Some nice photos and ads on the Weejun's new tumblr.

Blucher wrote:

I've just read John's latest piece with a more than usual amount of pleasure.  I've stayed in Bloomsbury a couple of times (close to the 'Horse Hospital'), and managed to visit the British Museum during the hour before closing time: mainly to see the Sutton Hoo treasures.  The murder victim Emily Kaye lived in Guilford Street.  I went through quite a phase, years ago, of reading Woolf, Strachey et al. 
In any large town or city, getting off the beaten track is vital.  Les Fishman has written illuminatingly on the East End; Richard Cobb on Belleville. 
I appreciate the reference to Hawksmoor.  I admire Wren.  Buildings for people, not corporations.  On a human scale.  Vernacular architecture is also often very pleasing.

Thoroughly enjoyed that too. I once worked around there one Summer and it's an area with many happy memories for me. My current abode is a nice bit of 1763 Georgian and the trick is to allow a certain amount of patina but not too much. I always want more patina, Mrs Jimmy less.

John's photographs remind me a little of some of the back streets around Montmartre and Pigalle.  There was a combined cobbler/shoe shop (expensive shoes), a rather uninviting looking bar and a prostitute down one narrow street, close to where I was staying.  Walk two hundred yards, in the direction of Sacre Coeur, you find tat: Jim Morrison t-shirts, tourist food, artists pretending to be Lautrec.  Italian towns and cities are wonderful for aimless roaming, Pisa being one of my favourites.  The seedier parts of Rome are interesting.  Great, cheap food; original photographs from Fellini movies on sale; old ladies dragging shopping trollies; most of all, cats, washing themselves in the sun.

Drink wrote:

I want to know who it is.

Andy. 2 to 1

It's that time again.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtLDh0elFeY

What about Milan? I go there at least once a month on business, you've missed Florence, I go there at lot on business too.

What about them?

And what about Strathmore paper, what about that?

What about Bruce Lee? And Bill Cosbys Adidas?

Seriously, it would be a shame if Andy decided to launch another attack on the board whilst Jim is away, getting well.

I'm still confused as to what Strathmore paper has to do with the road to the enlightment, that we're so obviously missing being in the playpen? Actually, I do notice we are missing a certain person's rattle and dummy of late.

In any event, I have my iron gall ink ready, are we going to do some Mayan hieroglyphics as found on Soho pub lavatory walls circa 1960 when it was so real and eternally hip, with all the East End gangsters sipping cappucino and discussing 'La Dolce Vita' and modernist architecture?

Italy is like anywhere in the world; there's good to be found, also naffness and down right hideousness that will make your blood boil. Especially when you start to deal with their bureaucracy, and god help you if you become unemployed as an expat.

The danger, like any place that can be considered superficially exotic and intoxicating based on holiday experiences and those gleaned from films, art and style (Brazil is another excellent case): is projecting these values through rose tinted spectacles and imbuing everday reality with mythical qualities and romance that are not actually there.

The REAL Soho?
Milan?
Bologna?
Cucina?
Et cetera, et certera....
Presented like we're missing the essential mythical reality of these places borders on the fraudulently ignorant, if not fascist attitide of 'I don't give a fuck, so long as it looks good.'

A bit like my Burberry tonic mac made in China then?

Inspiration and one's muse can be found anywhere IMO. You don't need to follow a rigid syllabus of seeking out 1960's gangsters in the real Soho, or drinking authentic espresso in Milano or feel the need to be digging modern architecture in buildings you will never live in let alone visit or understand.

David Hockney is now producing his best work in Bridlington, Yorkshire with vibrant landscapes that out shine his California paintings. This doesn't surprise me, as the countryside around there is absolutely amongst the most beautiful in the world. To the London-centric conceptual art crowd I imagine he is viewed with utter contempt and scorn. His sheer brilliance and talent viewed as a dangerous threat, not bad for a septuagenarian who has relocated to glamorous East Riding.

Bukowksi and Fred Voss found their inspiration in those sorting factories, machine shops, dead end jobs and no jobs at all.

Ellington found it being on the road 52 weeks a year - the venue didn't matter, so long as he was with his big band and they were getting their message out.

Not everyone has access to Soho and Italy, not everyone wants or needs to.

woofboxer wrote:

Right, now we've got that straight, having paid my fourth customs charge of the week, I've just enough cash left to shag a ten bob tom on Westminster Bridge and get a coffee up in Soho. Bar Italia will be packed with East End gangsters avidly discussing opera and italian architecture. This is the knowledge and where it's at.

An extra star and merit for following the syllabus so well. Ken will be pleased.