Saturday 26 November 2016

Saturday

Started bright and sunny - cloudy, cold and dull now - it’s going to get much colder next week so hopefully I’ll be back at the studio, and it’s excellent heating.

Feeling a bit better today, but taking it very slow - standing up and lying down are basically all I can do. Being uncomfortable makes it hard to concentrate - so i can’t read or focus properly on anything. It’s been a waste of a week and I’m getting quite pissed off.

I have to complete a couple of outstanding jobs on Monday and then look at finances and planning - I need to be able to think straight. Last week I was turned down twice for jobs because I basically didn’t want to work for free. They were both well funded commercial retail / food operations - but the owners couldn’t get it into their head that I couldn’t just throw together a brand and a website in 10 mins in exchange for a plug on Facebook or something. I actually strongly suspect that at least one will fail  quite quickly, so shabby has been their approach to everything.

Hastings has started to gear up for xmas, most shops and quite a few homes already decorated. It’s already becoming annoying. I have even less interest in xmas than usual this year, so I’ll be bypassing the whole thing. I certainly don’t intend spending any money.

I need to work on the way I present myself professionally and possibly do things I don’t actually like to make myself more attractive to clients I wouldn’t normally contemplate - but I need the money. It’s all a bit grim. People who I don’t rate are making a lot more money than me with work I frankly think is rubbish - and industry people I know are fawning over fashionable work that offers nothing but a thin layer of ‘now’. It’s all crap.

I had to cancel some rubbish collection last week because of my back - I need to get that sorted as soon as I am mobile again and get it done - and start trying to figure out how to deal with the front of the house. I’m going to have to really think on my feet there.

I have no strong feelings whatsoever about Fidel Castro.

Anarchy in the UK was released 40 years ago today (Castro would have been the same age then that I am now - that’s my only nod to his passing). I have read a couple of fairly crappy articles about Joe Corre deciding to destroy his Sex Pistols arc hive (He’s the son of McClarren and Westwood). Every single article has been critical - and all have pointed out it’s value (apparently up to 5 million) - which is kinda the point he’s trying to make about commercialisation. It’s only worth that money if people want to buy relics of the past to make themselves look good - otherwise they will spend it on something else. It’s dead, the past, over - I have friends who still own stuff from that time (One friend has a large collection of newspapers from the 70’s he bought as a child that cover all the key episodes in punk) and at least they have personal value - but turning stuff into icons is pointless - it’s all well recorded. If Corre wants to burn everything in a petulant huff. It’s his to burn, we’re not talking about golden statues of Buddha, here. I went to an exhibition of Malcolm McClarren’s stuff in Manchester about 10 years ago - there was something a bit uncomfortable about seeing it all presented as ‘art’ - even his shopping lists pinned up in glass cases. Perhaps by destroying it all, it gets to live forever - and not in the archives of the rich.

Weird anecdote warning. I know someone vaguely who lives next door to a colleague - she recently posted some photographs of her father on Facebook at a family party. It was Windsor Davies. He looks good.


I had an email offering me the chance to buy the official labour party 2017 calendar. It was on the theme of great moment in British socialism over the years. The past. All about the past. nothing about the future, just nostalgia and mythology. Sepia toned memories. Nothing about going forward. Typical.

PS - sorry if the type displays strangely here - there is a reason.

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