1834 Preparing to meet Sophie Calle

I have had an excellent and memorable long weekend in London with my first highly enjoyable experience of Lebanese food at La Roche, St Martin‘s Lane, followed by an unexpectedly satisfying three course prix fixe lunch with wine and coffee at the Café Rouge, Victoria station. There was my first visit to the Whitechapel Gallery to experience the work of Sophie Calle, only one of handful of large space exhibitions where I was overcome with WOW and also a close identification with the work which I need to test its reality. In contrast this was my most disappointing visit to Tate Modern where only one work was of interest and nothing provoked Wow or a search for notebook and pen. I have not been to the science museum for several decades and was much impressed with the strides made to cater for the most young of children and their parents. I was fortunate to attend the first day showing of a film about the life of Seraphine de Senlis and an evening of Baroque music by candlelight with the Festive orchestra of London at St Martin’s in the Fields, lazed an afternoon at the Royal Festival Hall, eat spiced chicken wings in a quiet corner of St Pancras station and a prepared salad close to the East London Mosque having visited the area where I worked for British Olivetti 50 years ago close to Petticoat, Brick Lane and Toynbee Hall. There were five conversations with strangers and my only regret was not to have brought my camera to have taken a shot of four beautifully dressed Asian young women talking excitedly about the social function they were about to attend across the road from the dodgy looking Nags Head gentleman’s club.

The journey to London, which I now make only three or four times a year, compared with a dozen or more during the 1990’s and around 50 during the twenty years as a local authority chief officer, was the best I can remember. The sun was bright for the walk from my home to South Shields station for the Metro train to Newcastle and I left early to call in at the Wetherspoons for an English Breakfast and coffee noting the number of early morning beer drinkers, many of them regulars, mixed with those taking breakfast, morning coffee or waiting to enjoy an early lunch. There was time at the station to visits Smiths for a copy of Time Out as a last minute development meant that I might be spending the weekend on my own and had made no plans about where I might go and what I could experience. I had also selected the train time as the best price for the midday early afternoon and was pleasantly surprised to find it was scheduled to be an exceptionally fast journey with only a stop at York before Kings Cross.

I had chosen a table seat although I had decided not to have my laptop to hand but to finish reading Kate Hudson’s book on the History of the CND movement. As I ashamedly admit from time to time I am still of big body but the young woman occupying the window seat was even larger and I therefore resisted the opportunity to sit opposite another young and attractive girl to go further along the carriage to an unoccupied seat without a seat ticket and where the window seat was also free as the individual booking the place did not arrive. A lady of my generation, but younger by a few years, was faced with having her case on her lap because there was no space left at either end luggage compartment and a notice asked for the luggage not to block the aisles. The suggestion it was placed below the unoccupied seat, was readily agreed and as a consequence enjoyed a conversation all the way to York. Subjects included the take over of the line by the British Government from National Express, the opportunities of the national bus pass for long journeys, the flooding in Cumbria with the loss of life of the policeman leaving a widow and four children, the death of so many young men in Afghanistan, wartime memories and flooded fields alongside the track on the approach to York, a city which is under constant threat of flooding almost every year. After she departed at York I read and promised to read through the book again soon with notebook to hand for a writing.

I did not have to wait long at St Pancras for the Brighton Thameslink train to East Croydon having purchased a single journey ticket at the automatic machine. There was time to notice that the area under the station width departure and arrivals board at this end of the station was now converted into a sales area for breads, cheeses, continental meats, olives and wine with large kitchen type tables to sample the food and drink as well as take away. I did not need to buy anything for the evening as I had eaten a French baguette with salami on the train down and decided to enjoy a soup, some pot noodles, grapes and dates for supper. This left a large prepared salad of lettuce, tomatoes, a sweet yellow pepper, cucumber, olives and a mixed bean salad for the following day. I was in my room on the 7th floor of central Croydon Travel Lodge by six pm

I decided to watch the first four episodes of the 4th and last series of the 4400 on the DVD I had brought with me, rather than the TV, missing Question Time but catching part of the weekly cocoa time political banter between Diane Abbott, Michael Portillo and what’s his name! For a day spent in packing, unpacking and travelling it has been an enjoyable one. On the train I had studied Time Out and marked possibilities. On page 46 there begins the notices for Major spaces and Exhibitions and on page 48 the was the announcement that Seraphine, winner of seven French Academy awards including best picture, was opening at the two Curzon’s cinemas, two Odeon’s, the Barbican and the Coronet Independent on the following afternoon. I must confess that it was only when her work was displayed in the picture that I associated the name with the work, which had never appealed, although by the time the film ended several of large canvases did, but fairly low in the pecking order of works I would like to have close by had I the funds and inclination to do so.

On page 49 under major space Critics’ choice. The fifth and final was Sophie Calle. I will write separately about the Sophie Caller experience. I immediately turned to page 50 where the Whitechapel Gallery was listed alphabetically in the major space section. There was a half page advert for the Seraphine film in film section where I looked to see if the children’s film UP was still showing somewhere in 3D.

Under literary events I noted that Professor Robert Barsky from the USA was talking at Peace News about the work of Noam Chomsky at 5pm on Friday at Houseman’s almost 50 years to the day I was offered a temporary job there over for a month until Christmas. Martin Bell was at Wanstead Library that night and Stephen Poliakoff at Foyle’s also on Thursday at 6.30. Jules Holland was at the Royal Albert Hall and James Morrison at the Wembley Arena. There was a Mozart Requiem on the Friday evening, the Baroque on the Saturday. There was an England National Opera Production of Turandot on Thursday evening with the Messiah on Friday evening and Sunday afternoon. Separately before departure I had checked out events, paid and free at the South Bank, including at the National Theatre where Richard Griffiths and Frances Le Tour were starring with Adrian Scarborough and Alex Jennings in the Habit of Art, a play about Benjamin Britain meeting with WH Auden. There were other possibilities all depending on whether I was to be on my own or not. I also wanted to visit the British Music experience since World War 2 at the Millennium Dome where the ATP tennis tourney was taking place with semi finals days on tournament Friday and Saturday and where interest would depend on the progress of Any Murray. Before going to bed I knew I would be on my own until the following evening and decided on Sophie Calle and Seraphine. I then found it difficult to sleep.

I had been up at 5.am in order to try and get cheap Travel Lodge accommodation for the cricket next April and May and had been amazingly successful getting 12 nights in all for £102. This included five nights at Nottingham and three in Leeds and then four in London after discovering that there was a relay of La Boheme from Covent Garden. Having booked the accommodation I then found there was no relay at the Odeon Covent Garden which on further thought was logical in that why would people pay several hundred pounds to watch the opera in the Theatre if for under £10 they could see the same show at the cinema a few yards away. I was to learn the following day that it was not being shown at the Curzon’s although Carmen from La Scalla and It Travatore from Barcelona were. Then I had a moment of good fortune with was to herald the rest of the weekend. There was a relay showing at the Odeon Wimbledon. I have been to the Odeon once when staying at the former home of my birth and care mothers. I am staying where I am staying now in central Croydon and a short distance away outside East Croydon Station there are trams to Wimbledon. I booked a ticket and according to the seating plan was the first person to do so.

I had gone to bed around eleven pm on the Wednesday night, between two and three hours earlier than usual. I had not managed to sleep or so it seemed the following morning. I had risen for an hour between 2 and 3am for a milk drink but this did not seem to work. I had tried to count chicken. I have no recollection of any sleep or waking dreams. On Thursday evening I was too excited about the following day to sleep. Usually what happens is an anticlimax. This occasion it will remain not just a day remembered but perhaps the eight day in a decade which had significantly changed the rest of my self aware experience, and in this instance for the better.

1836 From Seraphine to Sophie Calle

In the history of human kind, let alone the universe, it is a very short road from the village of Arsy and the town of Senlis on the Oise in northern France where Seraphine Louis was born in 1864, to the birth place of Sophie Calle in 1953, a couple of years before I left school and had visited the local reference library to read the official War Crimes reports on the concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz. Interestingly for someone who is precise and expansive I can find no published record of where Calle she was born.

(On a visit to the Science Museum a couple of days later I was also struck in the area on energy with the information that the sun will lose its power to sustain life on earth in about five billion years which is nearly as long as it appears to have already been in existence).

Seraphine Louis was the daughter of a manual working family who was sent to the local convent to undertake laundry work at the age of 17 after being a shepherdess and which is likely to account for her need to be outdoors and of trees which she loved to touch and talk to. From her work at the Convent of the Sisters of Providence in Clermont she developed the kind of fundamental Catholicism and adoration for the Virgin Mary which so dominated the life of my mother, to the extent that despite the totality of my mother’s senility and disabilities when she approached her death aged 100.75, her catholic faith remained evident to me as it did to her priest.

When Seraphine was 37 she commenced work for middle class families in the city of Senlis although according to the Film of her life which opened in the UK on the Friday afternoon of the day I also visited Sophie Calle at the Whitechapel. It was a further decade before Seraphine undertook cleaning for the garden flat tenant of one of these families, and one tenant by amazing good fortune was the Parisian art gallery dealer owner and collector Wilhelm Uhde, a German born pacifist Jewish homosexual born in what is now Poland, facts which were to have a great impact on the future of Seraphine

It is not known from the film when and why she commenced to paint her distinctive individual style of paintings which all have a tree like symmetry of floral displays in the most vivid and at times lurid of colours and which the films indicates she produced herself from pots of basic white using animal blood from the butchers for her red and algae from the river bed although these are guesses because she never revealed how she did it.

In the film one of her employers learns that Seraphine painted and asked to see a canvass which she then ridiculed because of its primitivism and abstraction. However the employer kept the work which was seen after the woman discovered that the tenant was the art expert and arranged a dinner party at which the local cultural worthies displayed their ignorance and contempt for the contemporary art of the day. The film suggests that it was only at this point did Wilhelm discover that his cleaner was the painter. According the Wikipedia he then became aware she had accumulated a body of work although in the film she only showed him a few of her small works painted on board and he urged her to work hard at improving her technique as well as being impressed by what she had created to-date. He bought her work and provide the support which commenced to lift her horizons as a mature single woman who had used all her earnings to buy materials to paint which she did at night by candlelight. The film also suggests that she was generally regarded as being “soft in the head” by her employers and the community in which she lived because she was on her own, appeared to have not family or friends apart from occasional visits to see the nuns and her devotions at the local church and spent hours in the countryside in all weathers, touching and talking to trees. The film states that she painted having been called by God to do so. She possessed the compulsion to do something regardless of whether she obtained recognition and wealth and did so at the expense of everything else other than working to buy materials. If her enthusiasm had been for alcohol, drugs or what have she would be said to have become addicted in a negative way and

Unfortunately just when she had found someone who believed in her work, the first World War occurred and Wilhelm had to flee from Senlis where understandably he was no longer welcome as the German army advanced, and where he would have been shot by the Germans if they had found him continuing to live there. The film suggests that Seraphine retrieved her work from the flat as well as rescuing his diary. He promised to return to see her but it was not until 1927 when Wilhelm returned to France and was living at Chantilly that he went back to find her. It is not clear to me if he could have returned to France before he did given his views and interests.

In the film it is stated that he assumed she had died until seeing a newspaper note of an exhibition of local artists and decided to see if any of her works were being shown and only then realised she and her painting had not only survived but progressed.

Wilhelm trained as lawyer and studied art history in Italy and was an early collector of the works of Picasso who painted his portrait in 1909. It was his patronage that made Henri Rousseau and in 1928 he showed the work of Seraphine in Paris along with that of Rousseau, Boucant and Camille Bombois who together became known as the Sacred Heart painters.

It was the juxtaposition of Seraphine the naive Catholic primitive and me, Colin the naive, former Catholic, primitive contemporary creative and Sophie Calle the now worldly exhibitionist and voyeur which has and such a profound effect as did the interaction between the work of many of those exhibiting in the Saatchi 100 and the Tate Modern in the Spring of 2003 when I knew not just what I wanted to do but how to do it.

The impact of the patronage on life of Seraphine was also profound in two contrasting ways. She commenced to paint large work on canvass two metres high and with access to the whole range of prepared paints was able to progress her work with paintings which overwhelm the senses and which will no doubt be shown once more in London following the release of the film there, a film which has already won seven awards at the French Academy including best picture and can be expected to do well as the foreign language Oscar film next year as well as the Baftas.

In the film Seraphine also moved into a bigger flat which she filled with pots and pans and silverware and then bought an expensive hand made formal white wedding dress which the film does not attempt to explain leaving the audience to decide if this was for wearing at her exhibition of work in Paris, or a symbolic dedication to the Virgin Mary and God, (non Catholics may not be aware that Nuns dress in bridal white when they enter an order following on from their white dresses at the first Holy Communion)

It is at this point that the role of Wilhelm becomes questionable at best and in my view disgraceful. When her neighbours become concerned about her going about the town in her wedding dress and distributing her silverware, they lock her up as mad and there was no one immediately on hand to speak for her. I was reminded that humanity throughout the ages, especially the established and ruling religions, have always persecuted those regarded as different and tried to silence, often killing those who challenge the existing order and way of doing things

In the film her psychosis progress to the extent she fails to recognise Wilhelm who funds the provision of a private room with access to the open air and countryside. In fairness to him he also was badly affected by the Wall Street Crash and could not keep up with her extravagance including the desire to buy a house like his and a car. However what is not clear if any effort was made to provide her with the material to paint and why did he tell everyone that she had died in 1934 when in fact she lived on until 1942. It is appreciated that as the control and suppression of the Jews became known, even if knowledge of their extermination was more restricted to officialdom and to the military throughout Europe, Wilhelm had to go into hiding in Southern France dying in 1947 back in Paris. Why on return and discovering that she been buried in a common grave did he not provide a new one for example? He had continued to show her work when in the asylum in an exhibition in 1932 and after stating she had died with exhibitions in Paris 37-38, followed by Zurich and New York, also in 1942 and in 1945 after she had died in a show of only her work. I was left feeling that that as her talent for painting grew she was abandoned by all those who could have helped her. I do take into account the barbarism of the care of the mentally ill which has stained medical practical for generations.

I rounded off my day by Eating spicy chicken wings in a quiet corner of St Pancras station after buying them from M and S, and as I was leaving noted two young men tucking into one of their large trifle bowls with similar enthusiasm to my devouring of the chicken. I had intended to call in at an attractive Christmas decorated Inn discovered on the way to the Brunswick centre but on exiting found it heaving. An Irish chain pub nearby was also packed out by early Friday evening revellers. I had not been to the Curzon Renoir at the Brunswick centre before and which appears to be an excellent venue for quality International films. They have a collection of DVD’s of previous successes which can also be obtained through their catalogue. I enjoyed a coffee before the performance but had to complain that the theatre had been placed in total darkness,

Saturday did not begin well as I quickly discovered that the Cross Thames line between London Bridge and St Pancras was down with the Circle and District Line and most of the Jubilee, Northern Kline Trains were not stopping at Kings Cross as individual stations such as Warren street were closed. There was chaos. The first port of call was St Martin’s in the Fields, the most famous non Cathedral church in the UK because of its location to one side of Trafalgar Square. It is technically the parish church of the Royal Family. It is also known for its open door policy towards the homeless following the work of Rev Dick Shepherd who pioneered charitable work in the first part of the last century Between 2006 and 2008 £36 million was spent on cleaning the building and creating new public facilities and parish and social care facilities which included a row of buildings to the north of the church. The large Crypt is now a restaurant cafe where jazz concerts are held and the church holds several concerts a week during lunchtimes and at night using candle light. It is also the London Brass rubbing centre. My interest was to enquire if tickets were available for the evening concert of Baroque music and they were, before walking across the bridge and along the South Bank of the Thames to Tate Modern.

This was my first visit this year. And as with my visit to the Saatchi in the summer for the USA show, it was a disappointment with nothing creating a new sense of wow. Most of the film space had warnings about nudity which appears to have become an issue although it is not surprising as the Tate appears to be a place for Tourists to visit and for curious parents to take their children along with them. I was struck by the difference between the two sets of visitors to the Tate Modern and the Whitechapel.

There was one work in which I did engage, by Robert Therrien from Los Angeles in which he had crammed into a small space, said to be the space he had used in his studio, some 888 objects all in red many practical, radio telephone, grill and that many of the objects had a significance in relation to his own past or that of his friends. It was this aspect which attracted my interest because too often the creative is seeking to cause an effect, to attract attention and the work has little to do, if anything with the life led or personal past experience. The redness was also commanding. I am not dismissing the rest of the displays which included several appreciated on past visits, but there was little I would want to live with or had direct significance to my own past experience or current work.

I enjoyed a sandwich and tea overlooking St Paul’s but came over tired and spent the rest of the afternoon lounging in a comfy chair at the Royal Festival Hall until it was time to brave the heavy rain in search of somewhere to eat. The crypt of St Martins was an obvious option but there was only limited choice of mass produced food kept warm. An exploration further along St Martin’s Lane led to La Roche a Lebanese Moroccan restaurant where a two course meal with wine will set you back £25 a head. However it was well worth it as I enjoyed some beautifully tender lamb with petite vegetables in a spiced sauce cooked in a colourful topped ceramic earthenware pot accompanied with rice and followed a delicious apple strudel. The wine was an unspecified house red.

St Martins is not an ideal place for music in that only those at the aisle or in the front rows can see the musicians and the seats are church pews although there was plenty of room for a bag underneath and for coats to be folded on the wide ledge used for hymnals. Yet it seemed ideal for the programme of Baroque music. Some of the work was familiar notably the Air on a G String of Bach and 4th Brandenburg Concerto when I have a double Long Play of the series and there was also Spring from the Vivaldi Four Seasons. I did not know the Telemann Recorder Concerto performed Martin Feinstein or the Pachelbel Canon and Fugue, Vivaldi’s Concerto for four Violins or his Spranino Concerto, but for me the I enjoyed most the Bach Double Violin Concerto with soloists Catherine Manson and Marianna Szcucs.

It is decades since visiting the Science Museum which since the films about Dinosaurs has been overshadowed by the adjacent Natural History Museum. I had been to the Victoria and Albert across the street earlier in the year and had been tempted to go again. Many of the displays are long standing especially the history of Flight and of Maritime developments. I am likely to have viewed the flying bomb rocket before but it still brought back the fear of childhood. The history of medicine has never appealed but 100 years of psychology usually would have but not at that moment. There was tremendous public interest in everything to do with space and the development of energy sources. I was delighted to see an Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter which I tried to sell in the late 1950’s. I cannot remember what happened to the one which I bought for myself as later I acquired a black Silverite in a black case. There was also one of the early adding machines with the fading paper print roll. What interested me most was the early nature of many of fields of research and study which then changed all our lives. I noted that when men played around with electricity servants and children were treated with small shocks because it was though this would help to keep them in their place.

There has been thought given to attracting and keeping the interest of young people to science and everything is geared to provide young people with interest and well as facilities. There is a special large area for parties and refectory type tables on the ground floor cafe restaurant as well as those for two or four, and the food looked well prepared and appetizing. There was also a picnic area and one large area given over to hands on experiments and tests where children were having a great time. At the area of flight there was a conducted tour aimed at young children who were engaged throughout in various ways.

The closures of the Tube meant that everyone appeared to be queuing for the only direct bus route at Victoria, the C1. While people did get out at the V and A marked stop and then at the South Kensington Station where there is a tunnel to the Natural History and Science Museums and which used by those going or coming from the Royal Albert Hall at the top of the Road. As the bus goes to Sloane Square and Harrods at Knightsbridge it was full of shoppers as well as some going on to Earls Court Olympia where there are a number of halls as well as the conference centre, and where throughout the year there are trade and consumer shows, sporting events from the Horse of the Year to chess championships and music such as the Annual Brit Awards. I would be taken as a school child with the aunties to see the Ideal Home Exhibition each year where I enjoyed going through the show houses filled with the latest appliances and gadgets, watching the free displays of things to make life easier and the free samples.

It became time for a Sunday lunch and having just missed the C1 back as more rain came down disregarded by the dozens of skaters in the open air ice rink close to the station, I opted to take a bus to Marble Arch at the edge of Hyde Park where there was both another Ice rink, one of six in and around London and a monster large wheel, cross over the space where there are no memorials to the Australians who died in the World Wars and then take the bus to Victoria from there down the back of Buckingham Palace and passed the former officers of the National Coal Board to Victoria Station where there were was a pub restaurant one end of the food court. It was here that on the spur I crossed over to the far side and discovered that the Cafe Rouge are having an excellent two or three course reasonable priced meal which despite small portions is nevertheless excellent value given the quality of the food and the pleasant ambience where there is no pressure to serve everyone as fast as possible to attract further customers. I had a terrine de poulet with four pieces of baguette, a crepe filled with vegetables and a green salad rather than French fries, followed by a mousse aux chocolat and accompanied with a large glass of Merlot followed by black coffee £15. The new Cafe Rouge at Gateshead has the same menu for servings from 12 until 5 and there are vouchers for 2 main menu dishes for £12.50 in the evenings and I received a 50% off mail meal voucher the former expires in December while the latter is for the New Year. The meal made up for the dreadful weather and it also became cold to freezing.

However on return I discovered how the chain is able to provide quality food at low prices. Until October it was paying staff below the national minimum wage and using the tips to make the difference. Now it is required to pay the way and for tips to be distributed. Staff are asked to put the tips on the bill and then a 10% deduction is made by the management for administrative costs. This will affect my going again but I will test out the one at the Metro centre especially if it starts to show the relays of opera and other live performances when it opens in a few days time.

1835 Talking to Sophie Calle

I did not know Sophie Calle until the autumn of 2006 when in my sixty seventh year. I regret this alongside my failure to understand performance and concept art until making the effort in the summer of 2002 after the opening of the Baltic contemporary art space on Tyneside and seeing the film on the life of Jackson Pollock. It was not until a visit to London a few weeks later that I bought the Nikos Stangos editing book Concepts of Modern Art and the last two chapters Christopher Reed on Modernism and Identity and Roberta Smith on Conceptual Art changed my life in a more fundamental way than the discovery in 1999 that my father had become the Catholic Vicar General of Gibraltar.

I do not mean know in the biblical sense, although my accumulated experience suggests that we can know more of an individual through their work than by living with them. What we know is our interaction with the time period of their work or our period of direct contact and even where another discloses their thoughts, internal images and sensations, it is always an edited experience and with only limited disclosure of their subconscious for those able to interpret with some accuracy.

In 2006 I had not been to contemporary theatre, or out to much else between 2003 and 2006, fully engaged as I was in the creation of the installation then called 101 Public and Private Art and now 100.75 Public and Private Art. until the redesigned Newcastle Playhouse was open again. On the 27th of September 2006 I visited to new second space at the theatre to see Exquisite Pain, a performance art work lasting two and a half hours without interruption and created by someone called Sophie Calle. I liked the old second space at the Playhouse which I previously visited usually to see actors of the Royal Shakespeare company because of the intimacy between the players and the audience less than 100 souls sitting within the performance space. Now the space was on the ground floor and could become an additional back space to the main space and auditorium, to as in the instance of this first use as a separate space a second auditorium with perhaps 200 uncomfortable seats in a traditional single slope to the theatre. I had not made an immediate note but written about the experience for my AOL Blog a month later 26.10.2006 and which I then published in a revised form here on as 31 in March 2007 and then on Google this year as 1031.
I had used Jokerman script for the original piece.“26.10.2006 .The use of Jokerman script for Exquisite Pain (27.09.2006 Newcastle Playhouse) is at one level appropriate. It is not a play but a performance art work where the setting of a seated audience for two and a half hours is inappropriate, one needed to be able to walk about” and in my instance join in.

“12.03.2007 if you have not been to the theatre to experience acting for sometime then Exquisite Pain is not the work to go and see. It is not a play but performance art using exceptionally talented actors. (I can say this because I also watched them perform a total theatre experience of the history of The World in Pictures, two days later).

You sit with increasing discomfort for two and a half hours without interruption. The discomfort is physical and emotional and is an appropriate way to experience the work. I would have preferred to have walked about a bit but keeping within listening distance.

This autobiographical work, previously performed by the artist and available in book form, is by Sophie Calle, born in Paris in 1953. In 1985 her lover and older man failed to meet her as arranged in New Delhi midway between where she had been for several months and experience, rather than traumatised and was able to work through the disappointment, humiliation, and victim guilt, because she was a creative using photo, memorabilia and words, but kept a record of how her perception of the event changed through linear time.”

“26.10.2006 The performance consists of one person telling the story of dealing with a traumatic experience and how the view of that experience changes over time, one blames oneself, where she had previously lived, She was devastated by the one blames the other person one gets angry at being affected so much yet because one wanted and hopes for resolution reconciliation one clings the hope for a different outcome because that it is a possibility but the reality is that when you compare such an experience with the experience of others you realise that however painful, it is insignificant to the realities of the succession of tragedies and horrors of others which are told in a dead pan and sometimes humorous way.”

13.03.2007 Sophie Calle could have just created a performance work in which she recounted the same experience over the subsequent days, weeks and months, reporting and observing changes in detail, consideration, feelings, attitude and judgement. This could have been a complete work. She did not.

On her return to Paris, she asked a group of friends to answer the question, "When did you most suffer?" Their stories of pain, each of them accompanied by a photograph, interplay with Calle's own story and daily reflections—"It is now seventy-five days since the man I love left me"—creating a testament to the heartache of romantic rejection. 130 illustrations, 71 in colour available through Amazon.”

30.11.2009. I write this on the train to Newcastle. Sophie appears to see herself first as a voyeur albeit a self controlled one me thinks, and an exhibitionist second. Both words tend to be regarded in only a pejorative way by the popular media and have conditioned the general public accordingly. Both require courage whether undertaken in a public or private way.

“27.09.2006 the university car park was free tonight, I usually pay £2. I enjoyed the salad and timed everything much better. It is the right thing to do to take the car although it would be sensible to work out the motorway way route back. It is ridiculous that you cannot enter the theatre at this level with the choice if steep steps or walking around the theatre up the slope.”

“28.02.2007. The revised travel arrangements to the Playhouse and other evening outings to Newcastle are now working well. I still visit my mother and then take the car to the Hewarth short stay car park adjacent to the taxi rank and metro station. I eat the picnic meal in the car and then continue the journey by metro train. On the way there is now a sign which suggests it might be possible to enter the theatre directly from the car park. It is.”

30.11.2009 The University has now built its main public reception building on the car park and there is now a grand staircase entrance by the side of the building which leads to the space with the splendid university student union building on one side and the Playhouse Theatre on the other. I assume one can no longer take the car close the theatre anymore but have not taken time to explore this further or been to the theatre for a year.

“27.09.2006 this is my first experience of the new second theatre space. For on the Town when both spaces were combined the audience sat on tiered seating the width of the second space facing into the main auditorium and banked seating. Previously we sat on similar seating in a semi circle around the stage which I like to call eyeball theatre. Now there is conventional tiered seating with not much space to move legs unless you sit on an aisle or the front row where you will feel part of the performance. I chickened out and sat mid row, fortunately one vacant seat so there was some manoeuvrability. My ticket was free as part of a five main theatre subscription packaged. Many in the audience were students. Unsurprisingly there was a plea for funds at the end and I decide to give £10 which is slightly more than the average of £7 requested. Free programme included.”

“13.03.2007. The incorporation of the stories of the experiences of Calle's friends was inspirational. Each story communicates an aspect of physical and emotional pain but the accumulation of experience helps to put her experience into perspective

At the end of the World in Pictures chorus makes the valid point that however much the average member of the audience enjoys, appreciates, is moved or challenged by the event, it will become submerged under layers of new experiences of varying intensity and significance.”

26.10.2006 There was also an after performance session with the two actors, and the company director chaired by a local cultural figure. I had only 'discovered' this extraordinary company through the internet during the afternoon beforehand and had become so interested that I abandoned my work programme. The amazing aspect is that the core actors had been together throughout their working lives having come together at university. At the discussion I made a clanger by concertinaing this time, having misinterpreted an aspect of the internet information. I also wanted to know if the order in which the stories of the friends are recounted is changed according performance. It is not although if the work was mine I would have included the variations”- to see if by doing so my view of what had happened to me, changed 30.11.2009.

“13.03.2007. Calle's work and the performance by the Forced Entertainment company is at the core of my work and confirms that what I am doing is only original in its particular form, at least I hope that this is the position, but the concepts are already aspects of the work of professional contemporary creative of international reputation. However I do not regret only entering back through the portal of my occupational dimension of four decades into my first period of full time creative endeavour. Now I have a lot to say even if I continued to be limited in the means of expression.”

29.11.2009. I have met Sophie Calle again two days ago. The experience was unplanned because at the last moment I had a free day in London and had read Time Out, looking first at the cinema listing and discovering that a film about the Seraphine of Senlis was to open at midday, decided to attend the first performance the Curzon Renoir in Brunswick Square. I then looked at the major space exhibitions which are listed alphabetically but on the third page under Critic‘s choice there was her name Sophie Calle, announcing that she was revealing more of herself at the Whitechapel Gallery from 11am. This became my priority visit until an evening engagement and I quickly worked out how to get to Aldegate East which is behind the City area where I had worked 50 years ago unsuccessfully trying to sell office machines for an Italian company and on a road to Stratford from Tower Bridge which I used several times a year over a period of several years.

I should have arrived for 11 but made a mess of the travel as a consequence of devoting insufficient time to learning the route from East Croydon Station. As will be evident to anyone reading any of my writing I have a learning disability which prevents the immediate recollection of grammar and vocabulary and to ensure that I remember anything and although I spell check, reread and revise any writing, usually once, I continue to find errors, sometimes rendering a sentence incomprehensible. I sometimes leave my work uncorrected.

30.11 2009. For some reason about which I am no longer sure I took the train to London Bridge rather than direct to St Pancras and this resulted in having to climb the stairs at London bridge over platforms and then down to the platform, where fortunately the train from East Croydon to Bedford arrived a few minutes later. I had not lost time but had the additional effort. However what I should have done is get off at Farringdon and take the Hammersmith and City Line to Aldegate East from there. Instead I continued to St Pancras and then had to walk the full length the station to the booking hall at the front and to the Hammersmith and City line which is one the same platform at the circle and district lines. As I was to discover on my way to King Cross station later that evening there is now a new booking hall between the far end of St Pancras and the present side entrance into Kings Cross and which was opened to the public for the first time on Sunday. I do not know if this will also cut the distance to the Hammersmith and city line.

In any event having arrived at the St Pancras platform trains came and departed along the other routes for 15 to 20 minutes before one of two trains in succession going towards Aldegate East were announced. Thus I had extended the journey time by half an hour and it was after 11 before I arrived at the art space and was pleasantly surprised to find that the station entrance and exist is part of the gallery building and that for several years I had driven along the road on my way from Wallington via Tower Bridge to Stratford. I also quickly realised it was in the area where the British Olivetti City office had been located and where each day accompanied with other members of the selling team we had made our way to a bacon roll and coffee breakfast hideaway from the supervisor.

I m just have the address somewhere which I hope to find one day, although the breakfast cafe may be long gone as much of this part of London.

Petticoat Lane is as always but with little evidence of customers on the Friday. From Wikipedia I gather that on Sunday morning there can be as many a thousand stalls covering the wider area and while tourists visit it remains primarily a place to go for clothing. I was struck by two neighbouring shops which specialised in formal suits and dresses for young people, including waistcoats. I assume this is for formal occasions as I cannot recall seeing a child in such attire. There were also two stalls/shops selling luggage at very low prices. Nearby is Brick Lane and its market of fruit and vegetable and which is the home of the Bangladeshi community in this part of London an area previously occupied by Irish and then Jewish immigrants. On my explore I discovered Toynbee Hall the original University Settlement Hall in which those interested in social work could provide services to the underclass in the local community and which continues to this day in an area now overshadowed by the Gherkin and other City Towers and the encroachment of corporations and hotel chains. Lenin visited Toynbee Hall and Clem Atlee worked there as did Lord Profumo who devoted his life there after the Keeler Scandal.

Later after the visit to the Whitechapel Gallery I found an area of street seating close to the East London Mosque which can accommodate 4500 people, next to which is also the London Muslim Centre, which has facilities for several thousand, for the purpose of eating the prepared salad brought with the previous day. Nearby was the London Bell Centre workshops and a little way further along I passed a small group of beautifully attire young Muslim women standing talking and giggly oblivious that they had stopped across the road from the Nag’s Head Gentleman’s club out of wish an Asian gentleman was exiting. I wonder if the various Royals and national politicians who have visited the Mosque and centre noted the incongruity of local authority planning approval being given for such a facility in this neighbourhood.

I knew of the Whitechapel gallery but had no knowledge of the nature of its space which is not surprising as after closure it reopened only earlier this year having doubled in size following expenditure of £13.5million. Having deposited by bag and resisted the temptation to visit the book shop I entered the new ground floor gallery space behind the new restaurant to be confronted with the Nelson Rockefeller 1955 commissioned tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica which for the past couple of decades has hung outside the Security Council meeting room at the United Nations building in New York. The tapestry is set against a blue backcloth the significance of which was to emerge in the installation notes.

Around 1975 on my visit to the South of France I experience a major work of Picasso on War and Peace in a church at Vallauris where Picasso lived from 1948 to 1955. I cannot remember when I acquired the large block reproduction of Guernica which now hangs in the room in which spend most of my days working and experiencing.

The reason for the presence of the tapestry at the Whitechapel is the work of London based Polish creative visual artist Goska Macuga who is known for the presentation as installations historical objects and documents. In 2003 a blue curtain was hung over the tapestry as Colin Powell delivered his speech on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Goska has placed his Guernica against a backcloth of Blue in from of which there is a large table similar to that used by the Security Council but with inlay of documents which reflect keys moments in the history of the Whitechapel where there have been meetings and discussions and where groups are invited to do likewise during the year long presentation of the installation. What was new to me is that the original Guernica was displayed at the Whitechapel in 1939 after it had been on display at the 1937 Paris Exhibition. Moreover Clem Atlee had addressed a meeting before the picture a large reprint of the photograph of the event was the centrepiece of a newspaper produced for the 2009 event and which I fear I mistakenly put out with the now free London Evening Standard. I will obtain another if still available when I revisit just before Christmas.

Before entering the ground floor space which is devoted Ms Calle’s Take Care of Yourself I stayed alone in the Zilkha Auditorium where Inci Eviner is showing perpetually her film Harem 2009 based on a 19th century engraving which looks more like the inside of a lunatic asylum than the sexual playthings of a Sultan of Constantinople. The film has a hypnotic quality despite the contrived grainy effect.

It was then I was ready to meet Sophie Calle once more although the front stage was occupied by a mural of video screens where a score of the 107 women she contacted from an opera singer to rock artist responded on film interpreting an email received from a partner breaking up with her. The performance are also on a continuous loop but switch between them for the sound and which is the English speaking Premier of the work which she took to the Venice Biennale in 2007, the same year that Tracey Emin occupied the British Pavilion. Around the walls are large format responses to this most extraordinary of emails, including from the chief of police and psychiatrist I ordered an edition of the book on the work while travelling back to South Shields today.

I found copies of all the official guides to the British leading participants to the Biennale on one of the top gallery floors together with photos and information including a group photograph at a lunch which represent a history of British art with Henry Moore and JMW Turner, Ben Nicholson and John Tunnard at the opening in 1948, Graham Sutherland 1952 Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud and Reg Butler in 54, John Bratby 56 Victor Passmore in 60 Bridget Riley 68 David Hockney 78 Anthony Gormley and Anish Kapoor. Damien Hirst and Julian Opie 93, and the single contributors over the past decade with Mark Wallinger, Chris Orfili, Gilbert and George before Tracey and the video installation Steve McQueen this year.

I was then ready for Calle’s Talking to Strangers, inviting people to use her bed and then photograph them as well as asking resident’s of the Bronx to take her to their favourite place.

Seven times before my life was fundamentally affected and reshaped by unplanned events or unexpected experience and the combination events last Friday has created the eight with the work of Sophie Calle pivotal. As with that day in the Spring of 2003 when I was exhilarated by the experience of the Saatchi 100 and followed this with another first to the Tate Modern, Friday got better and better with my visit to the film on the life of Seraphine of Senlis. For this bitterly cold night on the return home I am more than content to go to bed talking to Sophie Calle.

1834 The day before meeting Sophie Calle and Seraphine

I have had an excellent and memorable long weekend in London with my first highly enjoyable experience of Lebanese food at La Roche, St Martin‘s Lane, followed by an unexpectedly satisfying three course prix fixe lunch with wine and coffee at the Café Rouge, Victoria station. There was my first visit to the Whitechapel Gallery to experience the work of Sophie Calle, only one of handful of large space exhibitions where I was overcome with WOW and also a close identification with the work which I need to test its reality. In contrast this was my most disappointing visit to Tate Modern where only one work was of interest and nothing provoked Wow or a search for notebook and pen. I have not been to the science museum for several decades and was much impressed with the strides made to cater for the most young of children and their parents. I was fortunate to attend the first day showing of a film about the life of Seraphine de Senlis and an evening of Baroque music by candlelight with the Festive orchestra of London at St Martin’s in the Fields, lazed an afternoon at the Royal Festival Hall, eat spiced chicken wings in a quiet corner of St Pancras station and a prepared salad close to the East London Mosque having visited the area where I worked for British Olivetti 50 years ago close to Petticoat, Brick Lane and Toynbee Hall. There were five conversations with strangers and my only regret was not to have brought my camera to have taken a shot of four beautifully dressed Asian young women talking excitedly about the social function they were about to attend across the road from the dodgy looking Nags Head gentleman’s club.

The journey to London, which I now make only three or four times a year, compared with a dozen or more during the 1990’s and around 50 during the twenty years as a local authority chief officer, was the best I can remember. The sun was bright for the walk from my home to South Shields station for the Metro train to Newcastle and I left early to call in at the Wetherspoons for an English Breakfast and coffee noting the number of early morning beer drinkers, many of them regulars, mixed with those taking breakfast, morning coffee or waiting to enjoy an early lunch. There was time at the station to visits Smiths for a copy of Time Out as a last minute development meant that I might be spending the weekend on my own and had made no plans about where I might go and what I could experience. I had also selected the train time as the best price for the midday early afternoon and was pleasantly surprised to find it was scheduled to be an exceptionally fast journey with only a stop at York before Kings Cross.

I had chosen a table seat although I had decided not to have my laptop to hand but to finish reading Kate Hudson’s book on the History of the CND movement. As I ashamedly admit from time to time I am still of big body but the young woman occupying the window seat was even larger and I therefore resisted the opportunity to sit opposite another young and attractive girl to go further along the carriage to an unoccupied seat without a seat ticket and where the window seat was also free as the individual booking the place did not arrive. A lady of my generation, but younger by a few years, was faced with having her case on her lap because there was no space left at either end luggage compartment and a notice asked for the luggage not to block the aisles. The suggestion it was placed below the unoccupied seat, was readily agreed and as a consequence enjoyed a conversation all the way to York. Subjects included the take over of the line by the British Government from National Express, the opportunities of the national bus pass for long journeys, the flooding in Cumbria with the loss of life of the policeman leaving a widow and four children, the death of so many young men in Afghanistan, wartime memories and flooded fields alongside the track on the approach to York, a city which is under constant threat of flooding almost every year. After she departed at York I read and promised to read through the book again soon with notebook to hand for a writing.

I did not have to wait long at St Pancras for the Brighton Thameslink train to East Croydon having purchased a single journey ticket at the automatic machine. There was time to notice that the area under the station width departure and arrivals board at this end of the station was now converted into a sales area for breads, cheeses, continental meats, olives and wine with large kitchen type tables to sample the food and drink as well as take away. I did not need to buy anything for the evening as I had eaten a French baguette with salami on the train down and decided to enjoy a soup, some pot noodles, grapes and dates for supper. This left a large prepared salad of lettuce, tomatoes, a sweet yellow pepper, cucumber, olives and a mixed bean salad for the following day. I was in my room on the 7th floor of central Croydon Travel Lodge by six pm

I decided to watch the first four episodes of the 4th and last series of the 4400 on the DVD I had brought with me, rather than the TV, missing Question Time but catching part of the weekly cocoa time political banter between Diane Abbott, Michael Portillo and what’s his name! For a day spent in packing, unpacking and travelling it has been an enjoyable one. On the train I had studied Time Out and marked possibilities. On page 46 there begins the notices for Major spaces and Exhibitions and on page 48 the was the announcement that Seraphine, winner of seven French Academy awards including best picture, was opening at the two Curzon’s cinemas, two Odeon’s, the Barbican and the Coronet Independent on the following afternoon. I must confess that it was only when her work was displayed in the picture that I associated the name with the work, which had never appealed, although by the time the film ended several of large canvases did, but fairly low in the pecking order of works I would like to have close by had I the funds and inclination to do so.

On page 49 under major space Critics’ choice. The fifth and final was Sophie Calle. I will write separately about the Sophie Caller experience. I immediately turned to page 50 where the Whitechapel Gallery was listed alphabetically in the major space section. There was a half page advert for the Seraphine film in film section where I looked to see if the children’s film UP was still showing somewhere in 3D.

Under literary events I noted that Professor Robert Barsky from the USA was talking at Peace News about the work of Noam Chomsky at 5pm on Friday at Houseman’s almost 50 years to the day I was offered a temporary job there over for a month until Christmas. Martin Bell was at Wanstead Library that night and Stephen Poliakoff at Foyle’s also on Thursday at 6.30. Jules Holland was at the Royal Albert Hall and James Morrison at the Wembley Arena. There was a Mozart Requiem on the Friday evening, the Baroque on the Saturday. There was an England National Opera Production of Turandot on Thursday evening with the Messiah on Friday evening and Sunday afternoon. Separately before departure I had checked out events, paid and free at the South Bank, including at the National Theatre where Richard Griffiths and Frances Le Tour were starring with Adrian Scarborough and Alex Jennings in the Habit of Art, a play about Benjamin Britain meeting with WH Auden. There were other possibilities all depending on whether I was to be on my own or not. I also wanted to visit the British Music experience since World War 2 at the Millennium Dome where the ATP tennis tourney was taking place with semi finals days on tournament Friday and Saturday and where interest would depend on the progress of Any Murray. Before going to bed I knew I would be on my own until the following evening and decided on Sophie Calle and Seraphine. I then found it difficult to sleep.

I had been up at 5.am in order to try and get cheap Travel Lodge accommodation for the cricket next April and May and had been amazingly successful getting 12 nights in all for £102. This included five nights at Nottingham and three in Leeds and then four in London after discovering that there was a relay of La Boheme from Covent Garden. Having booked the accommodation I then found there was no relay at the Odeon Covent Garden which on further thought was logical in that why would people pay several hundred pounds to watch the opera in the Theatre if for under £10 they could see the same show at the cinema a few yards away. I was to learn the following day that it was not being shown at the Curzon’s although Carmen from La Scalla and It Travatore from Barcelona were. Then I had a moment of good fortune with was to herald the rest of the weekend. There was a relay showing at the Odeon Wimbledon. I have been to the Odeon once when staying at the former home of my birth and care mothers. I am staying where I am staying now in central Croydon and a short distance away outside East Croydon Station there are trams to Wimbledon. I booked a ticket and according to the seating plan was the first person to do so.

I had gone to bed around eleven pm on the Wednesday night, between two and three hours earlier than usual. I had not managed to sleep or so it seemed the following morning. I had risen for an hour between 2 and 3am for a milk drink but this did not seem to work. I had tried to count chicken. I have no recollection of any sleep or waking dreams. On Thursday evening I was too excited about the following day to sleep. Usually what happens is an anticlimax. This occasion it will remain not just a day remembered but perhaps the eight day in a decade which had significantly changed the rest of my self aware experience, and in this instance for the better.

1826 Parr and Kimsooja at the Baltic, Carmen tickets and World's Great Voices

For the superstitious Friday 13th is a day to cautious but for me this occasion its has proved a brilliant day, unlike two weeks ago when my car was hit in the rear corner by an accelerating bus.

I had planned to be up and away to Newcastle earlier than as happened although I had woken early and lingered awake in bed, as I thought. There was a cloudless blue sky. no wind and the temperature favourable for being out and about. I took the loan car to Heworth and should have taken a 2 hour ticket for £1.10 but with careless thinking put in the £1.80 for four hours at around 10.30 am.

The mission was to go to the Tyneside Film Theatre for the opening day of the sale of tickets for the remaining operas in the New York Metropolitan Live relay season in HD. Unlike the other cinemas in the chain the theatre had only sold tickets for the first three operas and then decided on its approach in the light of the demand which has been a great surprise and made them think their role in the cultural life of one of great cities of the world.

The lady in the queue before me was purchasing two of the advertised full rest fo season tickets, my Christmas present she said. The Lady with the other assistant was buying three single tickets for the next three operas for herself and was taking renewing her membership as was I about to do. She had not been before and clearly and been persuaded by word of mouth. The advantage of the Membership is two free tickets and £1 off seats in the Classic circle or 75p elsewhere plus 10% in the coffee room or one for the two bars. I bought tickets for Carmen in the Classic circle at the front and for Simon Boccanegra and Hamlet in the stalls. I then treated myself to a large coffee at the street level bar where I was joined at the next table by two young men each with laptops.

I then decided not to waste the paid for car parking and take a bus to the Quayside and visit the Baltic Contemporary art house walking through the shopping centre and Marks and Spencer’s along the way. I decided to check out the revised Green Market which used be a large areas of stalls but has now replaced where Argos used be. There is only room for six stall type outlets and only three of these are occupied with the available space used by the coffee bar. It is sometime since I have visited the Granger indoor market down street which has the traditional fruit and vegetables and other food stalls and various goods under a large roof area. Along the high level passage way there is a large stall selling very kind of calendar from pop stars to city views and the 365 day one good saying a day or picture.

There was one of the special buses at the terminus and I was the only passenger for half the short journey which nevertheless provides an excellent view of city centre. Newcastle is one of my favourite cities in the UK with Durham and York and along with Oxford and Chester and Brighton.

Newcastle is not pretty pretty, or quaint with dramatic vistas such as Durham or the colleges of Oxford or Cambridge, another I enjoyed a two week stay on a management course in the early seventies. It has a great river best viewed from the Baltic observations platforms or the Sage Concert Halls or the centre of High level Bridge. There is also the attractive 1830 neo classical facades of Granger and Dobson from the Monument of Earl Grey all the way down of the Tyne quayside voted the best looking street in England by BBC Radio 4 listeners

Newcastle has many faces and remains primarily the commercial centre for the whole of the Northeast of England. It had also become the a key part of Higher Education with 50000 university places within the city competing as a place to study and play with the collegiate Durham and the junior riverside developments of Sunderland and Gateshead.

It was always a place of culture and general entertainment with theatres and musical halls giving way to the cinema and the disco bar and nightclub and more recently the International standard concert halls. There are various major art galleries and museums and between 50 and 100 attractive Inns as well as a similar number of international restaurants, coffee and sandwich shops, tea rooms, and fast food takeaways. For general clothes and other shopping goods the Gateshead Metro is superior to Eldon Square unless you want expensive high class goods where there are specialist stores and of course Fenwicks.

I exited the bus at the Law Courts and had to scurry over the Millennium bridge as the warning bell sounded for the midday raising. This always attracts an audience for a process which takes a good ten minutes each way. As the visit was unplanned I had not checked the exhibitions but along the end of the former Flour Mill building full length banners declared a Damien Hirst showing of his Pharmacy alongside a work supporting the 175 year life of the Newcastle University Medical School. On the main length of the building there was a giant post saying vote for the Miners or a similar slogan.

I have been constantly disappointed by the building and the package of exhibitions until today. I am not saying that I did not experience WOW by individual displays on almost every visit. Today there was a more general WOW although I have already seen the Hirst at the former Saatchi and I decided against the Malcolm McLaren pay for show described as musical paintings restricted to over 16’s because of its nudity.

Instead I took the lift to the 5th level having never visited the restaurant at the sixth where a three course meal with coffee excluding wine will cost around £30 per head. From the 5th you look out across the raised Millennium Bridge to the other bridges across the Tyne and up the hill to where Newcastle St James‘s football stadium, one of the world‘s great stadiums, now dominates the skyline from all round the city.

It is also possible to look into the 4th level exhibition area, a space in full darkness except for four large cinema size screens on each of the side walls. Korean Kim Sooja has filmed crowds in eight cities approaching the motionless figures of a Seamstress, in London, New York, Mexico City Delhi, Lagos, Cairo, Tokyo and Shanghai. In most of the cities people go by without giving the woman attention or look bemused except in Lagos where everyone looks and speculates. What struck me was that London faces have become more cosmopolitan than New York. The film was on when I arrived and sat to watch a complete showing and was then repeated again so I moved on missing the showing of a Laundry Woman Yamun river India. The seamstress stands Performance art on its heads with the artist motionless while everyone else is moving.

I then enjoyed the two floor exhibition of the work of Martin Parr and quickly came to conclusion that we have similar artistic souls. The vast spaces of the second floor are covered wall upon wall with his photographs and montages of post cards and other memorabilia and there are tables of his art books gathered with care from around the world. Probably the most interesting for the casual visitor are his collections of souvenirs from Thatcher and Bush years, the macabre 9.11 and Saddam Hussein mementos and collection of commemorative plates from long since defunct coal pits about their defiance and role in the Miner’s strike.

On the ground floor there are his latest collection of glossy colour photographs of those engaged in luxury living ranging from contemporary Bright Young Things, looking and behaving just as silly as their predecessors and bosomy matrons in ill fitting couture frocks including the Northumbrian Plate, the Pitman’s derby here in the North East, the Dubai Art Fair, the Beijing Motor Show and the Millionaires Fair in Moscow. No recession evident for these people.

One of joys as far as art shops go in art galleries and show houses is that at the Baltic. In addition tot eh usual collection of books I would love to own and look at least once there art designed goods and games and plenty of stuff for young people. There appeared to be a problem with the bus to Newcastle from this of the river so I took the one to Gateshead Interchange and eventually found my way to Wilkinson where I picked up some black albums for creative work and their own indigestion tables for a third of the usual price. At Tesco there was fruit and vegetables fresh and in tins and more of the three packs of meat for £10 deal, some Chinese style chicken things and piece of unsmoked gammon. I remembered the toilet rolls, the Milk and the biscuit crackers but then forgot the fruit and nut cereal so I called in at Lidl’s where I bought some inexpensive salami to go with the rolls bought at Tesco.

It was mid afternoon on return and waiting for me was the World’s Great voices five disk set originally issued by the Readers Digest but now available at a fraction of the price from EBay and Amazon. I could not wait to listen, abandon the writing and game playing for the rest of the day into the early following with the exception of the third episode of Spooks which if anything exceeds the dramatic brilliance of previous seasons. Alas when after midnight the result of the first new style Euro Lottery ticket draw announced I had just one star number and one other on one of the three tickets. For once I was not that disappointed as I had in my possession one of the priceless greatest gifts, the musical voice.

1299 BLack and White Acrylic and Goal 2

Today Thursday 28th of February has been a day of pure self indulgence about food starting with Baxter's Minestrone soup with two thick slices of Brown bread, for tea, a cup of coffee and a chocolate wafer biscuit and for evening meal a prawn from shell sandwich with a large glass of Open Basket Australian Shiraz Cabernet as a starter, half an uncooked red pepper as a second course, then a plate of Heinz baked beans followed by two grilled Lochmuir Salmon fishcakes. The two should have been eaten together but I mistimed the cooking, and the meal ended with four buttered crackers two thin slices of mild uncoloured Cheddar cheese, and a dozen red and white grapes with a large cup of percolated Columbian Supremo ground coffee without sugar.

I broke off from the writing to watch the 10pm news, primarily to learn if there had been any progress in the investigations in Jersey, only to find that for 10 weeks the third in line to British monarchy, Prince Harry, the second son of Prince Charles and his former wife, Diana, has been fighting in Afghanistan, and that an agreement had been reached with the British and significant other foreign press to keep the information secret in order to protect the Prince and his military colleagues from becoming the primary target for Taliban and other forces. Since his disappointment at being pulled out of going to Iraq I guessed that something like this might happen and for once it is to the credit of the Media that the agreement was kept and that it is on the internet that the story was broken. As a consequence it was previously agreed that film of the Prince serving on the front line would be released and my reaction on viewing is that it will enhance the Prince's standing with everyone except the entrenched anti Royalist and those opposed to our original and on going involvement in Afghanistan. I followed on this news with Question Time and the political magazine programme this week and my mood until the news changed and I had to reappraise my day. Three cheers for Harry and King George.

It has commenced after a good sleep and some dreaming, and another clear blue sky morning, with later the information that this has been the sunniest February since records commenced another indication that the weather has changed, whether from human activities in one form or another or from changes the consequence of extra terrestrial events. I completed set work for the month, some 120 additions, bringing me close to the average since August 2003 of 125 a month, approximately 4 a day.

This afternoon was devoted to a visit to Sunderland which included a leisurely cup of coffee and a wafer biscuit looking through various brochures obtained from the Sunderland City Information centre which is truly the best I have seen anywhere in the UK. I was interested in three types of information. There was bus information for those going to Durham City, Middlesbrough and Carlisle as well as into parts of Northumberland. These are long hall day trip although the trip to Durham City from Sunderland is forty five minutes and there should be a similar time taking trip direct from South Shields. Some of the trips were from Sunderland Newcastle and onward so it will be possible for me to take the short in time route by Metro to Newcastle central bus station and from their or from other metro stops to Northumbrian towns such as Alnwick and Warwick. One issue is that with people like me travelling outward from 9.30 there could be homeward congestion so it might be risky to leave departures until the last buses. The second kind of information was on places further field where I have booked accommodation this summer, including Oxfordshire and Yorkshire. There was also some local event information although from previous experience the city library across the way has the more comprehensive range of cultural event programmes.

I rarely give way to day dreaming about situations which are unlikely such as what would I do if I won the European Lottery in a week where the fund had accumulated, but today as I set off to buy some canvasses, I indulged and continued with the concept when I returned home.

My priority would be family interests followed by supporting charitable and cultural interests as I am only able to do now on a very modest scale. But then everything else would be used to build and equip a black monolith building on Tyneside, hopefully planning permission would be given here in South Shields. A six floor structure clad in black polished stone with black glass. Thus recreating the black monoliths in which the main confidential component of the work will be housed. (Not everything treated as confidential will be secured beyond human curiosity, I have decided with red display units full of boring stuff house receipts and household communications suggest bank statements, income tax accounts gas and electricity accounts which could be displayed and become public access after a period of years after the security information contained in them no longer mattered and the names of employees identified no longer mattered.)

The argument being that only some material is never released to the public by the state such as on the workings and activities of the security services, especially those involving covert operations. I was amused by the outbursts of righteous indignation about the collusion of the media between the media, the Government and the Palace over the deployment on the front line of Prince Harry, although George Galloway on Question Time was consistent in his true colours defending the actions of Castro who imposed censorship and curtailed human rights because he regarded his country as being under constant attack by the United States, which it was of course, and where in 1939 we had to impose similar restrictions while we waited for the German onslaught on our people and their shores. The suspicion I have about George and others on the far left and right is that for them the control of the media would not be a short term expedient born of necessity but become a permanent way of government. This has been the evidence of all previous situations. Was Mr Galloway also beings serious when he appeared to be giving support for the way of life of the Taliban, while in the same breadth defending the high expenses spending life of those dependent upon public funds, on the grounds that those part of capitalist enterprises were able to use used business funds for lavish expenses approved lifestyle. This is class war hypocrisy George and the sin of all those prepared to misuse public funds. Mind you there is also just as much hypocrisy on the part of the unfettered capitalist who exploit the poor and uneducated.

I am presently set on my building having six floors to create a separate areas for guests which would be excluded from the 24 hour on line surveillance, recording and broadcasting system of everywhere else, except for bodily function areas. Within the edifice the rooms would be similar to those I have experienced during my life, in terms of size including height and recreating how the presentation of the work has developed as well as the work itself combining the routine daily living experience with the ongoing working activity. Retirement is only a concept for those who do not like or enjoy their work or wish to have greater financial.

If the amount was truly huge I would incorporate into the adjacent land area of the site, a restaurant cum bar, with facilities for music and song performances restricted to jazz, especially traditional jazz and the blues and a small complex of art studios and accommodation units to enable individuals to work and live while they attempted to establish their work. Dream on Dream on.

The second purpose of the trip was to purchase of four double primed, medium grain and hand made canvasses 16'' x 16'' to become part of the Black and White project which so far includes 101 copies of my 400 page autobiographical creative statement with 101 photos, which have been separately framed full size in Black and White and the first edition of 101 selected statements which are to be framed for display when the final version have been decided edition.

There will be 104 of the canvasses created, 101 for display with three reserves to complete four sets of 24 plus the 4 artman glitter and artman 100,75 project registration cards. Each Canvass will include an actual black or white A 4 size card, although I am yet to decide on the proportion where the card or photo card will be viewable or where it will have been submerged by acrylic, including acrylic representations of black and white cards. Pastel, crayon, pencil and watercolour will also be among the material used in addition to photographic montages, but while there will be a black and white A 4 size space, the surround will be worked in other colours.

Each canvass will be numbered within the creative sets where the range is 4001-8999, cards 96024-215976 as they will contain an actual card, and in some instances the painted representation of the card, or the additional photograph of the card which it covers. Although I am not a numerologist, the work will commence on the 69th anniversary of 9.3.39. I wonder what are the odds of a lottery ticket comprising 3. 9.12 36 39 42 or 3.9.12.15.18. 3 .6..9 12, 15 etc?

My evening meal was shared with a second viewing of the first film in series of three Goal 1 where I recently I Goal 2 for the first time. I saw the first film in theatre at its North East Preview having attended the two games at St James Park, against Chelsea and against Liverpool which are included in the film and interestingly only recently stood waiting for a bus opposite the Tynemouth terraced housing overlong the beach included in the film after my visit to the Church of St George at Cullercoats. The order of viewing the two films on DVD was set by the service supplier and it was consequently interesting to find what I had forgotten and to learn that the three film scenario had been agreed with FIFA and FA from the outset, concentrating on a British Premiership club in Goal 1, the European Club competition in Goal 2 and the World Cup in Goal 3, although getting Mexico, the USA or Spain to be the World Cup winners for which the star could be shown to have become eligible will be interesting. Newcastle was selected not just because the club had become internationally known with the first Keegan era, but because the ground is located on a peak of the hill which forms the greater part of the city, if filled to capacity with 52000 supporters and has the greatest night life on par with any other city in the world in a concentrated area from the Bigg Market in Grangertown down to the quayside and where between the High and Low Level Swing Bridges and the Millennium swing Bridge there is the Contemporary Art centre and the Sage Concert Halls and other developments on the Gateshead riverside.

Although the intention was to show modern football and its impact on cities, Newcastle and Madrid so far, the film is also about the impact of the rocketing economic and social status of becoming a international football star with the family (the Mexican father grandmother and brother of Santiago Munez (Kuno Becker) becoming USA illegal economic migrants in California where he is discovered by a former Geordie players and scout on holiday is given a Newcastle Trial where the International sounding Manager reminds of the new English Manager, and he hooks up with the goal scoring aging playboy Gavin Harris played by Alessandro Nivola and meets his future live in girl friend, who has the film name of Nurse Roz Harmison, (Anna Friel) which interestingly is the same surname as Durham and England Cricketer and Newcastle fanatical fan Steve Harmison. I had also missed the first time round the segment of the film on what it is like to play in the cold with driving snow and gale which is a features of playing and watching football in this region, and elsewhere of course but where here some male fans strip to the waist. I enjoyed the film even more than the first occasion.

I was disappointed with the second round of male performers in American Idol except for 17 year old David Archuleta who brought floods of tears to just about everyone from Paula Abdul, to his mom, and me, even Simon looked moved with his performance of Imagine, with Paula saying he was about to become a superstar. Simon's comments that there were now 19 other depressed contestants was not the kiss of death with the public as only David himself can prevent his otherwise inevitable success.

1693 Working with Don McLean and Judy Collins singing

This is not a time to bring into immediate consciousness Easter holidays of previous years as I decided to work on the project with relaxed attention rather than concentrated fervour. However I have been remembering previous writings as I continue to read Myspace published Blogs of 2007 and upgraded the presentation for publication again through Google. Coming across writing of attending concerts of Don McClean and Judy Concerts I have been listening to their records.

Don Mclean If you could read my mind
Vincent
Wonderful Baby

This work led to the completion of Google Blogs volumes 5816- 18; 5819-21, 5822-24 and reminds that I forgot to mention that in error I overwrote the list of completed sets according to category and number with the current record of completed sets listed according chronological date. Fortunate I had a copy on disk but saved at the end of September 2008. It was therefore necessary to reassembled the updated listed from the chronological list, in stages with Developments and Creatives and then Events and confidentials and the limited number of record records. Printing updates of the records led to reorganising my record of records indexes.

Love me Tender
It was a very Good Year
El Paso
My saddle Pal and I

The circular nature of aspects of the work does not escape me as I record having completed volumes of MySpace Blogs writing about recording volumes of Google Blogs of previously written Myspace Blogs, such is life. My Space Blogs 5789-91 5810-12

And I love you so
Crying
Empty Chairs
Homeless Brother
(Jesus on the Highway was a lost Hobo)

Birdie has been more on evidence on the nest because although the sun has been bright the temperature became cold, just above freezing on Bank Holiday Monday. I watched and listened to the Papal homily from the Vatican window overlooking St Peter’s Piazza in which he argued with conviction for the resurrection as a factual event and not symbolic. If I understood the transition correctly he claimed that without the reality of the physical resurrection of Jesus the rest of the religion was rendered meaningless because of our knowledge of scientific reality since then. In my opinion he made a fundamental fallacious conclusion equating moral conduct in its widest meaning with religious belief and immoral and decadent behaviour with scientific materialism when the evidence is to contrary in that some of the greatest acts of immoral and ungodly behaviour has been committed by religions and some of the heroic selfless acts of sacrifice, renunciation of wealth and worldliness committed by atheists. Cloistered thinking without a sense of space, time and history me thinks.

T Blues
Magdalene Lane
Infinity
Although chill the sun was so bright even after three pm that I had to go out, with camera to capture the sun rays on the spring flowers in North and South Marine Parks. The only pity is that the Council has miscalculated the volume of people enjoying the holiday weather and all the red waste bins were overflowing. Picnickers had done there best putting the overflow in bags. I will go out later if the weather holds to check if this rubbish was removed overnight or left to accumulate. The parks looked brilliant and were being enjoyed by a wide cross section of the population.

Prime Time
American Pie
Run Diana Run
(They are crossing the Atlantic: It is just assassination)
You have gotta share

I wonder when Run Diana Run was written as it warns her to escape the attentions of the media, or the CIA who wish to destroy and where all those who briefed the media against have her death on their immortal conscience.

Judy Collins Cats in the Cradle
They Say its Wonderful
Amazing Grace

I enjoyed my food cooking the round kilo of gammon and eating several slices with roast potatoes, followed by half a small sweet melon. Later I could not resist a couple more slices with an olive, cucumber, tomato and lettuce salad followed by a banana. I enjoyed the Mclean so much that listened twice. Also see 183 Myspace - November 2007 and 1189 Don Mclean Starry Starry night.

Blowing in the Wind
My Heart Stood Still
Embraceable You
I’ve grown accustomed

In addition to completing the volumes of Blogs the new versions are being added to a separate Disk from the latest in batches of ten to twenty and the Blog index is being revised with inserting the Google Blogs alongside the My Space. I discover that I have not saved Google Blog 1214 Cry Tsotsi and to recover the position I have to call up My Space and find the writing, copy, and then save on hard drive and copy to disk. In the process that I also discover I have not printed 0ut 1213 The Headlines of a lost Blogs written at the time and then lost so feeling tired and lazy I had noted the main points I had written about.

Barbara Allen
Till there was you
My Funny Valentine
Morning had broken

The one task I have been shirking is photographing completed sets. I must get myself into the grove again. I sent some e mails and received some comments which generated a further cycle. I wrote and checked and had to rewrite and recheck.

How are things in Gloccenmara
Times they are changing
Leaving on a jet plane
Send in the Clowns

Priority in the evening as the last Lewis oft eh present series. It struck me that In Oxford the working class are obviously finding the working day too hard to contemplate murder where as the University is full of calculated killers and men and women of murdering passion. This last episode took the team into the countryside and an aging group of hard rockers which extraordinarily and incongruously Lewis was a fan of in his alleged youth. Rubbish, such personalities as he portrays were conformists. The Beatles perhaps and locals such as the Animals, Bryan Ferry and Dire Straits and even more likely Lindisfarne. He is unlikely to have had friends who smoked dope let alone had the occasional puff.

Don’t Cry for me Argentina
Loch Lomond
Plasir d’amour
Both sides now

Having slagged off this aspect of the two how show the saving grace were the number of fine actors assembled for and otherwise predicable who dun it when clues were ladled up for the simplest of watcher to work out well in advance. In fairness I did not work the motive. Joanna Lumley played the fake former rock singer and Simon Callow the gay creative impresario who had to get rid of those who realised the returning star was her overshadowed younger sister. Horribly miscast although she did her best was gorgeous fine actor Helena Baxendale who made her name in Cold Feet and went onto Friends.

Black is my colour
Bewitched
Younger than Springtime
Let it be

See Google 1226 Judy Collins and MySpace 218 Truth and Therapy.

1152 Artman Report

Sometimes what I do is circular. This is the 149th MySpace published writing, commenced at 10.30, Wednesday 22nd August 2007,on a morning when I amputating my 101 project records. I have completed a printed 4 set volume of creative work numbers 5462-5465. It also contains two Artman glitter cards, the first written in freehand green and silver glitter and second in gold and red glitter, and two signature card signed Artman in black crayon which includes the numbers of each card in sets 131065 113060 and the numbers of the Artman glitter cards 108363 108365 and of the signature cards 108364 10836 of set 4515, also classified as a creative set. Technically only the glitter cards should be described as creative and the signature cards record cards but in the beginning I decided against because I was being lazy and therefore it is something that has to be lived with.

I have also photographed the volume one page at a time, although some volumes I also photograph two pages because the this interests and also establishes that the written or visual material exists in addition to the record of the writing on a computer and a computer disk, and in the instance of this work, on My Space, retrievable by me as long as I keep the My Space account and it keep me, and technically I assume in the master Myspace database unless all individual records are deleted if an account is ended.

I have also entered the record of the last two completed the sets in a chronological list 6570 6571 as the others were previously entered thus making 157704 cards officially registered although I have over 30 volumes some from one set volumes others of eight sets to be checked and registered and photographed of completed sets of work which rise from the floor onto a settee. Some of these volumes or where the Artman glitter cards or registration signatures also need to be created. The glitter cards can be created while I watch television, usually I am bored after twenty and I only have surface space for that number o dry in this room, and by the evening after a meal I am sufficiently tired not to make the journey into the front room, cannot be called a living room, because I use it rarely at the moment other than to clean, or get a bottle of wine, check on literature work from the library shelving, a DVD, to view on the wide 32in wide screen TV now in my ground floor work room. The front room also houses two thirds of the video collection and I cannot remembered the last occasion I viewed material although the intention is to transfer to DVD someday. The audio unit including vinyl record player is also next door, in theory I will listen to my music or use the music as a background to reading although this is also rare, because both activities should be undertaken separately.

Tonight it is a friendly football match between England and Germany and the BBC has again risked wrath by adding some laughter when it advertises that it showing the match, trying to generate an audience obviously having paid a substantial some to show the match in competition with other media and forgetting that in pubs across the land, the National Front and other right wing groups will assemble and use the occasion to display the worst kinds of nationalistic and threatening racist behaviour, and which will spill over into physical violence at any opportunity, especially if England lose. Oh some may say, if this is read by anyone how do you know? I have witnessed this myself, the last instance was at a public house at Waddon near Croydon where a charming young man explained to the Black barman that they would wreck the place if England lost. This was not banter, or boastful I intimidation. We all knew it was meant, that is the ladies who disappeared first with their partners because of vile references to their bodily parts, and the rest of us who decided to leave at half time, giving sympathetic glances to the barman and each other as we retreated while the yobs were at the bar to refreshing themselves for what was to come.

Working in was not my original intention as I hoped the weather would have brightened up to undertake the next stage of the two rivers walk, which covers the cliff promenade and suntrap sunbathing areas between the Seaburn and Roker beaches which includes a gap between the cliff over which there is the road, but under which there is pathway into a park which has been upgraded back to its Victorian splendour. It is brightening but having started I will do some 101 work, make myself a cheese or salami omelette followed by a banana or some plum visiting my mother between 2 and 6 and return for the evening meal and the match. Whoops I need to iron the three nightdresses washed and dried last night, next before the food. Tomorrow a walk is also out unless I get up early and the weather is suitable because I have been asked to meet with the consultant at noon, and in the evening I want to go to the pictures, to experience the third Bourne trilogy film, at least I assume it is a trilogy, and where through the kind benevolence of ITV the first two films were shown on Sunday and last night, repeated on another of their channels on Monday and tonight. An first of all to check emails and myspace and the post.

Great my internet post DVD club has sent Jamon Jamon, the 1992 film directed by Bigas Luna and starring Penelope Cruz, together with the Francois Ozon film Time to leave with Jeanne Moreau, both of which I know nothing about, more internet checking, but before or after? Hospital has telephoned to confirm I will be at the round doctors round tomorrow. New debit card arrived to replace one which expires in a week's time.

12.15. There was another of those infuriating annual discussion about the cost of school uniforms and the requirement to wear them. The BBC sees its role in these programme to present as wide a viewpoint as possible within the permitted framework of free speech without coming to any conclusions irrespective of the evidence presented or the logic of a particular argument. As a consequences it sometimes misses out on fundamental points. Earlier in the week or even last week a woman became very upset when others did not share her passionate argument that children should have the nurturing of their mother in the earliest of years, but nobody was on hand to explain to her that she was right, but only to a degree because it so much depends on the mother and her social, educational, cultural and economic circumstances. If she loves her child, recognising it is a young person, is comfortable being a full time mother and wife, and is able to prepare her child for school and for living in society then great, but how many young first time mothers are equipped to do this? An what effect will this have on the child if she not? It is a sad truth that the more poor in every respect the mother, the greater the child will benefit from mixing with children from different backgrounds and being ion contact with adults who have some insight and experience of good mothering. The converse is also sadly true that the stronger the background of the mother the greater is the ability of the child to function in whatever environment it is placed. Where is some circumstances the mother has died, departed or made herself unavailable a substitute mother is preferable and then a natural or substitute father figure. There is no absolute position and in every situation the issue depending on the circumstances and background of those with the primary responsibility for the upbringing of the child.

12.45 This morning the subject of school uniforms also had its infuriating moments. I agreed with those who argued that a school uniform was a social leveller in so far that within school the worst aspects of children's clothes wear can be avoided from inappropriate clothing to the showing off wealth and following of fashion which should be regarded by all sensible and caring people as one of the deadliest of sins and a guarantee of moving into the anti room of hell rather than heaven. We hen had the extraordinary situation of a male head of department arguing that children who wore uniforms correctly had better examination results than those who did not. If correct no one was on hand to explain that this meant we had the wrong examination system because it was measuring conformity and not originality and creativity. As a nation , it is true we once needed conforming masses who would be comfortable in the future roles working in heavy industry and manufacturing, or undertaking routine clerical work which can now be undertaken on a computer as part of other more interesting functions. This is not longer the situation and in order for the nation to survive we need an increasing number of creative, imaginative, energetic, inventive individualists, even to undertaking comparatively simple and lowly paid work such that being a waiter in a restaurant or serving behind a bar The establishment has to attract people to leave their homes from where the same food and drink can be provided at a quarter of the cost, and where those who make can continue to do so. This is also true for those who spend most of their day and night cleaning the bottoms of the old and disabled and ensuring that they are appropriately fed and clothed. The least suitable person is someone without imagination and creativity who cannot see every resident as the person they have been or someone they are likely to become. Unfortunately some schools do have teachers, even heads, who are the kind of adults who prepared their young men to go off and be slaughtered in their millions without being able to question if what they were doing is justified. This of course is what happens in totalitarian regimes of the extreme political right and left. What attracted me to Jesus Christ was his subversive tendencies.

1.20 I had my daily fix of profit predicting from antiques, a daily reminder that as with stocks and shares the only people to make a regular profit are the dealers. There is one expert who always qualifies the estimate or sale figure by saying there is a little bit of commission to take off hohoho. I hate to think what his definition of a big bit is. There are the occasional amazing tales of luck something bought in a car boot sale for coppers which is then sold for hundreds and even thousands of pounds, but the odds are no different from the national lottery or bring murdered by a stranger who is in their teens. Later while watching subtitled TV with my mother there was a programme where someone brought a Moorcroft Vase to a dealer who offered cash which is not accepted would go to auction. The person was foolish enough to tell the dealer that he had been offered £75 which he did not consider acceptable. The dealer offered £100 adding that at the auction there would be commission to pay. I have watched sufficient of these programmes to know that the Moorcroft vase usually makes over £200. By coincidence in a separate programme a pair of Moorcrofts, similar but not matching fetched over £600.

10.30pm I did a good pre holiday weekend shop after the hospital visit with on naughty naughty. Two choux chocolate topped fresh cream filled buns, eaten after a meal of two pork chops, steamed unfrozen vegetable and a bowl of cherries after red wine and peanuts, followed by a can of coke. This proved to be suitable preparation for the match which commenced with a good disaster in that I went to sleep for just over nine minutes after kick off thus missing the opening English goal. I then saw our goal keeper make the mistake which is likely to cost his international career and a first cap back (i.e. not a forward), blast a shot to put the opposition ahead 2.1. The Mr Owen short of match fitness, and good riddance Mr Dyer both missed golden opportunities plus the makes lost of mistakes, usually, opposition goalkeeper made some great saves, so we lost, but it was a no consequence friendly.

I have managed to transfer the photographs from two memory sticks and do the signatures cards for the Myspace Blog new volume and then for a volume of creative photographs with the title photodream and where one set 5470 is completed.

23.45 Checked the position in the legends prediction league and find that I have progressed from 600 something to 400 something at the end of week 2. The slowness of activity because for background I decided to watch Rat Race on Film Four. A ridiculous escapade race movie from Las Vegas to Silver City in which John Cleese sets up six punters chancing their arm in his casino to get to Silver City where he has placed two million dollars in the station left luggage available to any of the six who gets their before the others. The six who include Rowan Atkinson, as a badly speaking Italian, Whoopie Goldberg playing nun on the run and Cuba Gooding playing Cuba Gooding, are worthy of Membership of the Big Brother club and each have prosperous and predicable adventurous mishaps until the spectacular finale in which they decide to abandon their individual quests in order to help feed the world.

Another day is ending and despite the weather four or five members of the Big brother gang are in th heated pool while others coated sit at the smoking bench, which others get comfy in the bedroom, but I will be abed and asleep long before any of them are. I have added a registered six developments sets 1915-1919, completing one volume 1907-1904 creating the signature cards to 1925. 6578 sets registered and 252648 photos.