Thursday 28 May 2015

Thursday evening. Random stuff.

Despite being a short week - I've packed in a stupid amount of work - although, in truth - I earned hardly anything. There is literally no money out there, which isn't great for me. Among other things I managed to develop a branding package for a DJ, labeling, bags and signage for a pharmacy chain, creative work and research for a bar and a florist, some advertising and a load of support work for a client pushing through a job I've already completed. I have other bits hanging about too - but nobody values or respects creative work anymore - nor do they want to pay for it.

On Monday I am seeing a client at 7pm in Brighton for a talk about a new project that may or may not involve some paid input - I'm going to try and pack in another couple of meet ups with other clients too. Not really sure what else I can do. Seeing as there is just me, and when I come home I have everything else to deal with (people forget that) and nobody to help me out - I am, once again, running on empty.

Bumped into a friend early this morning who was waiting for the bank to open so he could get the money to pay his builders - he's having his house remodeled and was lucky enough to have another property to cash in, rather than - as he was happy to admit - waiting and saving up. Everyone I know seems to be doing OK thanks to credit and loans or cashing in on something - I doubt it will end well.

I gave a big bag of very god quality shirts to a friend who is smaller than me this week. All expensive stuff that I'd given up trying to fit into. We went for a coffee and he brought his toddler daughter. She amused herself by carefully spooning milk into her fruit juice, making it cloudy - I was on the brink of vomiting all the way through - I have a horror of milk being mixed with other things, and watching it cloud the clear juice made my head spin, but I was able to control my gag reflex and hid my distress.

One of my neighbours puts waste food out onto the grassy verge in front of the house every night for the foxes and badgers. As a result - we have a selection of very tame, fearless foxes - who have realised that as long as I have the dogs on the lead - they offer no threat. Alas - it does not stop the dogs from going totally loco every night.

I've managed to upset someone again this week. I seem to find that really easy. A good friend posted an advert for an AirB&B place on facebook - it was in Ditchling, not too far from here and looked lovely, but on closer inspection it was just a very fancy, very old 'shabby chic' shed in the woods - with a stove and a bed and lots of naff decorations. It looked like a fairytale cottage - except it was in reality a totally absurd and quite offensive example of 'poverty porn' - didn't have a toilet - was totally overshadowed by trees and on the market at £1000 pcm. It was technically unfit for human habitation. There are people living in sheds in this country out of desperate need - and not as a flight of fancy, with a bit of Farrow and Ball slapped on. I seem to have made a comment to that effect - which deeply upset the owner. That shed earns more than me. I bet they don't pay tax on it.

I keep seeing strange things left in the street. Yesterday it was the bottom half of a male mannequin, today an entire tea set. Makes a change from the odd TV set.

The scaffolders working on the building next door dropped a pole onto the skylight of the apartment and posh B&B above my studio - breaking the glass as everyone was having breakfast. It was bound to happen.

Saw a photograph of myself that had been taken at the weekend. Looked fucking awful, and very old.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A shed being used for any sort of accommodation would almost certainly need planning permission, to check that it was fit for use as such I'd have thought - which that would probably not have. Surely daft to actually advertise on the web that you are breaching the law, if that was the case, - you might think.
DL

Richard de Pesando MA(RCA) said...

yep - that's what I thought - the angry ranting response told me that 300 people had stayed there over the last few years via Air B&B... all of them DELIGHTED to spend a night playing at being poor. I despair...

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