“Yes. It’s very fragile”.
Later we watched an ok BBC lesbian period (pardon the pun again) drama. My mum reckons the writer’s earlier one was better. More “knowing”. Apparently they had a solid gold dildo in a chest. What I said was; she watches too much TV. What I thought was; put me in a frilly-cuffed shirt, dip me in the stream and feed me to the period brunette lesbians!
Walking alongside a train at Waterloo station today I (as did everyone else) heard this come over the loud speaker. Everyone was laughing by the end of it:
“What are you doing!?
Please be more careful. .. Don’t carry your bag like that … you could cause someone harm.
Yes YOU sir.
Please take your bag off your head. You look rediculous.
Yes … Big Brother IS watching you.”

Yay. Found out that the company’s budget for the V&A was based solely on projected figures. These being that more than 2000 ppl a day were expected to come through the door. They’re actually getting less than a thousand, so the targets drop way down. Seems we’re actually doing okay. Which means I can stop worrying about it. And shop. I have one pair of jeans, a pair of shorts and a pair of trousers that fit. I could do with at least another pair of jeans.
Bought a rucksack today in a sale. You really know you don’t need a new bag when you’re carrying it. In your bag.

Pissing in the capital.

Sit in Trafalgar Square long enough and you see some strange things. I ate an ‘all day breakfast’ roll today whilst watching a 3yr old drop his pants and trousers, waddle over to a long puddle next to one of the fountains and pee in it whilst holding his shirt and jacket up to his neck (presumably to avoid any splashback).
That’s rock ‘n’ roll right there. Yet his dad wasn’t watching. That kid’ll never know he did that. What a cool party story to miss out on.

“Of course, ever since I was thirty-seven years old, I haven’t been the kind of person who looks under his bed. I believe so much weird stuff that can mess up your life happens IN the bed that anything happening underneath needs all the help it can get.”
[Frequent Flyer by Kinky Friedman].

Saturday started with me getting poo in my eye …

That was 9.30am. It’s a long story. So is the rest of that day. Not, unbelievably, the busiest I’ve ever seen it but it certainly felt it. Finished serving at 2am (still part of the looong story). Walked home at 5am. Felt, how shall I put it? Knackered. Couldn’t actually stop my eyelids from closing once I got in the door. Sleep broken this morning by an aching 4hr shift, most of which was spent scrubbing out the foul-smelling and rather inexplicable discharge in the dishwashing machine. Discovered a shop in Richmond that stocks dusty and ignored copies of Vice magazine, which made the whole weekend seem worth it. Now to make up some parcels and wash my workshirts. Woo.Pee.

“British men have a genetic predisposition to (Andree 3000’s) kind of mixed-up dandyism.”
From the Andre 3000 interview in The Sunday Times Magazine.

This’ll be the summer I go out of my mind.

So James smokes some pot with one of the guys from head office and finds out I’m the company’s Golden Boy. Apparently they need someone to supervise at the V&A who can ‘charm’ all of the different V&A departments, and someone who’s ‘calm under pressure’ to site manage Buckingham Palace over the summer and apparently they seem to think I’m ‘the perfect person’ for both jobs. Two weeks there and already I’m lined up for their most prestigious site. And therefore pay rises. Yet they might scrap that idea. I’ve been covering for the manager at the V&A for three days now and I’m running way, way, way below target. Management seem to have dreamt up a target of £917 per day. This, for the moment at least, is absolutely unobtainable for a miriad of reasons. I’d get bored just listing them all. The main one at the moment being that tumble weed don’t buy audio guides. The place is deserted. Perhaps coz the show (International Arts & Crafts) opened on a Wednesday, or coz London decided to get sunny and beautiful all of a sudden (on Wednesday!). Either way, this plus 101 other reasons meant that I made £378 today. At least the security guys don’t come on to me here.
Everytime I go and sit on a bench outside the V&A in the sun it feels like the time last summer I was on the corner of Spadina and Dundas waiting to meet someone, trying not to crush the merringue hidden in my bag. This disturbs me somewhat. It’s like I’ve been in deep freeze for 6 months and when I got out into the sun at lunchtime I thaw. It’s saddening. The best time in London at the moment is 5.45pm. I come out of the museum into dusk. The warmth of the day is making its way to the horizon following the light and it brings back memories of hanging out in Redlees Park when I was a kid.

As stupid as this sounds I haven’t had time to listen to music in such a long time. I gotta get on that.

Victim tried to ‘reason with chimps’.

Okay. Maybe my sense of humour is rather morbid but I found it hilarious that Michael Jackson turned up to court, accused of molesting minors in his bedroom, dressed in his pajamas.
I also found the story in the paper about the; “zoo visitor (who) tried to reason with two chimpanzees as they ripped off his face and testicles” similarly amusing. Apparently the 62yr old was giving a birthday cake to a chimp when he was attacked. I must be watching too much Chris Morris. Anything that comes up in the news nowadays seems like satire or parody. How do you reason with chimps hell bent on pulling out your conkers? “Hey look! Birthday cake! Hmm…cake” or “Guys, guys? HEY GUYS! Can we talk about this? Guys?…”. I think not.
Then I read that a female feral cat can have 20,000 descendants in just five years.
Then I read this – at the end of a review for the (unfortunately terrible it would seem) art/porn/bore fest film ‘9 Songs’ – “Few film-makers have so deftly captured the life-sapping, time-trashing tedium of the greater indie live experience … Furthermore, by cleverly sticking his camera in the middle of a crowd and barely moving it, he even manages to make bands that are actually pretty good (the Primals, the Dandies, BRMC) appear generically pedestrian. When you get stuck behind some gormless streak of piss at an indie gig, you can move or ask him to move. Get stuck behind him in a Winterbottom film and you are well and truly stuck behind him”. Brilliant.
I like this concept: [http://www.interactivewallpaper.co.uk] Viewers of the capitalist machine “Sex In The City” will recognise one of the designs.

Do I look gay?

“Audio guides!”
-What?
“Audio guide sir?”
-Do you come with it?
“Erm .. no.”
-Shame. I’ll take one anyway though
“O…kay.”
-It’s still a shame you don’t come with it.
A little later a creepy French security guard suitably named Come greeted me with “Hey sexy”. But then I got a call from head office offering me a management position, so I can escape my male suitors (eeeew). I’d only get a third more pay, but it’s at the V&A and it would look a lot better on my CV than just plain old ’sales assistant’.
“The Great Gatsby” is a superb book. I empathise with the poor ‘old sport’.
We are nearing total, global homogeneity through media saturation at alarming speed. ‘The Bravery’ have played to sell-out crowds in London and been tipped as THE BAND of 2005 on the strength (?) of a sole single. Par example. Most of these bands seem to be re-telling The Clash, The Specials or Talking Heads yet skipping over their essential grit or essence. Which is a shame, as well as a waste of eveyone’s time and money. I have discovered a whole new world of second-hand and obscure record store goodness just metres from the red light part of Soho in which to reside (and hide). I need to aquire an anorak of some description. And some plastic bags

That’s right F.Scott Fitzgerald, tell it like it is; “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired”.

I’m not getting paid enough. But on the bright side…

My 14hr shift on Saturday provided me with another £100. I will have to wait until the end of April to find out if having to pay £36.30 a week to stand on a sweaty, densely packed train for an hour get to work is actually crippling, or just soul-destroying.
The new job is cool. I’m on my feet all day at the National Gallery selling audio guides. I work with an Italian girl, an Irish girl, a Chinese girl, five japanese girls, a Pakistani girl, a French girl, a Scottish girl, an English girl and some guys who are never around. The people and the environment make the job. Cause the pay sucks. And one of the security guys fancies me (much to the silent amusement of the Japanese). The Caravaggio exhibition is superb. Caravaggio was a rock star painter. An Anthony Bourdain of painting, only his dishes are more exquisite. And more bloody.
The “Faces in the Crowd” exhibition at Whitechapel rocked too. Spent three hours soaking up photos, oils, video, sculptures, sounds and words on Thursday night, watching the sort of peppered crowd that only a London show can draw.

I made eyes at Schad’s “Maika” … but she’s taken. The artist’s signature, Schad’s name is inscribed on her forearm in pseudo-mechanical type. She’s a fetishistic object, like the original Northern Renaissance 3/4 length portraits on which she’s based. Her sex is disguised by the disorientating polka dots on her dress and her andrgoenous bob of silky-black hair (this was 1929). The balcony on which she stands affords the viewer access to the interiors of bedrooms in neighbouring buildings (behind her, on either side). If you have the balls to walk right up to her face and gaze directly into her eyes you’ll see that Schad has placed you exactly where he himself was standing. Reflected in her eyes are the studio windows behind you. The only reason you are not reflected in them also is because by this point you are standing too close. Your reflection lies in the ink of her iris. At the very heart of her focus. Eyes have depth and soul … and sex.

As you walk into the gallery you enter the scene of a crime. Munch’s “The Day After” (1894-5) hangs on the right. The girl lies, fully clothed and open-bloused, unconscious on the bed, hair pouring over the edge of the mattress like spilt red wine, the ominous peak of her pillow towering above. On the table are two empty glasses. This was painted before the days of Rohipnol. Yet something equally sinister has been at work. Anyone who has seen Munch’s “Scream” will recognise the swirling brushwork in the corners of the canvas, suggestive of a subconscious at unrest. Is it a dream or a hangover? Washes of blue, brown and orange have been so delicately applied as to reveal the cotton canvas beneath. As I left the exhibition I stopped again to look. There are tiny, brilliant blood-red flecks of paint on her throat and at the corners of her mouth. Not a dream or a hangover, a nightmare. One in which she may never awake. One into which I had just walked.

Blondes have more fun. Brunettes do more damage.