Do you want to read this book? YES

So here I am, sat in front of Pondering once again.  A little overdue some might say, or at least I would.

I saw the Turner Prize on Tuesday and felt overwhelmed with the need to write about it.  So I crossed the road from Tate Britain to Chelsea, armed with my University of the Arts ID and feeling a little like a trespasser, only to find that Chelsea library doesn't seem to have student access computers.  It seems that you bring your own Mac or go home.  I definitely prefer Central Saint Martins.

On Monday the urge to write about modern art and London galleries and my own practice was nearly enough to make me write.  Instead I ate marshmallows and smoked a lot of cigarettes.  In retrospect, I should've written that one, it would have aided my upcoming report on 'London as a Resource' incredibly.

Last night I went to see Silent Hill and mentally brainstormed ideas for a blog about dreams and reality within film - which would have followed on quite nicely from my last blog, which I believe was about dreams too.

But this isn't about the Turner Prize, London as a Resource, or dreams and reality within film, though they might follow sometime.

This is about me reading a book.

Now, that may sound a little underwhelming to you.  And so it should be - I am very aware of individuals worldwide who are well versed in all sorts of books.  Hell, I used to be too.  The problem is that I recently I became a bit of a book-phobe.  At the start of University, that's not something you want to admit to, especially when you're sitting there in lectures with all these relevant authors and titles being thrown out at you and you're sat there going "Oh, I really should read that" only to forget every piece of relevant information as soon as you hear about something a little more accessible... like TV.  Or film.  They are both stupidly accessible and made me forget how to read.  Fuck you BBC.

One of my friends flatmates is someone who seems to read an awful lot.  Whenever we chat over a pint about a concept that interests me he'll go, "It's like that Sigmund Freud book on dreams - I can lend you it!" and I go "Ah yes!  I would love to read it!" and conveniently forget about it when we go back to our flats.

However, about a fortnight ago I got put in a corner.  I was round at said friends flat drinking a bottle of red and celebrating the fine Thursday night when the group got onto a conversation about... hot celebrities.  Here is the basic flow of our conversation.

Which celebrity would you shag? --> Zooey Deschanel. --> Yes, Zooey Deschanel is very fetching I must agree. --> Have you seen Yes Man? --> Yes.  Have you read Yes Man? --> No, but I always mean to. --> Ah!  It is in my room, let me get it for you.  --> ... Bollocks.

So he comes back into the kitchen clutching Yes Man and hands it to me.  I'm a bit scared.  If it's possible to believe that you've actually forgotten how to read then that is exactly how I was feeling.
But the red wine has acted as bravery juice, and I read the introduction to myself.  And I love it.  And I put the TV on mute and demand that the whole kitchen listen to me read the 2 page introduction aloud to them.
The reason I loved it so much was probably thanks to the ego massage it gave me in the last sentence...

Isn't that nice?  Wouldn't you continue reading a book after it noticed the effort you'd made on that particular Thursday evening?

So here we are, about a fortnight later, and I have to say that I've fallen back in love with reading.  And it's all thanks to Danny Wallace and Yes Man.  I read it in bed at night with a hot chocolate, I read it in bed in the morning with a hot chocolate, I read it on the underground whilst strangers peer over my shoulder and I thank god that there are no sex scenes, I read it when I go outside for a cigarette.  It is very readable.

I am going to write a little more about the actual content of the book, or rather, the positive outlook you cannot help feeling whilst reading the book.

But I am going to have to do it later, because my mum is on her way to meet me and I have to collect her from Tufnell Park station.

For now - get onto Amazon and order Yes Man.  Or tweet your friends asking if they have a copy you can borrow.

Or do neither.  I don't care.  Read what you want.

Real/Imagined

Tonight on Twitter I stumbled across an interesting article from The Daily Beast.

Allow me to jump backwards in time.  My last blog was about struggling to find a pathway within my Fine Art degree and fortunately I stayed on XD, which, as I understand it, puts more emphasis on the concept behind a work than the execution of work itself.  Earlier this week we had a lecture called 'What Can Drawing Be?' which, for a non-drawing artist like myself, was liberating.  We were shown that drawing can be as simple as a man pushing a block of ice across the street, leaving a temporary mark on the pavement, or as imaginative as a woman recalling her marriage through several illustrations depicting sex, sleeping, drinking, walking down the street, words woven into the narrative in the image.

Forward in time again.  This article is entitled 'Patients Draw Near-Death Experiences.'  There are 8 in this series.  A short narrative and context is given, accompanied by a drawing by the person who has had the experience.  The ages of these individuals varies from as young as infanthood, 6 years old, 20 years old, and adulthood.  I sent the link to my boyfriend, who shares an interest in the paranormal, and he raised a very valid point: "I like the kids ones best, they're more believable."  It's true.  By about the age of ten you could have seen films, documentaries or even just engaged in conversations about these scarier matters and chosen to lie about it.  My personal favourite of the series is a six year old who:
"Recalls an out-of-body experience where he fruitlessly swiped at his father with a phantom's arm and yelled at his older brother to play with him (his brother told his parents he could hear Scott's voice at the time of the accident). Then he says he was whisked down a dark ‘wind tunnel’ that took him to a monstrous mass of rotting flesh he calls the Devil. The Devil (at left, drawn by Scott shortly after the accident, and at right, redrawn five years later) accused him of being bad and threatened to keep him forever."

The accompanying drawings are simple, but they are honest and unfabricated and to the point.  The stories require no Renaissance sketch to be viable and interesting.

When I first arrived in Halls I was having very vivid, fictitious and downright scary dreams.  I would send a text immediately about the dream as I woke so as to remember it, and in one I wrote of a "fantasy world with evil religious undertones."  I remember the dream - I had to fly over Halls selling tickets for a Freshers clubbing event, and landed in another world keen to speak to a shrouded religious woman who, upon arrival, told me she was done for the night and I had to leave.
One night I walked to a pub with some friends and told a painting student that I'd keep a dream diary for him in case he fancied making any Dali-esque dream paintings.  Since then, I have had no dreams.

Tonight I joked that I had stopped dreaming because "the dream Gods know that I want to write about them, and they feel that I am making a mockery of them."  Despite my previous blog on tarot I must state that on the whole, I am not superstitious, nor do I have any mad belief systems.  I do, however, believe in the mind.

By now you might have noticed that this article has influenced my conversations for a lot of the evening.  I asked my friends in the pub whether they had very vivid dreams as children and they both revealed recurring dreams which, to them, make little sense.  A flatmate told me that she had the same dream as a child - that her mother left her in a pushchair in church.  Another flatmate told me that she has had recurring dreams for a long time, and she feels that the dreams come as she tries to avoid them.  She was so perplexed by this dream that she bought a book about dreams which suggested that dreams are due to "not actively handling issues in the active life," hence having to refer to these issues in less conscious states.

My boyfriend has been telling me about the same dream for the last seven months.  He dreams of tsunamis.
Megan reveals a similar dream:

Now, I'm starting to feel a bit left out here.  I have never had a recurring dream.  They are equally as fucked up, but they come individually every time with their own lessons to teach.  Often if I dream of a place I see it in my mind all day like a desktop background - every time my mind returns to an original and disengaged state I see a street or room I have been sat in the night before.  That's all.

As a child I had this one dream which I still cannot make heads or tails of.  My Glaswegian (it's a part of Scotland) mother read me a bedtime rhyme when I was younger.  You may know it.

"Wee Willie Winkie rins through the toon,

Up stairs an' doon stairs in his nicht-gown,

Tirlin' at the window, crying at the lock,

"Are the weans in their bed, for it's now ten o'clock?""

For those of you who cannot understand Scottish speech (I bet you gave up on Trainspotting as well) it's about this character running around checking through windows and door-holes to see whether the kids are in bed on time.  Personally I found it traumatic.  Who wants some strange guy coming and looking at you when you're trying to catch some Zzz's?  The pressure to perform to Wee Willie Winkie's early bedtime standards was unkind.

This dream I had must have taken place before the age of 5.  In the dream I am in my bedroom before we moved to Dublin (when we returned my sister got the smallest room, on account of being at University) and I must have fallen out of bed as I am wrapped in my duvet, afraid on the floor.  I had a crippling fear of the dark as a child and my parents would leave the door open and the landing light on for me, until they went to bed.  As I stare towards the lit door a very tall man puts his head around the door and looks straight at me... and then he leaves.  Now, I have asked my dad about this on a number of occasions as I have grown up.  "Did you ever find me on the floor when I woke up in the morning?" and "Did you ever look right at me but leave me there?"  The answer was no.  Also, my dad isn't a particularly tall man, but I remember this individual crouching so as to get his head in the door frame.  Maybe it's just a very vivid dream from a child with an overactive imagination, but very few memories from my childhood stick out this much.

Let's leave the dreaming stuff for a bit, but perhaps not entirely.  

I have a very special gift of being able to fall asleep in public spaces.  Yet when my mobile phone was stolen from my lap as I napped on the bus, I would probably rather have called it a curse.  Despite my best efforts to remain conscious  I tend to slip away on public transport, in lectures, and even (embarrassingly) on bar counters.  In these places I have quite situational dreams.
The other week I was on a bus tour with fellow 'Starting at UAL' blogger Irina and managed to doze off despite the wind on the open deck.  In my conscious state I had been irritated by the non-smoking signs, even though we were technically in an open space.  When I had slipped out I dreamt that I was having a cigarette in the open, but gradually descended onto the underground and panicked about smoking down there.  As I returned to consciousness I saw the head of the man in front and lingered in this fear that he would tell me off.

Last Friday I had my first lecture.  Despite Lewis' best efforts of nudging me every time my head drooped, I slipped into a dream state.  I could hear the lecturer talking about an artist, but in my head he was showing us a lumpy jar of jelly.  In this state I thought "God, how cool, a serious artist making jelly as her work."  I may now have to pursue it as a concept, since the artist he was talking about did something far more mundane than jelly sculptures.  Shame - I would have stayed awake for that.

By the walk home tonight I had realized I wanted to write this blog.  A friend I was with at the time has a Freud book on dreams in their room, but they picked something up from reception and I was too desperate to write to wait for them.  Fortunately I remembered a book entitled "50 Psychology Ideas You Really Need To Know" which has been on my shelf for about a month, and found the "Illusion and Reality" section.  I am particularly interested by what they write about hallucinations.

Hallucination: "to dream" and "to be distraught," derived from the Latin 'alucinari' "to wander in mind."

And maybe more on that later.

Bored y'all enough for tonight.

Lack of structure King B.

Hello stranger

It has been apparent to me that I had not written on Pondering for some time now.  Let me fill you in on the last month of my life.

On the 8th of September I moved to London.  I live in student accommodation in Tufnell Park, in the North of London (about two stops up on the Northern Line from Camden Town.)
You can see some posts and photos about those first few weeks on the Starting at UAL Tumblr I was contributing to.  My posts are identifiable by the icon to the left showing a girl clutching a pint of cider.  Standard.  Jeremy and Irina wrote interesting pieces about their move too.

But just in case you're too lazy to look, here are some images which summarize my first few weeks here.

(Olympic closing parade, Charing Cross)

(Sushi in Chinatown)

(Mae West Lips sofa, The Sanderson, London)

(Saatchi Gallery)

(Lewis and Harriet catch a mouse)

(My embarrassing note from Rick Edwards... thanks George)

That should suffice.

This Monday I started my BA Fine Art degree at Central Saint Martins.  During a tour of the Kings Cross building when I applied, I was given a booklet of postcards.  One of them read "EAT IT, SLEEP IT, PLAY IT, LIVE IT."  I stuck it to my wall until the move and it is now on my pinboard.

(CSM Kings Cross site)

It feels as if life has never changed so quickly before.
Last week I started complaining that I was living here, in London, in University halls, with a loan for education I'd not actually started yet.  It was guilt inducing and surreal.
For the last 4 days I have indeed eaten, slept, played and lived art.

On Monday we were given a short lecture and moved into our allocated degree 'pathways.'  I always wrote in my personal statement that I wanted to join a community of likeminded individuals (artists) and actually doing so has been incredible.  We finished for the day at about half 4, I popped home for some cereal and went to Holburn with my friend for a ballet society taster session.  On my way there and home I did some filming, and spent my night making about 87 stills from one of the 30 minute videos.  That took until about 3am.

Tuesday was our introduction to our Byam Shaw studios in Archway.  During stage 1 it seems that we will generally be using Kings Cross for lectures and workshops.  Byam Shaw is a smaller and more intimate building.  We spent the morning touring the place, because I say small, but it's kind of a maze at first.  The afternoon was spent in groups making performance art about another art piece submitted on A4 by another student - trying to interpret their intentions without any materials besides ourselves.  In a group of 4 my group played a huge printer.  I told my boyfriend about this, and he said that if you didn't know we were Fine Artists it would sound like we were at primary school... it's unfortunate but true.
The pathway I have been initially allocated to is referred to as XD.  However, it is oversubscribed and we were told that diagnostic pathway crits would be held in an attempt to thin out the group and put people who might be better suited to another pathway.  Everybody initially thought that XD meant spanning every media (as opposed to 2D painting/photography/drawing, 3D sculpture, 4D video/installation/sound/performance) but it turns out we were only half right.  The understanding I have of XD is that whilst you may span across media, it's about concepts being potentially more important than artistic execution; collaborating with other artists; and site specific work, eg. putting your sculpture on the street instead of in a gallery.  I had Tuesday evening and Wednesday to prepare for this meeting and really pitch why I need to be in XD, rather than 2D, where I had first been placed.

There's a guy called Lewis in my halls and on my course (and in one of the photos up there with the mouse trap) who I'd been planning a collaboration with.  We spent a good 4 hours on Tuesday night writing a proposal for this collaboration and making some tests for it.... as well as occasionally going on YouTube to watch Goldsmiths: But Is It Art? and Nicki Minaj videos.  It ended up about a page and a half and it's a bloody thorough explanation.  I will begin looking into copyrighting, as it has received some interest from others collaborators and I must ensure that every artist is given equal credit.  But it's very exciting... if you're an artist.  11pm finish, 1am realizing I was done for the night, 2am bedtime, 2 night playlists before I nodded off.  Ho hum.

Wednesday saw a morning of rehearsing and showing performance art in groups again, and a lunchtime hanging out with other XD students chatting about art, mostly.  I went home, finished preparing stuff for my meeting, then flew out the door to get to Tate Britain for a talk by Spartacus Chetwynd who has been shortlisted for this year's Turner Prize.  Half way through the talk I realized I was scowling, despite her fun and totally unconventional talk.  Mainly because I was frantically scribbling notes so that I could write an essay about her.  Being in education after a summer off is very odd.  I feel like if I'm paying £9k then I'm going to get every penny from a £6 talk and crack out some work from it.  After all, it's two boob jobs worth of cash.

After getting soaked walking from Tate Britain to Pimlico, we got back at about 9pm.  I made my first microwave meal in my time here, and spent the evening typing up my notes so that they made sense later.  One of my favourite bits of the talk, in my notes, is:

"Chetwynd has been stressing that the subject matter of her art is “fun.”  She recalls studying at Slade and being asked by a professor “What is your subject matter?”  She didn't know, and he wouldn't let her use the painting workshops on account of it.  10 years later at an interview for the British School in Rome, he was one of five panelists she showed her work to.  Mortified, she describes avoiding him, imagining he wasn't there, as she shows the panel her paintings.  He eventually exclaims “I know what your subject matter is!  It’s ‘fun’!”  Until then she hasn't realized this herself, and responds; “And is that something with which you are familiar?”"

This morning I had my diagnostic group meeting/crit/I can't even decide what it's called, and I'll find out for sure whether I've been moved again hopefully by Monday.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Tonight I had a choice between the first Yoga society class or an event in Holloway called "Welcome to Meeksville" which CSM have had some involvement in organizing.  I was almost going to let yoga win, until I remembered something a tutor at college had told me about going to CSM - "You're going to be invited to a lot of [art] parties, and you must absolutely attend them.  Your degree is important, but that's as important."  So tonight art wins again.

9:30am lecture tomorrow, but I hope to be finished by 4pm or so... it's Late at Tate tomorrow night, but I think I ought to give myself a night off.  I'm going to try cooking a fish lasagna (yes, I know it sounds weird)  and watch some films with my boyfriend.  At the most demanding, maybe we'll walk to Kentish Town for some drinks in this nice little cocktail bar... but I've got a bottle of Absolut in the fridge and he used to work in a better bar, so I'm pretty sure that won't need to happen.

So I've got this far and now I don't even know who I was writing this for.  I guess it was for me - an icebreaker with Pondering.  It's been so long, there was a large gap to fill and a lot that I wanted to summarise for friends and family so that I can stop repeating information.  I apologize profusely if you believe the post belongs in an email to people who give a shit.

I do have plans to return to Pondering though.  

• Now that I live in London I don't eat in chain restaurants since there are so many interesting, well decorated and soulful spots about.  Having also bought into the Instagram thing, I tend to photograph my food when it arrives... hey, I'm paying London prices for it and I'm a fast eater, let me immortalize it somehow.  For a while I've been talking about food reviews, and the food society first meeting is on Saturday, I'm hoping to get involved with that.
• Women in London are very well dressed.  I noticed a big need to step my game up when I got here, though I've not bought any new clothes yet.  On my walk to studios this morning I thought about photographing my outfit every day to post weekly, in an attempt to look as good as possible when I leave each morning... it's a bit LookBook and fashion student-y, which isn't really me and never has been, but maybe I'll give it a go.  Even though it's only for documentation purposes... and for my family to look at when they miss my face and telling me that my skirts are too short.
• I'll be going to a lot more galleries, artist talks and art events, which I should be reviewing and reflecting on as much as possible.  Turner Prize started on Tuesday and though I went to the talk I've never even seen Chetwynd's work, so I'm looking forward to writing about it when I have.  I'll probably share these here, even though I don't always need to.
• General reflections.  My best blogs have always been about random topics I found interesting or sharing cynical rants.

I need to write to stay sane.  Since moving here I can't remember a night I haven't emailed my dad before bed.

If you made it this far, you deserve a cookie.

Here's a miserable looking photo, just so you know I'm the same grumpy bitch as ever, just a bit strung out and boring from the last week.

Ta-ra for now.

The Tower

Tonight I had my tarot cards read. I joked that death would come up and was warned that it would be more catastrophic should it be 'the tower.'

The cards were shuffled and the tower came up on top.
The cards were reshuffled and the tower flew out of the deck at me.
The cards were placed down and the tower was the first one.

Now, as my mother later told me, this is not statistically impossible. And rather than taking a superstition-dodging stance on this one, just think for one moment: if you were playing with a deck of standard playing cards and, say, the Queen of Hearts came up three times in a row… would that not seem a bit odd? Especially if you had just mentioned that card?

So I had already been warned that this card was the worst of omens. Okay. What next? The card depicts a figure falling naked from a burning building whilst lightning strikes in the distance. Pictorially, it is not a happy card.

Like the curious Kat I am, I went home and Googled for some information about the card.
“This card is the Tarot's way of acknowledging that the rapid transformation occurring in your world is due to forces beyond your control.”

I move to London on Saturday. In a few weeks I enrol at Central Saint Martins to begin my three year honours degree, and in October it begins. Most relevantly, I have not packed yet. I don’t even know what I am packing. It has been stressing me out for the last week. On Monday I went to the doctor, having experienced chronic stomach pain for the last three days. It was unreal – I had never been in so much pain for so long. After having my stomach poked about and undergoing a mandatory urine test I was told that it was acid reflux due to stress, and was advised to pump myself full of Gaviscon. Sorry, NHS, for wasting your time.

“This card follows immediately after The Devil in all Tarots that contain it, and is considered an ill omen. Also, some Tarot variants used for game playing omit it.” To omit the card makes it sound worse. When you play solitaire you would leave out the Joker, but omitting a card so full of meaning quite frankly only makes it sound as if some people would be so troubled by this forecast that they would rather not be faced with it whatsoever.

Wikipedia informed me that some frequent keywords for this card include “Crisis - Revelation - Disruption - Realizing the truth”. No thanks, I tend to avoid the truth at all costs. Different card please. “It is, quite simply, that moment in any story where someone finds out a shocking truth, one that shatters their perceptions and makes them reassess their beliefs.”

Today I realized something. Maybe I have been realizing it for a long time, but here it is: I don’t want to leave home. Well of course I do. Everyone wants to. You grow up to an age where you apply for University and leave your parents and your hometown in fear of stagnating in the place you grew up. Of course. What I mean is: I love my parents. When I was a rebellious youngster I used to wish that I could run away, and even looked at renting places with friends a few times over the years in hopes to leave the nest. But I come from a very happy family. I haven’t lived with my sister since the age of five, as we moved to Dublin and she preferred the English education system. By the time we came home she was at University (there is an eleven year age difference between us.) My brother must have gone to University when I was about nine, so for the last ten years it has been Mummy, Daddy and I, and they are truly incredible friends.
In addition, the reader asked me something that nobody had asked me tonight, and it is the first time I faced some unkind facts. That is pretty much what the card is about: the moment. Over the past few months, when forced to consider the future, I have felt as if I am about to fling myself from a bridge into something unknown.

This card layout was a daily reading, so it is very much present rather than the entire future. The tower was the first card, which represents work. As the reader said – “This basically means that your work endevours will fail.” I had just told her about how I would be looking for part time work in London to stretch my loan a little further. She added, “You’ll look for a job but you won’t find one.” Whilst I may fear that it bodes badly for the onset of University, “The card may also point toward seeking education or higher knowledge.” It does not necessarily imply that this will fail.

Believe what you will. Personally, I enjoyed learning a little more about the history regarding a freak incident that happened to me this evening. I have always enjoyed a good story.

Single White Feline (A.K.A. A survival guide to day 1 of being alone)

There is a percentage of women in the UK who are single. I do not know the percentage, because it didn't come up when I googled it.

Point is: thanks to me that percentage increased yesterday.

I guess that in the lead up to University a lot of women may find themselves in the same situation as me, and this is why I am giving you my tips to your first day of being single.

1: MAKE YOURSELF LOOK GOOD. SERIOUSLY.
I know you want to lie around your house screaming and crying, in your slouchiest joggers with shit greasy hair and bedsocks on. But you can't.

2: ADMIT TO YOURSELF THAT BLACK EYE MAKE UP IS NOT MADE FOR TODAY.
If you are like me, and like to do big eyes and nude lips, reverse it for a day. You're probably going to cry a couple of times and you don't want to be grabbing a compact mirror every time you sort of pull it together, only to realize how shit you look and cry again. What I chose to do was wear a really nice dark purple lipstick and just gold eyeshadow and waterproof eyeliner. Oh and a lot of concealer round the eyes - they're probably a bit gross looking. (Have a look at Laura's blog for general make-up godliness.)

3: GO SOMEWHERE YOU DON'T USUALLY HANG OUT.
I chose London since from next month it's my new home. The point is that you want distracting, but you don't want to bump into anyone you know and have the "Oh hey how are you today?" - "Oh not so good I just lost my partner." - *Silence* moment... awkward.

4: DO, HOWEVER, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW ONE PERSON THERE.
Having one person who understands what's happened and that you need some serious cheering up is a must. Choose someone who is super dependable, fun and who's company you like. Otherwise you're in for a right shit day.

5: AT A SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE TIME, HAVE A DRINK. OR SOMETHING.
Socially acceptable is anything after noon, by the way. We chose Portobello Gold for drinks because it's truly gorgeous in there and sort of makes you feel like everything is going to be fine.

6: SPOIL YOURSELF.
This is not the day to worry about money or calories.

7: SMILE FUCKING LOADS.
Because it makes you prettier and it makes everyone looking back at you (smiling too) prettier to look at. Pretty things are nice.

This is one of my favourite comedy videos on YouTube. Watch it, laugh, feel better. There - you survived day one. You're alright.

Johnny Flynn: Music You Need To Hear

It's a bit hard juggling social networking at the moment, have to admit I'm drowning a bit. I got an android phone and got eaten by Instagram (dickhead) and I've been using Tumblr a lot for my UAL contributions, and to upload Instagram stuff onto...

The UAL one is here - startingatual.tumblr.com
And my personal one with my Instagram bollocks and some occasional funny stuff is here - kittykittyking.tumblr.com

I guess I've been saving this bad boy for stuff I want to actually write.

Anyway I've got something I want to write but mainly I just want to share some awesome stuff you need to hear. I figure I'll post here and my Tumblr cos I don't know who looks at what but you all need a fair stab at hearing this.

Spent my weekend at Tramlines in Sheffield and got to hear some wicked music at a bit called Folk Forest, can definitely recommend a duo called Katriona Gilmore & Jamie Roberts. You need to watch out for those guys. I don't know much about music but I know that they sound good.



First up; if you've not been listening to Johnny Flynn for a few years then I apologize profusely for not doing more to help you. Really. He's a good buddy of Laura Marling's, but unlike how Marling's grown up and her music has got really serious and slightly depressing (lovable all the same, but you have to admit...) his last release in 2010 was still relatively upbeat.

Old Tricks

Can't honestly tell you when Flynn wrote or recorded this as there's not an awful lot of info about him hanging around on the web and I'm too lazy to search. This is an upbeat sing-along song with a female vocalist throughout. Happy music.

The Prizefighter and the Heiress

I can tell you that this was released on the second album Been Listening in 2010, and the whole thing's worth a listen. This one starts off a bit slow but you need to hang on in there because it becomes a pretty huge tune... well, as much as you can refer to folk as a 'huge tune'...

Ordinarily with songs I'd like to quote some lyrics along with it, but these aren't Dylan-esque works which can stand alone as poems - these words are accompanied by amazing sounds which you need to hear to really get anything off it. So just listen to the damn songs.

City called me so I caught the bus

I realized two things last night:

1: My bus pass expires one week tomorrow

2: I am poor

This is something I should get used to seeing printed onto my receipts, as my impending 3 year London art degree is not set to be an inexpensive affair.
Unfortunately, I am left with the dilemma: do I buy a £72 4-week-South-East-all-zones bus ticket for my last bit of time here?

About this time last year I spent £528 on an annual student saver ticket, which sounds a lot, but considering the 80 minute return journey from Thame to Oxford is now £5.50, it paid itself off in fewer than 100 journeys. College took up three days of the week and work an additional two (both in Oxford) and I would occasionally make 4 journeys on the 280 in one day if I wanted to go back in for the evening. (Funnily enough everybody will tell you that living in London is a big commute, but I live a 13 minute walk from one of University buildings and 20 minutes on the underground from the other. It’ll be bliss.)

When college finished I was tutoring in Oxford for 5 days a week, but for the last 2 weeks I have found myself missing the 280 somewhat. I have still travelled in to work and shop, or just to get away from Thame, and the idea of having to start paying in cash whenever I want to get out of the sticks is incredibly disheartening.

But am I really going to go in that much? Let’s face it, the bus is shit. It’s always late, it’s never clean, it leaks when it rains (and this is England, it rains a lot.) It’s full of loud teenagers or smelly old people, and recently I had to inform the bus driver that the floor of the top deck was incrusted with somebody’s vomit. Charming.

Things I like doing in Oxford, or would like to do before September the 8th (moving away date)
- People watching in Starbucks
- Spending money I don’t actually have anymore
- Jenny Saville exhibition at Modern Art Oxford needs revisiting
- There are plenty of bars and pubs I’ve not visited enough…
- Charity shop shopping in Headington
- Noticing and being noticed by people who I know and that awkward thing where neither of you wave or say hi cos you don’t know how close you actually are and no one wants to make really idle chit chat cos everyone has somewhere to be
- Going into work when I’m not working to make the people who are working really miserable
- Open mic nights

You know what fuck it I don’t like Oxford and I don’t like Thame and I just want to move already.

Listen to this if you have functioning ear drums which need a treat. It’s about a city and so is this entry, kind of.



City called me so I came - it isn't mine to question what it said. I sleep until the point when I'm awake, I walk until there's nothing left to tread. And everyone was looking for an answer and everyone was waiting for a break. I came and I was bored of it soon after but I had nowhere to go and so I stayed; I dreamed a lifetime of this place, it seemed an awful thing to waste.

The Tattoo Survival Guide (21 things I would have told my 16 year old self)

At the age of 16, I started getting tattooed. Soon after this I tragically came to realize that the law requires you to be 18 for a reason.

Here are some of the lessons I learned the painful way.

Tattoo number 1, August 2009

My first tattoo was done in a little studio in Dublin, using somebody else’s ID. I had flown out to visit a childhood friend from back when I lived there and I had wanted a crown tattooed to the back of my ankle for a few months. One morning we googled the ‘Scottish crown’ (is there even a special crown allocated to Scotland? In retrospect, I think not) and my friend traced a photograph for me. Only the size of a 10p piece, the tattoo cost me 80 euros and took 20 minutes.

Lesson 1: Tricking someone into giving you a tattoo is really dodgy – they could go to prison, and to be honest, at 16 you barely know how to dress let alone what to stamp on your body for life.
Lesson 2: If you are going to be a stupid illegal fucker, then get it small. Seriously. I’m lucky I don’t hate this one.
Lesson 3: 80 euros is a lot of underage drinking money, and tattoos are expensive. Don’t go crying about how poor you are afterwards.

Tattoo number 2, December 2009

The most regrettable tattoo of all: the pocket-watch, thanks to a raging obsession with Alice in Wonderland. It was New Years Eve, I felt impulsive, and I wanted an Alice related tattoo. Even on the bus into the city I hadn’t really decided what I was after. My boyfriend at the time knew a guy… so

Lesson 4: Just because somebody owns a tattoo machine and knows how to use it, does not make them a tattoo artist.
Lesson 5: Get an idea, and think about it for at least a night. Who am I to encourage methodical planning beyond one night?
Lesson 6: Never, ever, EVER and I repeat NEVER let somebody tattoo you in a grotty bedroom. It is unhygienic and if the artist is any good, they’ll have a studio representing them.
Lesson 7: The ‘artist’ traced this from a magazine for me. Don’t ever copy anyone else’s tattoo. Come up with your own ideas and if you have no ideas then go to an imaginative studio where somebody will help you design something awesome and unique.

Tattoo number 3, February 2011

The October previous to this tattoo I had become rather enamoured by literal translations of Japanese proverbs. You can check them out here, but my favourite was “kishi kaisei” and meant “to come out of a desperate situation and make a complete return in one sudden burst” – literally to “wake from death and return to life.” For personal reasons, this one stuck with me, and so during tattoo chat with friends I would tell them about this saying. After loving it for 5 months, one evening I asked my dad (who collects pens and is an avid writer) to write the saying down three times for me, to a certain scale. When he asked me why I told him it was for an art project. As he handed over the paper I gleefully told him “well that’s my next tattoo sorted,” and when I came home from Camden the next day there it was on my arm.
He would never tell you, because it’s a father’s job to hate tattoos, but secretly I think he feels quite flattered.

Lesson 8: It is a really nice gesture to have the handwriting of somebody you love.
Lesson 9: Inner arm tattoos can remain quite secret. Hardly anybody knows I’m a tattooed female, and I like it that way.
Lesson 10: Think hard before you have anything about death and life tattooed to you. A lot of people think that I am “fucking morbid” or have a fixation with zombies… not cool.


Tattoo number 4, June 2011

Finally, I decided to cover the awful pocket-watch, as I realized there is no saving a horrific perspective. Geekily researching birds I found I loved the Oriole blackbird with its yellow body, often nicknamed ‘jaundiced one’. In my mind I envisioned the bird in flight, holding in its feet an ornate empty birdcage, in a very illustrative style – like a nature drawing in a classical book. I booked in with an artist who would have done a really beautiful job, and when I turned up to the studio for my appointment, having travelled for about 2 hours, I was told that the artist was not actually there (great) “but this guy can do it for you.”

Lesson 11: Leave. Get out. I know it’s annoying that you’ve travelled so far but just contact the tattoo artist later as to why they weren’t there and can you get your deposit back on account of the studio being idiots and not letting you know sooner and can they book you in some other time.
Lesson 12: Always look at an artist’s portfolio before you let them touch you.
Lesson 13: It is one thing for an artist to say they know what sort of style you want and yes of course they can do it, and to actually understand. A good tattoo artist will put their hands up and tell you when it isn’t their usual sort of style and refer somebody who will do a cracking job at it. A complete dickhead will take a go at anything.
Lesson 14: By the time you’ve paid £260 for 3 hours work which is clearly taking too long and not going how you’d like, just don’t go back. Take a breather. Whilst an unfinished tattoo is annoying, a shitty tattoo is even worse.

Tattoo number 5, November 2011

After a few months tattoo free I was feeling the itch. My dad brought me up on a diet of Star Wars and Bob Dylan music, my favourite film is I’m Not There, and I firmly believe that Dylan is the greatest living poet. A friend at the time was dating a tattooist, and I discovered the incredible world of ‘mates rates’.

Lesson 15: Do your research. Fake signatures are everywhere online.
Lesson 16: Bob Dylan is awesome.
Lesson 17: Don’t pick the scab off your tattoo – duh. If this one wasn’t already pretty flowing what with being writing, I’d have turned it into a right mess and I would be to blame.

Tattoo number 6, December 2011

(Tattoo & photograph - Paul Tipping)

Following the Dylan tattoo, I thought about how I would like a tattoo to represent travel or free spiritedness. There is a Frank Turner song I Am Disappeared featuring the lyrics “I keep having dreams of pioneers and pirate ships and Bob Dylan” and “posters of Dylan and of Hemingway, an antique compass for a sailor’s escape.” (It is a wonderful song and Turner is perhaps one of the only singer songwriters I believe could even nearly hold a candle to Dylan.) A few days into these thoughts, Paul Tipping posted a photo of an anchor that he wanted to tattoo on somebody…

Lesson 18: Befriend good tattoo artists on Facebook or ‘like’ their page. They occasionally post photos of sketches they want to tattoo, which is sometimes a little cheaper. Either way, that many tattoo ideas and completions keep you up to date with what looks good and how artists work.
Lesson 19: If you like a tattoo artist, go back to them.

Tattoo number 7, July 2012

(Tattoo & photograph - Paul Tipping)

Having paid £260 for 3 hours with a studio which will remain nameless, I was fuming. For a year I had left the bird untouched, and I grew to resent it. Backless clothes became a nightmare. People will always come up and comment about any tattoo (because they are vultures) and the worst thing was hearing “Oooh I like your bird” and having to reply, “No you don’t, it’s shit, I hate it, it isn’t finished and I don’t know what to do.” I even started toying with the idea of laser removal, but really I was just upset because it wasn’t finished. My anchor tattoo had immediately become my favourite and receives so many compliments that I asked Mr Tipping if he’d mind finishing it off for me, and I am incredibly fortunate that he agreed.

Lesson 20: Good artists have a waiting list. Get yourself on it and wait the bloody wait. It is worth it.
Lesson 21: Forget all previous lessons and make your own mistakes. That way, you have all the best stories to tell.

And listen to this song, it is great.

'Gordon Behind Bars' on the box

“Most people think these are just crack heads and shit - fair enough they do take crack, but you don’t know what they went through in their life and shit.” - A prison participant

The first advertisement I noticed for Gordon Behind Bars was on a billboard in Birmingham. Three images showed the famous chef holding one of those white signs you see on arrest photographs and the gist of the show was laid out somehow. I looked up at it from my Megabus seat and thought about how tacky the triptych looked, as well as what a job he might have in this project.
For three weeks I didn’t think of Ramsay or the upcoming television show at all, nor did I tune in to Channel 4 enough to see it advertised.

Dinner was rather unplanned tonight (I haven’t been feeling so well) but for routine’s sake I decided to whack a chicken breast and some mushrooms in the microwave at about 9pm. I retired to the living room to find some undemanding entertainment whilst I enjoyed my bland concoction and faced the dilemma – New Girl on E4 or How I Met Your Mother on E4+1? Mindless indeed… Are there no cooking shows on the telly on a Tuesday night? Earlier in the year I would watch about 2 hours of Come Dine With Me a day until everything in my head was narrated by Dave Lamb, and my boyfriend continues to remind me that I could cook nicer meals if I’d only watch a bit of Jamie. Yes, you caught me – I like to watch food when I eat food, and yes, I am well aware that it’s probably part of the slippery slope to morbid obesity or something equally as appalling.
Flicking towards Channel 4 my spirits were lifted when I saw Gordon Ramsay’s name. Granted, I have never intentionally tuned in to his shows but anything felt more appealing than hearing that God-awful canned laughter that goes hand-in-hand with American sit-coms.

Unsure of what to expect anyway, I found that Gordon Behind Bars was not another ‘how-to’ cookery show but the documentary of a sociological study involving cookery. The show is set in Brixton prison, reputably one of London’s rougher areas, and sees Ramsay trying to occupy a small group of prisoners by setting high-pressure cookery tasks. I refuse to spend more time than necessary describing the show so I urge you to watch it instead – the link to the shows on 4OD is at the bottom of this blog.
What I did notice was that of all the TV chefs there is nobody better than Ramsay to be working alongside convicted burglars and drug dealers. With previous show titles such as The F Word if you remember one thing about him, it is probably the swear words. You see, Jamie Oliver is the sort of nice lad you could invite to cook a Sunday roast for your grandparents. In stark contrast Ramsay is comparable to the bad boy you remind about your Christian upbringing and find that he subsequently describes Nick Clegg as a ‘cunt’ and the potatoes as ‘fucking fantastic.’ As far as mainstream TV personalities go, Ramsay is a badass, and enough so to connect with these guys.

In this episode (the third, that is, I have no idea what happened in the first two…) Ramsay makes it his aim to market food made by the prisoners to the public. In particular, Ramsay outlines that he would like to crack into the £5billion UK coffee shop market (I know, I don’t want to believe that amount either. Incredible.)
One buyer asks “Was it made by a paedo?” That was particularly odd. So what if it was?! The individual may need reminding over a cuppa and a kind chat from somebody that paedophilia is a mental sickness rather than some flu-like disease you can catch through food preparation.

With 138 prisons in England and an excess of 80,000 prisoners each year, we do often wonder what they’re getting up to in there. If Ramsay’s goal of turning these under-stimulated and unfortunate individuals into hard-working individuals with an ever building skill set is achieved, then he will deserve every bit of praise he has ever received in ten-fold.

You can catch up on the last three episodes if you click here for it on 4OD...

Or you can do whatever else you do with your life, I don't actually give a shit.

People Talk

“A frustration or complaint only experienced by privileged individuals in wealthy countries.” Wiktionary definition of a First World Problem.

There are millions of people in the world going through various trials which, however small, feel crushing. And, like all problems, we believe that a problem shared is a problem halved. I for one am terribly guilty of complaining about small tribulations which, by any standard of a ‘real problem’ I am lucky to be worrying about.
We all know the people – but just in case you are squinting at your screen, desperately trying to figure out what I am talking about, allow me to contextualize it with this screenshot from Twitter.

Know what I mean now? Good! Let’s get cracking.

My first world problems this afternoon were as follows: I had eaten too much at lunch and felt too full to walk into town to collect my dry cleaning because my dad handed it in a fortnight ago and forgot to collect it and I need to wear a jacket tomorrow to work in a different branch of the retail store I am employed by. (It sure is a hard life.) So I promised myself a medium skinny sugar-free-vanilla latte when I got there, and brought some sketching stuff to do in the café whilst I enjoyed my pretentious beverage.

My first world problem of the summer is that I have a place at one of London’s most prestigious art schools in September and I have to keep myself thinking of concepts for when I arrive since I’ll be left to do my own thing. (Again, I’m really suffering here guys…)

I encountered some more first world problems when I got to the café. The barista almost gave me full fat milk in my latte (we all know that the 100 extra calories would put me up at least three dress sizes instantly, God) then once I got my latte to the table an uneven base meant I lost about one fifteenth of my beverage, equating to about 30p of waste. And to think of all the starving Africans with third world problems I could have fed with that 30p… who I wouldn’t have fed anyway because I’m too busy worrying about my own latte spillage. Yep, you think I’m a dick, but as Andre 3000 would say – “I’m just being honest.”

Leafing through a leftover copy of the Sun, which was full of first world problems just as unexciting as my own, only you’re meant to care about the ones that make the papers, I decided I was better off trying to sketch some stuff around me. First off I drew a nice little old man who was also leafing through a paper.

(Bear in mind I am a conceptual artist/class A bullshitter/not an illustrator/I don’t draw people good, yeah?)

My attention was being forced towards a conversation taking place between two brunette girls opposite me. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop (that’s a lie they were talking so loud it was impossible not to) but I did anyway.
Of the two, the prettier girl led the conversation, her friend occasionally managing to throw in a contributing sentence here or there – you know the conversations, don’t pretend that you don’t. We’ve all had or heard them.

I have mentioned in a previous blog that I find myself acting in a slightly (non-sexual) voyeuristic manner, and it has surfaced in art projects such as the one below where I, in disguise, photographed strangers whilst being photographed.

After a while I thought, fuck it, what these girls are saying is gold. And I couldn’t stop myself.

Try to view and read this as handwriting as it has far more flow and charm – but here are the transcripts too. The ellipses are where they continue to talk but my hand couldn’t keep up with their mouth, so naturally there are parts of the conversation missing.

The thing about that place is office work I’d hands down take it … I like the flexibility … not doing anything til the end of July … I don’t know, I’m going to see what they say on Friday … even if it’s just a month’s work in August … working in the evenings – I wanna do things in the weekends and evenings … but um, yeah …
I don’t know why I’ve never been to that ABC before … not bother going back to Bicester.
What do you think you’re gonna do with the summer though?

All I want is 9 to 5 office work Monday to Friday … Eight pounds an hour or something … it’s not just I owe my mum money but I need to buy so much shit … problem is, I was so desperate to have a really sociable summer … I don’t wanna be sat around … this is the thing like, I have so much I wanna do and no money … thought about … it’s my own fault, I can’t complain, it’s my fault.

Once I got bored of writing, I decided to draw them… but one of them must have noticed and suggested that they depart, so I only got a head and leg and completed sketching the sofa when they left.

Okay, so I’m going to step back for a second here. How many of you think I am a total creep? I would be interested to know. None of this was recorded in a malicious way, I was genuinely charmed by the conversation they were having. I wish I could hear myself back, troubling over what to wear at a weekend, or how many squats to do in a workout, or whether I’m drinking too many carbonated drinks. The reason I was charmed is that these are problems, real problems to somebody, and yet they barely cross my mind because I’m so busy worrying about my own spilt lattes and wobbling tables.

Most important of all, these girls first world problems helped solve one of mine: I now have a starting point for a project this summer. It appeals to every aspect of my curious and slightly inappropriate nature. I will be looking into the legality of the entire thing, but I will not be capturing actual voices or pictures of the individuals, rather they will be portrayed in (very bad) drawings and short snips of handwriting.

Now tell me – am I a terrible person?

Disclaimer: I do recognize that unemployment is a more serious problem than a wobbly table.