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metrocentric
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| Summer of One Fucking Thing After Another |
[Jun. 1st, 2012|07:29 pm] |
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Where the flags have been hung lengthways, across the streets in serried ranks, the impression is inevitably martial. As if we are shortly to celebrate the return from foreign battlefields of our glorious dead. |
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| So rough, baby, baby, baby; so rough, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara Streisand |
[May. 16th, 2012|12:08 am] |
First train out of La Bocca not until a little past five and I knew them just about well enough and it gets to the point where... it's the worst of the English, but you don't have to struggle with another language. I expect this is what it's like for expats.
We had been talking about alcorexics. He'd spoken of sweating at his desk of a morning, she'd recounted hunching over on the TER of a morning so's not to faint. I mentioned a bit of documentary about the Tube I'd recently seen on the computer: a paramedic run all over the Bank attending to ladies swooning in the rush hour who'd had a large night, no breakfast.
There was music and it was all over the place, that Duck Sauce track that follows me about, and Prefab Sprout: two or three of theirs in a row. Then, I'd not heard it since it was contemporary and that's a long time: coming out of car radios all over Zone 2, Tenor Saw's 'Golden Hen'. The memories: sun setting over Coldharbour Lane and rising over shops at the fringe of Herne Hill. And also, I did not realise until later, several lines almost spot-relevant to what we'd been talking about.
Got a little girl at ma home
She wake up this morning, she didn't eat no breakfast, no
She wake up this morning, she na eat no breakfast
She leave out my home and she faint in the path
She give my neighbourhood lots of remarks, lots of remarks, she give them lots of remarks, lots of remarks
It was not my fault, when she faint on the path, Lord God no |
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| "Ni moi sans vous, ni vous sans moi." |
[May. 3rd, 2012|11:55 pm] |
On the Place Masséna a young man approached me bearing FN campaign materials. "Non," I said, "je suis étranger." He wasn't put off, and proceeded to canvass me in English, as if I had a vote in their elections. He didn't look like a fascist, but then neither does Mme Le Pen: she reminds me of an unusually patient and helpful pharmacienne I was served by in Courbevoie not long ago.
For reasons unrelated to the environment I was often unable to sleep after dark. I found it easier to doze in the sun, of which there was a great deal.
Overnight, one of the television channels arranges for the insomniac and nocturnal to be read to. On the hotel television it seemed to me that Audrey had just washed her hair and was leaving it to dry untowelled. This isn't so evident on the version to be found on the internet, but the effect of intimate domesticity achieved was quite charming. I still could not sleep, but it took my mind off things.
"Du lundi au samedi, entre 3h30 et 6h00 du matin, narrateurs et narratrices nous lisent les plus grandes œuvres de la littérature française et rendent un hommage aux plus beaux textes de notre patrimoine.
Amoureux des livres ou simples curieux, découvrez aussi les coups de cœur de l’actualité à travers de petites chroniques. Laissez-vous embarquer dans un voyage nocturne plein de surprises…"
More here |
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| Cannes |
[Apr. 26th, 2012|12:16 am] |
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| Αθήνα |
[Apr. 10th, 2012|07:50 pm] |
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| And Shirley Bassey and one of them shiny microphones |
[Apr. 6th, 2012|08:23 pm] |
You'll be familiar with the range of behaviours and expressions exhibited by a horse when it refuses at a fence. If you're not, I would point you to examples, but the Flat Season has started. In summary, confronted with the hurdle the beast's eyes roll, its nostrils flare, it rears up and wheels around, flecks of foam in the wake of its turning muzzle.
I saw my colleague approach the room in which the presentation was to take place, and I tell you he did the exact same things at the doorway. As he passed me in his retreat he said:
"There's tables Metro, tables! Sod that."
The heart sinks when arriving at a seminar to find the seating is arranged in what is known to facilities managers as the 'cabaret' formation. Rather than serried ranks of seats all facing a focal point, the seats are grouped around tables.
I don't know about you, but the word 'cabaret' suggest to me a variety of entertainments, ending in a troupe of young Venezuelan ladies and gentlemen clad in costumes consisting of several feathers cavorting amongst the tables. At minimum. Also, a reasonably okay plate of steak-frites, and a steady supply of drinks. And I'd be fine with that. For me, that's cabaret.
What it actually means is that at some point during the presentation the speaker will wag off and twat about on his laptop, having enjoined the attendees to talk among themselves. Or 'engage in group discussion'. Would not be so bad if there were drinks. And something interesting to talk about, like: don't they build 'em well in Caracas? It's tough going. It certainly is not an opportunity for the attendee to switch off and glaze over. Which is surely the only reason anyone goes to these things.
Other reasons to turn on your heel at the threshold: presence in the room of a flip chart, a white board, or the absolute worst: several large sheets of paper and supplies of post-it notes and pens on each table. All suggest an unacceptable degree of interactivity: the expectation that each table will report back some outcome from their conversation. I mean, really, sod that. |
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[Mar. 22nd, 2012|09:19 pm] |
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Public Bill Committee Financial Services Bill Thursday 8 March 2012 (Morning)
[Mr Edward Leigh in the Chair]
Hoban, Mr Mark (Financial Secretary to the Treasury): Part 7 of FSMA provides for the transfer of insurance or banking businesses through a process of court approval. The process is used extensively for insurance companies, so much so that the tax rules dealing with it are complex, but it has not been used for the transfer of banking businesses. I understand that the courts are normally used for the internal reorganisation of insurance companies, while banking businesses are normally transferred through a takeover—for example, Lloyds Banking Group’s acquisition of Halifax Bank of Scotland.
The Chair: Order. Mr Hamilton, you are eating a banned substance in Committee. Will you share it with us?
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab): I am sorry. You would be most welcome to have my porridge, but I will finish it outside.
The Chair: I am sorry, Mr Hamilton—I could not resist it—that you are obliged to leave during the Minister’s gripping speech.
Fabian Hamilton: I apologise for interrupting the Minister. If my car had not broken down, I would have had breakfast.
Mr Hoban: I am at a loss as to what to say, but I am sure that, fortified by his porridge, the hon. Gentleman will rejoin our proceedings with great vigour and enthusiasm. As I was saying, Mr Leigh—
The Chair: We have lost track of your speech.
Mr Hoban: Yes. Let me get my speech back on track.
Court-based processes are used extensively to transfer businesses in the insurance sector and as part of internal reorganisations of such businesses....
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| Colm Tóibín, 'Flann O'Brien's Lies' LRB 5 January 2012 |
[Mar. 18th, 2012|08:54 pm] |
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"...in one of his Irish Times columns written under the name of Myles na gCopaleen, O’Brien offered a service to readers who owned books but did not open them. For a fee, books would be handled, with passages underlined or spines damaged or words such as ‘Rubbish’ or ‘Yes, but cf Homer, Od. iii, 151’ or ‘I remember poor Joyce saying the same thing to me’ written in the margins. Or inscriptions on the title page such as ‘From your devoted friend and follower, K. Marx.’ He even offered his readers membership of the Myles na gCopaleen Book Club. ‘You join this,’ he wrote, ‘and are spared the nerve-racking bother of choosing your own books. We do the choosing for you, and, when you get the book, it is ready-rubbed, i.e. subjected free of charge to our expert handlers.’ " |
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[Mar. 14th, 2012|10:27 pm] |
It has to be a burnt offering. You couldn't call it a 'burned' offering, could you? For one thing, that hints that the offering might have been subjected to a limited degree of burning, but not been fully burnt. For another, you would lose that essential charcoal scrape of the final consonant in the correct form: burnt. Burned? It might as well have been boiled.
Nevertheless, there is the toast, it's the last of the toast, and it's now a cinder. But at least I know what to call it. |
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| Madrid |
[Mar. 11th, 2012|11:16 pm] |
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| Commuter Outerwear London a/w 2011 |
[Mar. 11th, 2012|10:41 pm] |
'The North Face' The North Face of what? The North Face of Tesco's? What is Alpine about Muswell Hill? How polar is Purley? Climb a mountain? Let's see you do the emergency stairs at Chalk Farm for a start.
And 'Superdry' can sod off too.
Those faintly quilted Barbour jackets - despite looking like the coats M+S employees are given to wear in the environs of the frozen food section, they could only flourish under a Conservative government. |
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| kunst en cultuur |
[Mar. 6th, 2012|09:35 pm] |
'Santa Claus', Paul McCarthy, 2001, Eendrachtsplein, Rotterdam
Benidorm Bastards
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 17th, 2012|09:08 pm] |
A bloke sitting behind me in a cafe the other day answered his phone, and then did not speak for a very long time. When he did, he said: "Sooner you stop talking about yourself in the third person, the better." Then said goodbye.
Anyone overhearing the other side of the conversation was probably getting a better deal. But they might not have guessed that the speaker physically present was referring to him/herself in the third person.
Why would someone do that? What circumstance would lead them to, what would their objective be in doing so? I can think immediately of only two categories of person who do this: some, but perhaps not all, Roman emperors; and some, but by no means all, parents of small children.
Some examples:
Roman emperor: "Caesar was pleased to discover that along with France he had got Belgium and a bit of Holland free."
Mother: "Not now darling, Mummy is on her Black-ber-ry."
Father: "Hush, child, Daddy's busy writing a suicide note." |
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[Feb. 11th, 2012|03:08 pm] |
Dogs everywhere. Ambiently, just around. Undomesticated, in most circumstances indifferent to people: they don't importune attention.
In an arcade off Panepistimiou, several cafes face each other across the intersection of the four passageways. It rains and the people collect, and the dogs find floor space wherever they can. It gets more crowded until all the tables are taken and when a new dog ambles up it regards the conditions of crowding with the same disappointment as would a person.
Dogs in the suburbs, barking at the approach of an unknown person, but into the air and not at the stranger. Barking in the distance, barking in the night.
Riot cops, their line defined by long shields, protect a bank or similarly offensive institution near Omonia. Facing them, a gathering of chanting protestors, their own boundary defined by banners held at waist height. In between, a no-mans-land, into which wander two dogs who look about them. The angry noise, the cops: their tails begin to wave. They approach the front line, obviously wanting in. So one of the banners is held aside for them, and they join the crowd. |
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