It's Gabriele's burfday

wahey

Barry

I remember the first boy l fell in love and l think about him everyday. His name was Barry, he was a total scally, lived above his brothers pub, never had any money, passion or direction and just adored drugs. So l plucked this gem from the rough when he was propping up half a pint of some rank home brew at this pub and became tragically infatuated, he scared the living bejesus out of me and l thought he was the most perfect man l had ever spoken to.

I worked at a local pub down the road, pulling pints a few times a week for yokels, when we first started to date. I’d go around to his after l finished my shifts at night, or he’d come and meet me after l’d finished serving the lunches and we’d hang around, doing absolutely nothing for hours on end. The first time we went on an official date all we did was sit in his room. He got a phone call, late, and ominously announced he had to go and see some one straight away. He wanted some cocaine and didn’t want to miss an opportunity to be able to go and get it so he got snort it all asap. I begged him not to go, l really wasn’t that bothered by getting high, l was so happy sitting next to him in his shitty little room doing nothing and holding his hand. But it wasn’t enough for him so he got his gross motorbike and picked up. I told him l’d go home if he left, but l didn’t, and when he came back he turned his back racked up his lines and spoke too quickly for me to listen or care. I called my dad, Barry walked me to the cinema and l went home alone.

His skin was really rough, really weathered and tanned and his hands always smelt of tobacco. He had green eyes, they were sleepy eyes. When he spoke he always sounded like he had a blocked nose under his soft Liverpool accent and when he laughed his whole face would crease up into a smile. We giggled a lot, l only ever used to laugh when he laughed. I liked the sound of him being happy, when he was angry or sad he changed so much it used to frighten me, but l liked that too. I never understood him and there were parts of him l loathed, but then when l used to sit next to him and catch his eye, l’d get this rush of feeling so excited to have him, really have him although l know l never really did. I go home now and sometimes l walk past that pub deliberately and still hope maybe he’s standing, having a fag out front. They’re all gone now though. When l glance up at our window, where we used to sleep, scream and kiss each other its just dark and empty inside, like we weren’t ever there. I’m glad we were.

A Grave With No name single launch, Madame Jojo's

Baby girl

Picture: Tara- Corinne Day
I first met her a few weeks ago, a Sunday afternoon when l was trying to make some pocket money on the market. l was squatting on the curb, hovering above a sheet l had laid out on the floor with a load of clothes and brik a brac piled on top. I felt a little bit shy. No one was coming over to look at any of my things. The two men next to me were French., they were selling kids toys and old books. They gave me some fruit and we passed the time. The lady next to me was very quiet. I think she was in her late thirties, l’m not too sure, she looked nice. She was pretty, really. She reminded me of my aunty Paula, a bit of a happy-go-lucky hippy….. So l smiled at her and she smiled back at me and so l liked her. She is dark skinned, l think she’s Jamaican, she’s got these lovely freckles on her cheeks and grubby dreadlocks that fall on her shoulders and she talks with a West Indian accent and calls me ‘baby girl’and smiles even when no-one is looking. She‘s quite different. She wasn’t selling very much: some old scratched DVDs, these tacky plastic trinkets and some incense, they are all her things, personal keep-sakes she has to give up, to sell, for a bit of extra cash. Her clothes were just ordinary, blue jeans, denim jacket and a patterned t-shirt. I don’t know why l kept looking at her or wanted her to like me but l did.
She started to drink pretty early, maybe 11am. She was sweet and chatted to me about the people who walked past us, she rolled her eyes at the tired old crackheads, skaggies and morning wasters who fell down the road and it make me feel like we were laughing at the same thing but now l look back we couldn’t have been.
The first person who came up to her whispered something and she laughed again. But her face didn’t smile, she made a noise like she found it funny but l think she was scared. She started to drink more and more and more, those harsh cans of K that made her wince and gulp, wince and gulp. l carried on chatting to her, but she stopped listening to me or showing any interest in what l had to say, more dark characters kept approaching her. When she spoke to them she talked louder and looked more serious. They crept up and kept her attention, l couldn’t hear them and they only spoke to her. The sun went behind the clouds and the street got much busier, l got distracted by all the crowds, my clothes were selling well and l was having fun watching the world go by. The next time l looked up she had five of them around her and she was angry and desperate. I shouted over to her but she couldn’t hear or see beyond them, they had surrounded her and blocked our eye line. Then, just a quickly as they came, they disappeared and she spoke to me. Only this time l couldn’t understand her. All her words slurred into nothing and her eyes were bloodshot. She got up and stumbled over to me, grabbed my head and mumbled ‘baby girl, baby girl’ over and over into my hair.
She was different now, l didn’t know her before, but this new person who shouted like just another crazy, who spat in my face when she muttered her sentences at me wasn’t the lady l looked up to this morning. After that they came back and back, more and more, she became manic, shouting and sending them away, but they came back and back, more and more. The shadows from the pavement loitered all around her all the time now. She kicked all of what she had left into the gutter and threw the sheet into the road, she was crying but didn’t make a sound. Tears just spilled down her cheeks, all the while she argued more and they showed no sympathy. It looked cruel. She gave them her money and just wandered away, they walked in the opposite direction. l watched her little dreadlocks bob away until they just disappeared into the sea of people.
She’s there each week. She shouts ‘baby girl’ and l give her something of mine and she gives me anything she has. I watch her like any another addict but there is no such thing. Don’t you think behind each somebody there is a story, someone else, somewhere loves them. That’s someones sister, that’s somebodies child, somebody somewhere loves that person, but they aren’t around now. She isn’t just a victim, but she does invite this, l wish she wouldn’t.

Hackney WickED

Hackney Wicked Art Festival
31 July – 2 August 2009

Various locations around Hackney Wick, E9 and Fish Island, E3

Hackney Wicked Art Festival is back with a BOOM! Hackney WickED, dubbed by NY Arts Magazine as ‘the most vital art event of the summer’ is set to blitz the capital in its second year running. This major event will showcase the new blood of contemporary art in a rising generation of galleries and open studios.

Grand opening of Hackney Wicked Friday 31 July 2009 from 6pm - 9pm at various locations

Hackney Wick throws opens its gates to present cutting edge gallery shows from some of London’s most extraordinary Galleries and a plethora of artists’ Open-Studios.

READ PLATFORM

http://www.readplatform.com/finger-lickin-lewis/

guy bourdin

Dayle Haydon and Sayuko filmed by Guy Bourdin on a Vogue shooting in 1974 in Normandy, France.

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ATC

Everything is Illuminated : photographed by Horke Diekgerde

Double take

The £16 imitation Balmain dress, from George (of Asda) doing the rounds right now.

I could be convinced

satisfying itch

ooooooooOOOOOOOOO0000000

tekin time ent laziness

vincent, my love

35 shots of rum

Radio GaGa

Introducing:


Amazing baby took the stages of Heaven by storm supporting The Virgins in Heaven earlier this year. Since their explosion onto the scene they have gone on to secure themselves hotspots on the alternative European festival circuit this season.
These cute crooning psychedelic Brooklyn babies jam to soft rock and specialise in making all the girls scream with their illustrious crooning and floppy haired harmonies. They are a cross breed somewhere between the Kooks, The Shins and MGMT (que music journo cuckolding) and I like em. You do have to concentrate to really listen to the lyrics, its all very dreamlike and surreal, the guitar solos entice you into a fantastical melodrama remaining of a consistently high calibre throughout all of the album. A rare quality. A lot of the best beats aboot seem to be streaming out state side these days, Amazing baby are no exception.

Noah and the whale: Free downloads

DO IT

Blue Skies - Death To The Throne remix

https://rcpt.yousendit.com/715548324/3ee04ac837ca16fff37cb799c2291eb0

Blue Skies - Yacht remix

https://rcpt.yousendit.com/715552684/deda4b3a0764a6ef454e7ffc933783cb

Boards Of Canada

I wish monday mornings looked more like this inside my head. bad times.

-in a beautiful place out in the country


Everything You Do is a Balloon


Whitewater

super chat

dolly to the rescue

art attack? We have a band!

Remember art attack, l always preferred neil to Rolf




oh yeah this song is called you came out by 'we have a band'
have a go at making your video kids, just grab some paint and and a few of your friends......

my favourite bedtime story

from my favourite bedtime story book

PLEASE, SORRY AND THANK YOU

Once upon a time, Please and Thank You were having a little talk. They were feeling very sorry for themselves. Presently they saw Sorry coming along.
‘Why is it’ said Sorry, ‘that all the other words have such a nice easy time why we have to work so hard? People are always saying ‘Please’, Sorry’ and ‘Thank You’, but half the time they don’t mean what they say. It isn’t fair’
‘No it isn’t fair’ said Thank You ’there is a lady in our street who has a little girl and she is always saying, ‘ Say thank You’ to her. I’m sure that when the little girl grows up she will say ‘Thank You’ but it won’t mean much. And it makes me so very tired. I just don’t get a moments sleep.’

‘It’s just as bad for me’ said Please. ‘All day long, in every bus in the world, it’s ‘Fares Please. Fares please. Fares Please’ Of course its nice being polite, but I’m quite worn out.’
Please turned to sit down and accidentally trod on Thank Yous toes. ‘Sorry’ He said.
There you go!’ said Sorry ‘Even you make me work’
‘Oh Sorry’ said Please ‘I trod on Thank Yous toes so I said Sorry, Sorry.’
‘There you go again’ said Sorry. ‘Will you please stop it? Now I’m making you work. What shall we do to get a rest?’

They thought for a bit and then decided they would go on a nice long holiday and sleep for a whole week. Then nobody in the world would be able to say ‘Please, Sorry, or Thank You.

And that’s what they did.

When they came back from their holiday, they weren’t feeling tired any more, and they didn’t mind when people started to say ‘Please, Sorry and Thank You again. It seemed much nicer because people had gort out of the habit of mumbling ‘Please’’, or ‘Sorry’, or ‘Thank You’, whether they meant it or not. They only used the words when they truly wanted to say them, so Please, Sorry and Thank You did not have to work so hard, and were not nearly so tired as they used to be.
Every year now they go for a holiday so that when they come back, people will remember when they say ‘Please’ ‘Sorry’ or ‘Thank You’ the words really do mean something.

whatever happened to...

the avalanches

gREGORY cREWDSON

Its hard to comprehend, but this 'punk/rock' band (and specifically this song) were what inspired Gregory Crewdson to dabble in photography. To look at the empty, soul destroying domestic landscapes he fabricates strikes the kind of lonely fear into any humans heart that makes you ponder just what person this all comes from..and now l know but l'm even more confused.

Anywho, Gregory Crewdson is a God in my country, l first saw an exhibition of his by chance but two years ago and since then have been an avid fan and admirer of this incredible talent. to see his work in real life is even more staggering. The canvases he prints on are vast, covering entire gallery walls, audiences edge back and back more in disbelief upon first encounters. His detail is so hyper real its impossible to understand how the images are digital, l was convinced they were paintings despite knowing better. If you ever get the chance to catch an exhibition of his do it. I rate him in my top 3 artists of our era, for sure.