Random acts of kindness

We have just returned from three weeks shooting our latest film,'Living with the Tudors' in rural Suffolk. It's been an epic experience, and though the shoot is over I will for some time remain in the peculiar aftermath of intense documentary filming - a state of heightened sensibility to, and awe of - human experience and survival. Despite the almost complete exhaustion of my emotional resources, as I watch people at the train station or eating lunch, I am scrutinising them for the tiniest perceptible scars of their life stories - perhaps an awkward gait, a shrill laugh or a hesitant look.
Reminding me of the day after I lost my virginity, I expect everyone else to detect this seismic shift in my sensibilities in my external appearance. Of course, they don't. In the supermarket, people examine the produce as usual, perhaps seeing me in their peripheral vision as just another tired-looking shopper.
One particular encounter reminds me of what can happen in this state of mind:
On the way home from shooting our first film Bata-ville I remained in the retro travel hostess uniform I wore throughout the film as I had no time to change. Arriving very late at Oxenholme Lake District train station, it was dark, windswept and raining heavily. I had practically slipped into a coma en route I had been so tired, and now I had to drive the next hour home myself. I was feeling unsociable and introspective. Then, I saw a young black woman with a large suitcase looking hesitantly at the empty taxi rank, and I felt utterly compelled to ask her if I could help. She seemed unphased by my appearance or my cluttered car and I offered her a lift to the nearby town Windermere, where she had a job in a care home. It was only as we reached the town's main road she admitted she did not have the address written down, or any idea where the building was. Once more, going utterly against what would have been my habitually irritable response to this spiral of chaos, I felt simply sorry for this woman and we continued to drive through deserted streets for another hour until the vast Victorian pile loomed into view. On offloading her case, my passenger reached into her handbag and asked how much she owed me for the lift. I explained that really I had been going her way anyway.
Today, rushing to buy some food at the supermarket, I impatiently freed up my trolley with a pound coin and noticed in the corner of my eye a very stooped old lady in the next row of trolleys. She was being very discreet, but she was clearly utterly baffled by how the coin system worked. I watched her struggling patiently and proudly for a little while, as other shoppers wrenched away neighbouring trolleys. Then - of course - I went and helped her.

My fledglings have left the nest

I recently left academia after a decade in part-time fine art lecturing. Like many life-long art lecturers slash artists who use their teaching to pay the bills, I had thought at best I'd last seven and was surprised to make it past this itch.

In fact I changed jobs after seven years, and left UCE Birmingham to work closer to home at St Martin's College (SMC) in Lancaster. The move was a wrench - I had made great friends at UCE, had - in some ways - grown up there. But in the last few years, a number of colleagues had died prematurely, after long illnesses, and in some ways the time felt right to move on. My new job promised a new course, built to the specifications that myself and another newly appointed colleague then spent several years crafting. There were many good times earlier on, and I learnt - at first anyway - to work a comfortable 8 hour day instead of UCE's unusual 11 hour one.

On my interview day, I toured the archaic and empty Apple Mac Suite and viewed the grimey Uglow-esque paintings in the Art studios with a band of fellow interviewees (one of whom described the job as a 'poisoned chalice' I recall). I wondered if there were any young people even on the course, it all seemed to careful and polite. But I really liked the staff I met, and I was excited about moving away from the safe haven of UCE and its largely middle-class intake. I remember now how long I took to accept the post when I was offered it - something in me knew I was in for a steep uphill climb. To cut a very long and arduous story short, the institution - very sadly - proved to be as backward as it had first appeared. Tens of thousands of pounds were wasted by the college fulfilling half our list of IT prerequisites, which would not function without the other half. The one half languished inoperative in cupboards and my angry and unreplied to emails built up.

Our course was finally aborted at a very late stage, with very little warning and no debriefing from management. I was disgusted, and no matter how fond I was of my colleagues by then, and how much good I felt sure I was doing the students, I could not remain working for management I had so little respect for. It's a very ordinary tale in academia....



Fast-forward then, till Friday night, when a small, diverse group of my favourite ex-students (I can say that now I'm not their lecturer any more!) hold a show 'The 9lb project' in the College gallery which I had helped design as part of my job at SMC. They had had the gumption to turnaround their usually lacklustre work placement module and organise the first real gallery show SMC had had outside of degree show every June. As I drove there, I had the usual mixed expectations of a student show. And I still was feeling considerable guilt for leaving them - as I saw it - at the mercy of a largely unsympathetic (or maybe uncomprehending) course team. I knew I had probably been the only lecturer who had really pushed their buttons, and that I had left them now. This probably sounds like I'm taking it all to seriously, but hey - this is how it goes in the post-partum mind.

These students were an almost crazily diverse group, but they'd put on - with our very committed technician Stephen Bentley as their institutional support - an incredibly fresh exhibition of energetic, articulate work. I loved it. It wasn't the best-installed show on earth, but I was just thrilled to see a decent turnout of young gallery-goers, some fine skate-boarding, some Paul McCarthy-seque gutsy performance (see image) and no politeness on the walls. It was as if finally some young artists had entered the building. Predictably there were no senior SMC staff in attendance (in some way just as well seeing as how hazardous the pissed skateboarding was getting) but I'm certain the exhibitors didn't give a shit. They all seemed elated, and I remembered how exciting shows are when you start out. I even remember Nina throwing up regularly before them - that's how exciting they were.

As I was getting ready to leave some of my former students began to lament my departure. One of the exhibitors challenged me "You said in drawing class you'd be really impressed if someone did a full-length self portrait - I did! You said you'd be impressed if someone did a bit of performance - tonight I did! What's you're next challenge !? - Bring it on!!!"
I sped home on the M6, the route suffused by warm early summer light and skipping through my iPod. I realised that for the first time in a long time I felt good about what I had left, and certain that they'd all be absolutely fine without me.

Paid to smile

I just enjoyed a pre-Easter minibreak in North Yorkshire, mainly to relieve the inevitable pressure valve of impending Easter in the Lake District, which is an endurance test of tourists driving, picnicking in your garden and allowing their dogs to chase your cats. I used my favourite guidebook to choose ur destination: Alistair Sawday, which Nina and I somehow discovered a few years ago when R & D-ing our Almanac project. It provided us with a series of characterful B & B's owned by characterful people who didn't - like us, but unlike the Tourist Board - overrate ensuite bathroom, central heating, or proximity to local attractions.
Alistair S once again led us to an appealling eccentric venue, in a little fishing village 'much beloved by artists' (I did like it, it's true) weirdly close to Middlesborough (no postcards available of that sadly) - a restaurant with rooms, famed for seafood. The room was nice - ensuite bath not shower (I approve) with rather odd but compelling view of sheer cliff face with gulls /wallflowers, and a cupboard full of DVDs to compensate for the crap TV reception. The energetic cook and co- owner sprinted up the stairs ahead of us, just the right side of warm and informal - a very hard thing to get right in the 'hospitality trade'. Then, downstairs he introduced us to his partner, who was pouring another guest a lovely looking Kir Royale.
She looked up fleetingly, and flashed a momentary and utterly superficial grin before returning to her evening of service. Now, as a 'directors wife' I recognise the ennui of the bored hostess more easily than most - it happens to us all at one time or another that you find yourself bored to death by somebody important to your partners work. Luckily Grizedale Arts generally delivers a gripping guest - Ken Russell for example - so this is rare. Nevertheless, this woman was clearly suffering from the syndrome badly. At dinner, she made sure to book us in to a strict 15 minute breakfast slot that rather belied the image of a 'relaxed getaway'.
Later that evening Mrs Happy described to some 'regulars' - well within earshot of us - her and her chef / host husband's recent 2 week break in California. "Hmmm, nice, but it was the first holiday we'd had since we started this place in 2003...". The regulars sympathised quietly, not quite sure what she was trying to say.
I felt sorry for her, but then I remembered we were paying them 200 quid. She was paid to smile and had somehow forgotten how to make this at least look sincere.
(Music reference in title for pop-pickers: The Lemonheads)

Looks familiar

I have recently left academia after a decade (the reasoning perhaps being a subject of a future blog entry...), and taken a freelance job leading Grizedale Arts 'Creative Egremont' programme - a year long public art project in the largely-unknown West Cumbrian town of Egremont, which sits cheek-by-jowl with Sellafield Nuclear Power Station.
My drive to the town takes me out of the condensed hyper-landscape of the Lake District across a spectacular stretch of moorland near Broughton (pictured). I'm told that at certain times of the day this empty road is filled with boy-racers escaping from their shifts at Sellafield, though I haven't yet experienced this.
What struck me when I first took this route was its familiarity. At first I put this down to its resemblance to my homeland Scotland, and also to the post-academic euphoria of the open road. Now, however, I have become convinced that this sinewy road and its 360 degree panorama is in fact the backdrop for the countless car commercials that bombard us from billboards (ok, not here in the National Park where such hordings are absolutely verboten...), sunday supplements and TV.
Is there no escaping the iconic landscape in this part of the world?

I love America and America loves me

(For non-art readers please Google ‘Beuys, Joseph’ right now)
I don’t think I saw so much as a plain old hound dog let alone a cayote on my recent trip to the ‘alternative’ bit of Texas – Austin - to screen our film ‘Bata-ville’ for the first time on US shores.
The Austin creatures I encountered in the ubercool SXSW Festival were altogether more exotic and strange to my eyes: Grown women screaming ‘Neat shoes!’ at me without alcohol or irony; a bronzed expat Johnny-Lydon-esque cockney guitarist jamming in a thrift store; people so large and immobile that when stationary they could be mistaken for one of those inflatable armchairs.
Film festivals: Tedious though it is to have to summarise one’s film to 75 different people a night, this is pleasingly facilitated by being whisked smoothly through 3 margarita-filled parties a night by friendly, interested and interesting strangers. I don’t get to party much up my mountain, so I like to take big bites of this kind of thing when I can.
During SXSW (music, film & interactive) the city becomes an international but compact circuit for bands, film-makers and geeks – ideal for the time-starved and jet-lagged, the programmes are stimulating but not epic so long as you know what you like. The atmosphere is like a much cooler (but warmer if you know what I mean) Edinburgh Festival for the young(ish) and hip – laidback, a little flirty, and (speaking about the films anyway) eccentric.....

Like many Britons I am ambivalent about America and Americans, though until last week I had never ventured further than New York City (which sees itself as a fashionable suburb of a farflung European city). It takes around 2 days to acclimatise to the relentless friendliness and (we’re more alike than we think) inability to give a straight answer. (I lost count of the times I heard ‘Well ma’am, I cannot give you a precise answer to your query at this time, however....’ instead of “I don’t know”).
And it’s hard to trust a nation whose addiction to fast food compromises almost every waking experience – even arthouse cinemas are filled with a rustling, snacking mob.
And yet there is so much to delight in – at least in Austin: sequins and neon gleefully adorn most stores as if a 7 year old girl has been given the shopfitting contract; potplant cacti growing as rampant and wild on wasteground as foxgloves do here; the literally countless re-interpretations (read ‘refoldings’) of the burrito; the dusk pet-shop cacophony of the vast flocks of grackle birds (spelling?!) roosting in the trees and competing with the live bands everywhere,

Ethno/erotophile

Courtesy of my younger brother’s merciful replenishment of my iPod I have belatedly discovered the Scottish band Arab Strap. They’d previously only been known to me via occasional John Peel mentions and when at a film-making masterclass recently the director Richard Jobson said he’d made a music video for them. (Lucky sod, I say).
I don’t know anything about the band but I’m loving the tracks from The Last Romance album. Come Round and Love Me had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, which is beyond rare for a cynic like me. The plain instrumentation and mundane eroticism of the lyric intertwine – like a lot of good music - to remind me of a past I don’t know I was nostalgic for: lie-ins in student flats, hangovers and aimless lust.
I am a Scot who has been an expat for 15 years, and perhaps most startling for me is the (re?) discovery of the eroticism of the Scottish male voice in Arab Strap. It’s well over a decade since I had anything erotic to do with a Scotsman, and I’m pretty sure that over that decade I wasn’t conscious of the accent’s specific allure. But something weirdly bubbles up in my subconscious when I listen to this album: I’m sure a psychoanalyst would have a field day on where this is coming from – dad, brothers, my first boyfriend, teacher/s – all vying for space in my ever more crowded psyche.
I’ll eagerly await the invitation to make Arab Strap’ next video and get some of this out....

Radical horticulture

Notable by its absence to date from this blog is my fanatical obsession with gardening, given full reign since my move to the middle of nowhere four years ago from Peckham, where I endured a tiny patch dominated by overzealous plum trees and the neighbour's rottweillers.
To be fair, my garden has its own website, that's how big it is - at www.lawsonpark.org.uk - which I try to maintain in the same relaxed way as the garden itself (a duff link = a dandelion in a corner in this analogy).
Anyway, back to the point - I am truly saddened by the death recently of Christopher Lloyd, arguably Britain's most influential gardener of the 20th century. He lived a privileged bachelor life in his folks' place, Great Dixter in Sussex, and dedicated himself and his resources to his colourful, inspired, exprimental garden there. I was lucky enough to visit last summer, and though many of his gleeful planting experiments can't be replicated up my cold mountain, it was an inspiring day, despite the crowds.



I was particularly struck by his 'still lifes' of potted, clashing plants of both refined and mongrel origins, dotted about (see top image) - and reminded of the work of the noted and IMHO much under-rated (move over Grayson, please) ceramicist Richard Slee. Both men share a mischievious and knowing disregard and manipulation of taste and cliche in their oeuvre. From Richard's fabulous website at www.richardslee.com I have borrowed these pics to hopefully prove my point.

With very different artistic vocabularies, both cock a snook at the bourgois sensibilities of the art or garden-lover, who at first glance sees a covetable 'ornament' and (hopefully) at second glance, a complex codefied challenge.



A highlight of any Dixter visit is the house tour, a not because of the artefacts within the impressive and ancient building (as I understand, transported there bit by bit by Christopher's father). Ours was led by the most entertaining guide never to work for a publicly-funded organisation. A Joyce-Grenfell-a-like, willowy, and oddly ageless lady lead the way with the most hilarious and laconic monologue throughout, interspersed with the kind of almost supernatural authority and understatement that English spinsters were once famed and feared for. Whilst facing the opposite way and commentating on a medieval window, her speech would fluidly transform into a brief but severe reprimant to the a naughty 9 yr old who at that very point was leaning on a rare and valuable antique chair behind her. When faced with explaining some particularly wacky contemporary furniture in CL's office, a deep - and deeply disapproving yet oddly warm sigh preceded her "Christopher Lloyd has been shopping AGAIN..."

LLoyd's prolific writing is justly esteemed too, and I particularly enjoyed it when I was writing for a shortlived garden magazine ' The Northern Garden' a few years ago. Pithy and erudite yet always amusing, I particularly enjoyed reading of his ambivalence to the 'paying public' in his garden. Apparently, when on all fours weeding on an open day (his was a high-maintenance garden, low-maintenance according to him being for the 'uninterested') inevitably a visitor would ask the name of a particular plant. Without turning round or looking up his response would be to ask if the enquirer had a pen and paper ready. "But I'll remember it!' the poor visitor would persist "No, you won't, so it's simply a waste of both of our time me telling you!"
My kind of guy.

Would the Cumbrian film-makers at the back please stand up

Happy New Year to you. I have a good feeling about 2006, my first venture way from home since festive hibernation having been surprisingly good:

Pulling up at the venue for the Cumbrian Film-maker's Network inaugeral 2006 screening, my heart sank somewhat. The bar, a dim 'aluminium-chairs-blond-wood' type of place, had stopped doing food at 6pm due to lack of customers, and we were forced back into Kendal's hellish one-way system to find fish and chips.
However, on returning later with my DVD of my short film 'Welcome To' there was a pretty good crowd, though I was surprised to see mainly the over-50s, many blokes, and very few of what you might guess were filmmakers wanting to network....Jo Hutton, the organiser, is an enterprising young woman who hosts the event too.
Debate was modest but the atmosphere warm, and I squeezed in the trailer for 'Bata-ville' and plugged its next screening at the local-ish Keswick Film Festival (Feb. 19th FYI).
Along with my film there were a number of others procured on the whole through the local screen agency North West Vision. They were kind of slick but not my thing at all. Most of my attention was spent noting the funders logos at the end for future reference.

The highlight was Edward Acland, a local ex-councilor, 'creative soul' (his words) and eco-zealot who had done an exhibition at the Brewery Arts Centre in 2004. The show ("It was an enormous project, it took over a week!" he said. i didn't want to tell him how long most of my projects take...) included a short autobiographical film which was both elegiac and a call to arms against the impending global envornmental crisis. A guy from the world of corporate video had produced the film, which was technically very competent but formally very pedestrian. What made the film so compelling was the charisma and succinctness of Acland's narration, as he told how he had abandoned his dayjob at the Council and now acknowledged the impossibility of radical green politics ever reaching 'the establishment'. Miraculously un-bitter anyway, he spoke passionately about his concerns for the planet's future, in a seductive language which was tinged with the more predictable hippy-dom but which also was energised with an impatience to find new ways to influence people's behavior and awareness of green issues.

Many of my friends would be surprised to hear that I have been a member of Greenpeace since I was 15. I don't wear that side of myself on my sleeve despite my passion for horticulture and early consumption of organic foods (seeking them out when at art college, you had to buy a bag of what was mostly mud from a dingy shop staffed by some very strange people). Naturally, since moving to the middle of nowhere, the dynamic of nature has gradually taken on more significance for me, as I connect again to my childhood weekends and holidays romping on the Arran hillsides until dusk. In many ways I find the culture of the Lake District largely stagnant / static, and so my theory is that this makes you finely attuned to the very dynamic natural world, and by extension more committed to its sustainance. (Note, I don't say 'protection' a la Lake District National Park Authority).
And so I am always delighted and suprised to find people here like Edward, who manage to actually apply what many would deem hopeless idealism to his life and work - maybe this in turn produces culture?

Sportswear - it's really important

I must be getting on. I have a lot more time for Madonna than I used to. I gladly buy into the whole radical older mum of 2 struts her stuff regardless of 21st century social norms. I admire someone who samples the wondrous Abba, possibly the biggest influence on my life between 4 and 6 years old.
But when I saw the grand dame on telly a few weeks ago being interviewed by a sycophantic youngster, she made the mistake of trying to articulate something else that obsessed me between 4 and 6 years old - "Where do ideas come from?"
Madonna, following in the footsteps of so many cultural colossi, cited the need to "find my muse" for every new reincarnation of herself. And this year's muse was - the interviewer enquired...?
"Leotards" she answered, thoughtfully.

Lukewarm Radiator

I hadn’t been out of the Lake District for about a month before travelling last weekend to speak at the Radiator Festival, an art & new media wingding in Nottingham, an idiosyncratic kind of town slash small city, where they have things called the Household Bank and a Leprosy Mission. I think Boots might have started there too (any pharmaceutical relationship to the Mission I wonder). I was looking forward to seeing my friend and one-time mentee Jeanie Finlay who lives there, an artist and film-maker who – like the ideal mentee she was – has surpassed her mentor’s meagre personal and professional achievements in every field. She even speaks Japanese.

I’m something of an alumni of the Radiator festival, having spoken at its first incarnation in 2000. As I recall, a handful of people – almost all working at the event – attended my gig, directly after which the organiser handed me a cheque for £350. Whilst I was still on the stage. I don’t think I have ever been paid more, or more rapidly for any presentation. I liked it.
Arriving at one of the Festival’s main venues, Broadway, after some phenomenally slow service at the town’s Wagamama noodle joint (and remember I’m speaking as someone who endures Lake District speed service on a regular basis) , I joined a late ‘remote’ talk by a commissioned artist. A handful of people, mostly working for the event, clustered around a small computer monitor into which one was typing in an online chat. The roar and fun of the downstairs bar was deafening, and a few semi-detached audience members shared beers at the back of this upstairs ‘space’ – one of those semi-circulatory, transitory rooms which neither invite relaxation or facilitate communication or interaction. I sneaked onto a seat and looked across at the curator Sarah Cook (the chair for our next day’s panel) who I had arranged to meet there, trying to ascertain her level of commitment to the event.

I found myself instantly wondering if anyone from the event had even spoken to anyone in the bar or foyer downstairs about it – announced it I mean, when it was starting, what it was, why they should come? The security guy on the stairs had shrugged when I had asked him what was going on up there. Yes, it’s hard to walk into a crowded room of drinkers and endure a few nanoseconds of embarrassment. Yes a few twats would probably shout at you as you struggle to be heard over the drinking, as you struggle to make ‘moving-upstairs-to-engage-in-an-online-chat-on-a-small-screen-with-some-obscure-foreign-artist-you’ve-not-hear-of ‘ actually sound inviting. But isn’t it the job of a festival like this to try and get new audiences.? Or just any audiences?
I am reminded of the late and much-missed Robert Woof (see my eulogy below), director of the Wordsworth Trust - someone who unfailingly rang you up a few hours before the Trust’s monthly poetry events to personally invite you to attend. You invariably did. As marketing gets, it doesn’t get much more targetted and God knows he must had dreaded doing it some days – I mean, this guy was the Director, not the administrator, he had other stuff to do. But he knew that how to get people in to events – at least outside of the safe haven of London – using a combination of guilt-tripping, manipulation of the English’s fear of embarassment and unwillingness to say no, and a sympathetic acknowledgement that you probably hadn’t read the brochure as closely as you might have.
Anyway, in moments Sarah and I had escaped to the roaring bar and fortunately quickly engaged in an – as ever with Sarah –widerangingly enjoyable but techno-flavoured discussion that included Sarah’s patient responses to:
“Is it just me, or does there seem to be a lot of that academic dance and technology stuff programmed here?”
“Is it just me, or is Open Source for artists really problematic – I mean, you’re not allowed any images on Open Mute’s Omweb thingy....”
“Is it just me, or is this a very small audience?”

You can see that after 4 weeks up my mountain, the Rural Laptop seeks affirmation for her distantly paranoid observations of the cultural world from afar.

How do you cry online?

This is one of questions, that in the blur of the funeral of my friend Marie Nally, I starkly remember. It was part of a brief eulogy that had been emailed, and someone - I think it was my friend and work partner Nina - read it out in the service, shaking with the A4 in her hand. Marie had a strong online network of friends, chiefly though her engagement in the breast cancer cause (the disease that took her life), for which she paved the way for so much of todays' Internet support and discussion.
It's still a question of the utmost poignancy and loneliness of grief, articulate of the fundamental limits of our expression: technological limits, emotional limits.

Last week came the news of the death - also from cancer - of Robert Woof. Robert was the director of the Wordsworth Trust in nearby Grasmere, and an irreplaceable and inspiring friend to my partner Adam and I. Robert was a man of enormous intellect, but rarely for an academic, his erudition was woven into a vast net which - at lightning speed - would have him making the most inspirational cross-references. Even for much younger guests - as often the Grizedale artists we have with us are - an evening with Robert was a totoally engaging cross-cultural tour at breakneck speed.

Robert is pictured here at an unforgettable dinner at our house a few months ago with the film-maker Ken Russell and many other notable guests. I had the honour (and it really was) of sitting between these wise men for the meal, and enjoying a conversation that leapt from the sadomasochism of Percy Grainger (something I know a little about thanks to my school music teacher - another story for another blog) to elderberry pie, to road planning in the Lake District and many places in between. For once, I shut up and savoured being the audience. Robert knew he had limited time. He had a huge appetite for food, wine and conversation that evening and - as so often at dinners with Robert - the night ended in the small hours, with his wife Pamela, encouraging him out into the darkness to be driven home.

In so many ways Robert was much kinder to the Lake District than it was to him. He never gave up working tirelessly to promote the place's most famous cultural export - Wordsworth - in both the lowest and highest circles. Here was a man who in his seventies, was taking the first train down to London at 5 in the morning, to appear on Breakfast TV listening to some dreadful 6 year olds who who recited 'I wandered lonely as a cloud...', deafeningly, in a circle around him. Every Tuesday, a few hours before one of the Trust's poetry evenings, Robert would personally call you up (knowing, as he did, that I hate poetry - not that that ever came between us) and cajole you into coming to the event. They were always fun, and this typifies Robert's charm and persistance, his belief in his mission and his personal accountability for its success. And yet the Trust's library building (which finally opened this summer) - a cause which ate so much of Robert's energy in the last few years - was a feud with the planners on an epic scale, a needlessly and pointlessly protracted war with a council who should know so very much better.

So, Adam is on the other side of the planet in Japan, when he receives an email with the news. He must cry online.

iPod love - part 2

I have been doing rather lot of driving on the same stretch of M6 recently and consequently my brain is in overdrive as it disengages with the actual road signeage.
Back to the iPod - I was thinking of the analogy of pot-pourri, but a pot-pourri where each and every distinct scented fragment transports you somewhere absolutely now - the school hymn book, your grandmothers house, your mother's embrace.
One of the compelling but potentially dangerous aspects of the iPod is its capacity to hold literally thousands of pieces of music that have a direct and powerful emotional effect on you - all available (and discard-able) within a millisecond. Think of the music that transports you back to your teenage years, to school or to heartbreak. Think of how rarely most of us encountered that music before. Maybe while screeling through a radio dial in a hired car, or at a friends wedding, and remember how viscerally it affected you.
Like many I am sure, I have filled the little beast with only the creme de la creme of my musical taste, scouring the Web for downloads "christ, Magazine - I haven't hear that since I was 15!") and consequently it's now like a quietly ticking bomb, a genies lamp.
What does the iPod's ability to fast-track us to the most heightened emotional states of our lives do? I find myself on perpetual 'shuffle' mode, gorging on successive memories at 95mph on the motorway, then skipping ruthlessly through the opening bars of dozens of them thinking 'Christ, not Magazine again!'

iPod – the ladies’ friend

Is iPod - at last – the life-soundtrack every girl’s been waiting for?
I had a CD Walkman for years but could never be arsed complicating my travel arrangements even more by sorting out CDs and batteries before leaving the house. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many women I have seen using a Walkman outside of a gym.
Maybe, just maybe, as I’ve got older I need to block out more of other people. Whatever – I find myself addicted to my sleek lime green friend, nurturing it (him? Her?), feeding it new music at regular intervals, clothing it in a sensible zipup case when not in use (i.e rarely) and even conversing with it during our long car journeys together with Teach Yourself Japanese.
Oh, and because it's autumn you should be mushroom-hunting. Here's a photo of some exquisite chanterelles to get you inspired.

“Vegan Banquet”

Like ‘friendly fire’, these words feel uncomfortable, even improbable, together.
But, hey, I’m one of the many thirty-somethings who in the past trained themselves to consume ‘milks’ called ‘Rice Dream’ and ‘Soy Delicious’ before finding out that female mice fed on GM soy beans were growing penises. And anyway, putting stuff in your tea that actually curdles on contact makes you start really enjoying the ever-reliable, mechanised consistency of some really unhealthy products like Coke and Big Macs.
When I stayed in New York, imagined mid-life crises around dairy-intolerance became a regular conversation topic at parties. When we left our apartment I had a T shirt made for my landlord / friend – a major exponent of the theory that milk products were killing us all. It said ‘Dairy Happens’, and went down a storm.
Now, this is my blog and I don’t have to be fair - but having ranted against Lake District food here, I really have to haul a recent ‘vegan banquet’ (their words) consumed in London recently, right over the coals. Which, incidentally, might have helped furnish the dishes with that elusive but important culinary feature – flavour.
The cafe was in one of the last central London hippie / squatter enclaves, and so you’re eating in what almost feels like a theme restaurant in this age of bleached laminate-flooring and chrome light fittings. Bizarre throwbacks such as freestyle jazz and allowing smoking compound the retro vibe. You can almost imagine staff being issued with uniforms of ratty dred wigs and piercings behind the kitchen door. Anyway, suffice to say that the tepid mush served us had all the classic vegan attributes – no seasoning, undercooked pulses, overcooked vegetables and a certain holier than thou miserliness – no fresh coriander (they even manage that at the tandoori in Maryport for God’s sake) and certainly nothing as needlessly raunchy as a popadum.

So, if you find yourself mysteriously craving a vegan banquet in central London, take my advice and eat at one of the many fabulous and economical South Indian restaurants behind Euston train station on Drummond Street. You can even wig out completely and order a (dairy-filled) lassi with it.

Ken Russell's legs

Well that was some weekend.
The Coniston Water Festival came to fruition with a diverse smorgasbord of cultural open sandwiches. My favourite was Ken Russell's Lovely Legs Competition - pictured here in progress (those are my boyfriends legs on show). I have removed Ken's as they were just too good. But seriously, shortly after this pic was taken he declared himself the winner. And shortly before it he had discussed Cumbria's self-proclaimed ' Professor of Adventure', Millican Dalton, an Edwardian cave dweller who developed a line in mountain tours for the bored English bourgoisie.
Find out more about this fascinating nut at www.professor-of-adventure.com
Nowadays of course, Millican would be living off Cumbrian Rural Regeneration grants, completing hundreds of Health & Safety assessments and wearing a hideous fleecy instead of canvas shorts (a garment he claimed to have invented)...

End of the Century

Yesterday morning I drove past a remote rural bus stop at which stood a middle-aged man wearing a Ramones Tshirt saying 'Too Tough To Die'. Sadly for most of the Ramones this hasn't proved true. When I sayed in New York a few years ago - in the band's native East Village - you could even buy T shirts that said 'Pray for Johnny', who was at that time the only surviving core member.

Coincidentally, over the last few nights I've been watching 'End of the Century', the recent docu feature on the seminal band. It's no great film but it's been nostalgic for me - the first gig I ever went to as a 14 year old (I've just looked it up online and it must have been Sept. 23rd 1984) was the Ramones at the Glasgow Barrowlands. Back then this venue was still the sweat and vomit-pot of legend. I still remember meeting my older brother Mark (pictured here with me recently) afterwards (we had gone seperately - it's not like you take your kid sister to see the Ramones, c'mon), after he's spent the gig inches from the stage. His Tshirt was shredded (a la Incredible Hulk) and he was lager-drenched but euphoric.
I don't remember much about the experience except the speed of the noise, and the profound sense that I was not going to be the same again. I have often heard creative people reminisce about these moments in their teenage years, when they realised (or is it that they decided?) they had turned a corner in their life. One occasion I have heard of was an early Sex Pistols gig (was it at the Royal College of Art or St Martin's?) at which it seems 80% of the audience have gone one to become noteable artists or musicians. I wonder what that power in moment or place is made of?

In the DVD extras (a favourite place of mine as I enjoy extended meandering interviews) not only do we see how profoundly different the band members were (a highlight is Johnny picking up the Hall of Fame award and thanking Bush and America - the audience applaud his irony as they can't believe a rocker is really rightwing) - we also get a sense of how miraculous the bands long career is. Apart from the series of more or less interchangeable drummers, each key member had serious addiction or personality disorders. But somehow - as my boyfriend Adam puts it - a 'concern for trousers' and immaculate 2 minute songs won out.

One beguiling interviewee (now playing guitar in the sky with most of the Ramones) is Joe Strummer (of the Clash), whose acting I also rate in Jim Jarmusch's 'Mystery Train'. He's full of praise for the tightness of the Ramones' live set, their concern for trousers and style generally. In one particularly eloquent passage, he states that 'bands matter so much more than individual artists because they symbolise something important to humankind about the importance of being together, working at something'.

Let them eat cake

Why is food so shit in the Lake District?
Even assuming the locals never eat out (and why would they) it's supposedly a place dedicated to serving the millions of visitors it fleeces annually with every comfort and stimulation they could hope for. And yet, not only is the food almost invariably crap, its rare as hen's teeth toboot. Countless times have I walked into a cafe at 2pm to be told that lunch is finished, or at 4.30pm to be told that no tea is available as it's dinner time (for who - the under 5's?). As I personally keep most of Ambleside's ethnic restaurants afloat over the darkest winter months with my custom, I can't help but feel like the place could try and meet me half way for the rest of the year.
Last weekend we endured a phenomenally overpriced and pretentious 4 course (obligatory menu type for optimum ripoff)) dinner with Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, who were up at Grizedale to discuss their greasy pole sculpture for Appleby. There were butter swans (melting rapidly), bucket sized wine glasses, bread rolls stuffed with God knows what, and brusque staff. Luckily the company was entertaining and each new plate was greeted with gasps of amazement by us - I think the staff interpreted this as flattery...

Case Study from Today:
I leave the house having not had time to lunch there due to rigid adherence to new time management self-help book, plus not wanting to get in the cleaners way. I am driving for an hour or so to the 'local' hospital for an X ray, and whilst en route I realise that the only lunch prospect viable is the local supermarket. My car renders any alternative costly and time consuming (you'd be amazed at how scarce and expensive a parking place is up here), but, flirting with the almost alluring mystery of the prospect of a hospital sandwich (would they exist? what fillings would be left by 2.30pm?), I decide to press on until after my appointment by wolfing a banana.
I am early, and so I cruise around Barrow-in-Furness, a hardcore kind of place far from the Lake District's pretensions. There's a chip shop here , doing well at lunch time, but I don't fancy it in the heat. There used to be a great little old-fashioned italian run by an expat Sicilian with that skin condition the Singing Detective on Tv had. Photos of hen nights with his signature banana dessert plastered the walls but you could always face out onto the streets whilst you ate a well-priced and speedy (something you NEVER get in the LD proper) spag bol.
I digress - to cut a long story short, on my way home - famished at 3pm - I remember that a nearby town has a rather chi chi little cafe in which I am certain to be able to eat. Now, I am no hard core ethical consumer, but i feel a little self-satisfied as I decide to opt to support this local entrepreneur instead of the supermarket, I park, I pay, then sit down inside the cafe - the girl emerges "We're just doing soup and cake now" Soup?! And not just soup, celery and stilton - a soup which almost sounds like December. It's 80 degrees outside.
So, you guessed it, I end up in the supermarket, where along with another 40 ors so diners, I enjoy a well-priced and speedy cooked English breakfast - at 3.15pm on a hot July wednesday.

It doesn't get much better

Me & Nina's film Bata-ville has been accepted for the Edinburgh Film Festival AND broadband has arrived at my mountain top!
A few minutes fiddling with a router and I was almost disappointed to find myself wireless too - such ease. I recall my first ever home dial-up in 1994 I think it was - lines and lines of code I had to type in to a Mac Classic, invariably followed by failure, mysterious error messages, expensive help phonecalls (though at least you were only one of 11 other subscribers) and that endless endless furry modem trill. Actually, I might rather miss that now. Something about the audible frailty is so articulate of the miracle of the Web, especially so when you live as literally remotely as I do.

No puns on the word 'Tate'....

I have just spent a typically over-stuffed three days in London, ending in an over-stuffed Virgin train carriage en route home to the north sitting next to someone enduring a protracted phone text relationship melt-down with someone called Trevor (not that I was peering over her shoulder, it's just the cramped conditions y'know). Thank God for my iPod - though I sometimes wonder if my total reliance on the 'shuffle' mode implies some kind of fundamentally indecisive nature.....
Nina (Pope) and I are in the final (ish) furlong of the distribution of our film Bata-ville and are limping to the finish line with our graphic designer Re. An ex-student of Nina's, the working relationship - mainly via the enormous and fraught website - has deteriorated to a kind of mute tussle, something akin to the mock-fighting that Nina's two cats engage in whilst we're all round the meeting table at her studio. Like the last bout of any long session in the ring, each party wants out as quickly as possible but with themselves as the winner. The spoils include a DVD cover and film poster which noone has the objectivity or energy to really apply themselves to. We've done so many print design jobs at this low-level stage in the last throes of an epic project, and they rarely meet one's aspirations - but how to avoid this pattern eludes us. Answers on a postcard welcome.
Before Re even arrived we had 6 hours of high-level life coaching with our assistant Jane, a woman so awesome that the title doesn't fit. A day of her time spans business strategy, mailing list additions and washing up.
Today was spent outside the studio after yesterdays 13 hour day - Bata-ville was one of three arts and regeneration case studies in 'Tracing Change', a symposium at Tate Britain. It was a pretty small event with an invited audience made up of many artists we were familiar with, some stakeholders from local authorities and other interested arts-folk. Unusually for us, Nina and I managed not to take the podium, instead of relying on our EPK (Electronic Press Kit) for the film, featuring a shockingly badly filmed interview with us about the project which we played frm DVD to the audience. David Cross (of artists Cornford & Cross) chaired the day with the authority of a better-dressed Paxman - this man is the natural successor to the increasingly flabby Mat Collings, surely.
Anyway, the event included a roleplaying workshop where I played a commissioner, the enterprise was flawed by my detailed knowledge of the field from my own activities and my boyfriend's (director of Grizedale Arts). However, I enjoy any activity using post-it notes and felt tip pens and ended up the spokesperson of the group. That might have been because I was wearing the brightest clothing. Hierarchies work in mysterious ways.
Pleasant though it was, 10 - 4 is too short an event for both the theme under discussion and for the projects presented and as it ended a handful of really interesting comments hovered in the air only to dissipate on the way out. Over lunch I met an ex-student of mine from way back in my first year of teaching, at UCE - Gavin McWilliam, who had been one of those over-talented but delicate young men whose idealism is dented fundamentally by the introspection of art school and its often puerile debates. I both recognised him and recalled his name, testament to the fact he was one of my first students and formed part of a (I now see) unique cluster of idealistic and engaged students whose group tutorials never ended on time, so vigorous was the debate. At the time, I was too inexperienced to realise that every group tutorial since would seem comparitively like a Teenager's Bible Group . It was genuinely thrilling to hear that after some years in design he was finishing a landscape architecture course and sounded like he's really found his passion. It's rare to encounter students so long after your interaction with them and even rarer to be able to remember anything about why you ever cared about them - so this was a much-needed antidote to the woes of my current academic role wrestling bureaucracy.
Before the train I met an old friend and ex-boyfriend who I have kept up with, perhaps because in the years following our break-up we attended an (accidentally) cathartic fencing class together every Thursday night. His wife is expecting their first child and - something of a comedian - David has been disrupting the antenatal group's 'breakaway' workshops. When asked to complete the sentance, 'The pain of childbirth is....", he added - to very little acclaim amongst the mothers to be - "a feminist lie?".

It's lambing season here too

Yesterday was mostly spent at the Koiwai Farm near here in Iwate - a kind of real farm meets tourist attraction that appears to successfully balance production of dairy products (though est. 1891, these stil have a kind of cachet here in japan - e.g people give butter as a special gift) with a very popular visitor attraction complete with the hand-rearing of lambs. All the livestock we saw were experiencing a kind of 5 star accommodation that would have their UK counterparts voluntarily making their way to the slaughterhouse - fresh sweetsmelling hay, futuristic polytunnels (v popular here due to typhoons etc) and adoring Japanese schoolchildren. Though the whole enterprise had a whiff of the old Grizedale Centre about it, it was a fair number of notches up in quality - from the gift shops to the food options - the latter being a kind of indoor barbecue where you cook your own food on a brazier. Very funky was a series of snow 'igloos' they use all winter for families to have barbecues in the grounds - a massive success that I can imagine we could import but using leaves and branches instead of snow. The snow rests on a metal support that is removed for summer - it's a great example of the Japanese love for a kind of expedient and easily consumed 'natural' experience.
The night before Adam and I delivered our talk at the Iwate Museum of Art, very well-recieved despite the challenges of translation. If in doubt say 'peter rabbit' and all the japanese laugh and nod.

At Kata and Kate's where we're staying, their daughter Emily (see below) demonstrated her Kendo to us and I compared the abject polyester European fencing kit I have, to this majestic get-up.