sheep may safely graze?
We made a swift visit to Cologne, not for any very compelling reason other than it was there. Naturally we explored the cathedral, which is just as big as I remember it being, we were both rather struck by the slightly more contemporary saints that have been added in certain places, and most especially by this very knowing and camp trio. I don't know what the sculptor was trying to say, really...
more spray art
It's from Essen, or possible Cologne, shame that some little bugger tagged over it.
Paris
I find it quite comforting to discover that while Paris remains as slick and european as ever, with scarcely a french voice to heard on certain streets. In various corners, however, Parisians are still pursuing various eccentric trades. It all started when I went looking for a shop I had found the last time I worked at the Pompidou; it specialised entirely in cow related artefacts, and I was hoping to find some friesian patterned socks to cheer up the Arts correspondent. As I half suspected, that shop might have been too specialised in its appeal, and has now been replaced by a bar.
What I did find, however were two splendidly eccentric shops, one specialising in the restoration and hire of ivory and historical animal specimens. and in Les Halles, a shop dedicated to the destruction of rats, with a comprehensive window display of specimens killed in the area since 1925. Its proximity to a very nice boulangerie must, I think, be coincidental.
straight to Hull, more Yorkshire spray art
I found this was on the same wall in Sheffield where I pictured a sprayed image a couple of years ago (
http://lx999.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html), and although the wall has since been repainted, the same artist has made a return visit, his subject is a bit more morose this time.
baggage
Time was, when you participated in a Theatre festival there would always be some sort of official present. Inevitably there would be a t-shirt, equally inevitably the wrong size, made of impossibly cheap material and covered in the names of sponsors that you have never heard of, and finished off with some sort of snappy arts related strapline across the chest. Commonly, when you arrive at your venue there will be a row of carrier bags, one for each participant, containing the afforementioned t-shirt and some sort of quirky gift; a mozart kugeln in Vienna, a recycled pencil in Copenhagen, and incomprehensively, a condom in Bogota.
In the last year or so, however, things have changed, the message is now the bag- it has become de rigeur for any self respecting festival to produce its own celebratory luggage; weird nylon things in Latin America or over-printed cotton in most of Europe. Last week we were clearing out the store, in preparation for an influx of unusable tat (aka: the new show), and as I was clearing, I was struck by the sheer number of discarded festival bags littering the floor. The prize for most creative goes to the former Eastern Europe, and a festival in Prague: hand sewn and finished with patches of coloured fabric providing a series of mysteriously purposeless pockets. Will this madness never end?
By way of a digression, I took Tim the satnav out for its first European outing this weekend, driving from Zeebrugge to Gelsenkirchen, and he performed admirably, guiding me through three countries without any trauma. The only moment of dissent occurred when I switched it on on the ferry, and it announced; 'turn around when possible', either it had developed cold feet about travelling, or it was still determined that Dover is a nicer ferry port than Hull, I think the jury's out on that one.
