Recent favourites:

Noisy Tits in the garden

House by All Saints Cemetery in Maidenhead. Up for sale, very tempting.

Somewhere in Shiplake

In the woods…

Karen, Emily and Katie posing for their Indie-rock album cover (by the Temple of Venus in West Wycombe park)

Knowl Hill in the Snow:

Braving the wastelands of Knowl Hill in the snow:

Katie – Rescuer of abandoned Christmas Ornaments

Ed’s favourite ride

Full set of Knowl Hill Snow expedition photos.

Avebury:

Quick visit to Avebury for lunch with Dad and Jan.

Full set of Avebury photos.

Wargrave Commission, Maidenhead in the Snow

More shots of Maidenhead in the snow.

The Typaedia is exactly what it looks like, a great big book of index numbered typefaces which you could leaf through to order sheets of letraset-type font sheets to create layouts, negatives and all the other stuff a working print-shop may use typefaces for. There’s an introduction page:

Introducing Conways’ Typaedia*
Conway’s Typaedia is a unique collection of some 4000 display faces.
Each is shown in its entirety, with caps, lower case, variants, punctuation and signs, arranged alphabetically in two separate sections, and all available at Conways’ as headline photosetting.
The first section shows the bulk of the faces – 3300 in alphabetical order with the second section showing 700 faces in the Agency series.
There is an Introduction to each section, a Latest additions section and a comprehensive Index.
The first section of 3300 faces is enclosed along with with the full Index.
The Agency section together with the introductions and the Latest additions, all at present at the printers, will be delivered to you early 1980.
Altogether…a unique work of reference
* Typaedia,-paedia (Latin,fem), a doctrine or learning.

From there we just dive into pages and pages of fonts, no other explanation needed. It’s a lovely catalogue, nicely spaced with no unnecessary crap, no explanations, no sales pitch it assumes the reader knows it’s purpose and doesn’t need to patronise or hard sell at them. Lessons on simplicity could be learned from here (mostly by me).

It’s a great reminder of how stupidly easy it is for us these days even in comparison to 30 years ago. When we need a new typeface we can purchase it and be using it within a couple of minutes, back then you had to go collect them or wait for an order to turn up. Every character you used had a cost, if you knackered up your design there was no undo, it was back to the supplier to get another sheet. And most importantly you had to keep your stash of lettering safe from your 8 year old who found the whole concept fascinating and would happily apply your lettering to any surface given half a chance.

My Dad gave me this book recently, which was really cool. For most of my childhood he ran a print shop (and still does), and I have some really happy memories of laying into his assorted work materials and making crap with them. I have especially fond memories of letraset and some really sharp memories of sitting on the floor rubbing the letters onto whatever materials happened to be around. Not with any real creative intent, I just found the whole process amazing, it held an almost bubble-wrap type fascination. The Typaedia was never that far from hand.

The book itself is well used, covered with splatters of ink, random bookmarks, biro scribbles and the other assorted grunge of a workshop. It’s almost comforting to have on my bookshelf. I’m slightly annoyed that I forgot to photograph the back cover which has one of Dad’s promotional stickers on it as drawn by a local illustrator (Peter Classey), as they also form a strong part of my early memories.

Thanks Dad.

Full set of Typaedia photos on Flickr.

I picked this up in a charity shop in Newbury for about £3 along with a nice selection of arty books. I have no idea of the purpose of this book, assuming it had a purpose in the first place. It’s a lovely chunky hardback containing shedloads of text, some colour photos of Highrise buildings and a mass of intriguing floorplans for aforementioned buildings. None of the text is in latin script apart from the title on the cover and a couple of chapter headings, I’m assuming it’s all in a Chinese dialect. I don’t want to know what any of it means, that would ruin the magic, it’s probably an exceptionally dull text book, but it looks nice. It’s been rubber stamped on the inside cover (again in Chinese), which may be  a library stamp, or a school stamp or may not be. Enjoy the intrigue.

Disclaimer. I may be violating someone’s copyright here. If so, contact me and I shall remove this entry and photos.

Full set on flickr.

There was a pleasing selection of art on show. I’d expected nothing but still life and landscapes, not that I have anything against still life or landscapes, it’s just good to see a little diversity. We hung around with Jen and Neil for a bit, bemoaned the timing of the market (too close to Christmas, I’d already spent all my cash), bought a couple of prints then sodded off home. Really enjoyed it and looking forward to the next one.

More that a little pissed off with myself for having not got my shit together enough to have taken part. Another year has gone by where I’ve prioritised other people’s projects over my own and let work get in the way in the most horrific and unacceptable manner. I have been taking steps in the right direction, hopefully I’ll have got myself sorted enough that I might have enough finished material for the next market (May). I have a couple of sketchbooks full of ideas but nothing concrete yet. It was good to see that both Jen and Neil had created a load of really brilliant work alongside their day-jobs, with the right mindset I may get something finished. Had a chat with Scott and Emma today about maybe sharing a pitch at the next one, should give me a bit of motivation.

So, thanks to Boville’s for injecting a bit of art and culture into our otherwise fairly dismal town, and if I fail to get enough material together for a future event I’ll just have to go on an axe wielding rampage through the town instead.

Some links of interest:

• Jen’s art blog
• Neil’s art blog
• Buy Neil and Jen’s art here
• Harriet’s art
• A. Boville Wright
• Art on the Street

More photos here.

Brown Signing: Traveling in one direction until you see a brown traffic tourist sign, then following it to that specific tourist attraction regardless of if you’ve heard of it or it sounds interesting. It doesn’t have to be an official brown sign, just some indication of a touristy type thing.

There’s an excruciatingly dull story behind this, I expect you want to hear it. Being cretinously self-employed I don’t really have such things as holidays or weekends. My darling Lady K who is somewhat challenged when it comes to transport will on occasion ask me to drive her to work related events round the country, not usually that far from home that I couldn’t come back in the interim, but as an attempt to stave off the ever impending work related mental breakdown I’ll take the entire day off rather than come back and work. She get’s transport, I get a day off, everyone wins.

I suck balls at taking days off. I have no idea what to do with myself, I know I should write, draw, photograph and similar but usually end up dragging my arse around the nearest town centre slowing turning into some sort of consumer-zombie. I started trying to research the areas before we set out, but I either can’t find anything that sounds FUN or I leave my list of places to go at home (I am nothing if not a fucking idiot).

After spending an HOUR AND A HALF in Newbury town centre trying to find the public toilets (thanks Newbury council you fucknuts, considered a signpost or two?)  I left. I had planned to spend a while at Donnington Castle, but it was rainy, and pretty dull (comparative to other castle ruins). Bored shitless with no desire to haunt shopping centres or go home I drove in one direction looking for something to do, with the decision to stop at the first tourist attraction regardless of what it was. It was a disused 12th Century Church – St Margaret’s Catmore which is a pretty awesome find.

I have a minor (non-religious) obsession with churches, it was disused and mildly difficult to get to so completely devoid of people (I have  minor dislike of people).  There is no way I would have found this intentionally, the only tourist attractions I found on the web were the usual family friendly over-priced nonsense, this my friends if the power of the BROWN SIGN. Couple of hours poking round a disused (but still fully furnished church) in complete isolation for free was worth the journey. Afterwards a drive back towards Newbury stopping at the first signposted country pub for a very nice lunch in an otherwise empty pub (no idea what it was called or where it was) and set out again.

Next brown-sign find was Snelsmore Common. What’s better than empty churches with no people? Nature reserves with no people! Well very few people. Mostly wild ponies, which was nice. I did have a disturbing moment in the car park. There was a bus of disabled kids alongside me whose teacher was holding up items from the forest for them to name. As I stepped out of the car the teacher presumably held up a leaf as all the kids turned to look at me and chanted ‘Leave, leave, leave’. Good for them, I wouldn’t want some hairy angry web developer stumbling round my  common either.

Then we went home and nearly had three horrific accidents on the way, I am a shit driver. I took many photos, let me bore you with them:

Donnington Castle – (Full Set Here)

St Margaret Catmore (Full set here)

Snelsmore Common (Full set here)

Mostly close-ups of fungus. Mmm… fungus.

Pleasant day all considered, I’m happy I’ve found a way round my usual mental lethargy, hopefully I’ll have another crack soon.

A strange event to go to. The fireworks were cool, although both Tim and Myself seemed to remember them being a little more impressive when were younger, there was a lack of catherine wheels or static display type things (I have no idea of a better way to explain that), just a shitload of rockets. Fifteen minute walk to a field, fifteen minutes of fireworks, fifteen minute walk back to the car and it was all over. Still, a great deal better than sitting in watching fucking X-Factor.

Our intention to go for a meal afterwards was a little misplaced, the entire rest of the world had the same idea and we ended up having to drive into Wycombe to find anywhere without a stupidly long wait for a table.

I took a couple of hundred photos, mostly messing about with long exposures, like a grade a shit-conductor I left my tripod in the car so they were a bit hit and miss. The results were ok for a first go at photographing fireworks, I’d like to give it another go as none of them were very impressive.

Full set of Cookham fireworks photos is here (21 shots).

Here’s some of the better ones:

We went up to London with Scott and Emma a few times recently to go and see the stuff that we usually pass up as being ‘just down the road, we can do it anytime’. First trip we covered the Natural History Museum, The Science Museum and Harrods.

The Natural History Museum is absolutely awesome. It doesn’t appear to have changed much since I went as a child (it probably has) so it was a brilliantly nostalgic experience. Some of the exhibits seemed amusingly outdated, but this just gave it an extra layer of charm. The age of the exhibits is pretty much beside the point anyway, they are fascinating, fun and informative.

The building itself is beautiful, there’s so much detail to it it’s hard to imagine the effort that went into it. There’s carvings around all the doorways DIFFERENT carvings around all the doorways, seriously. From room to room the details change, always in the same style but always slightly different. Some have birds, some monkeys, lizards, plants and flowers and then this:

I blame either Lovecraft or Geiger any ideas?

Next up was the Science Museum. I’ll be honest, I was less excited but possibly more through my aching feet than anything to do with the museum itself. We didn’t manage to cover much of it, it was getting late and my feet were starting to hate me. It was brilliant, the space section was especially inspiring. I really wanted to see the historical medicine section on the top floor but my feet and K’s desire to see the HORROR that is Harrods killed that plan (for now).

HARRODS. Well beat me with a tacky stick from the tackiest shop in tacky land (Harrods). I had been here once before in my youth, but obviously being young and unaware of such things I hadn’t noticed the pure amazing lack of taste and decency in the decor. Kitsch doesn’t even begin to cover it. It’s fun in a tasteless manner. The massive over the top Ancient Egyptian style decor coupled with the OPERA SINGER SINGING DOWN THE FUCKING ESCALATORS did have me wondering if I had fallen through a portal to a world where fairground ghost rides were decorated by drag queens. Karen loved it (of course). It’s now her new favourite shop in the whole world ever. She ran around the Christmas department like a mental and didn’t want to leave. We bought some nice decorations and chocolates (NOT the £10,000 box of chocolates, I mean SERIOUSLY, how does that work?).

I live with her. Pity me.

Then we went home.

Here is some photos:

Here’s the entire set. I was too busy looking at stuff WITH MY REAL EYES to take many photos, unlike various mentals I saw in the museums who never removed the camera from their faces.